not a bad game at all, a pretty good one in a lot of ways but incredibly messy. the conspiracy in this one maybe tests your suspension of disbelief a bit, but there's so many good moments and it's not nearly as boring as 3's conspiracy so it's still an enjoyable time, at least when the game has you in onomichi. kamurocho feels like a drag regardless of how unfinished it is, but that's mostly because onomichi is just such a great hub and where most of the actually compelling story and character moments take place. characters like hirose and someya are also incredibly compelling, especially when the rest of the cast is just kind of there in my opinion. iwami more than anyone is a very bad and unenjoyable character but that's kind of the point and why he's so effective in his role, but then you have everyone else who's just kind of boring or vaguely evil and it just doesn't do much for me personally and it maybe doesn't help my wider thoughts on the characters that the western release is missing all of the tatsuro yamashita vocal tracks so cutscenes involving those songs just feel kind of empty and stilted since the original japanese version lets the vocals and facial animations do more talking than.. actually talking. the most striking thing to me about this game though is that even if it's not the last step in his journey, a lot of kiryu's story in this one basically has him in the passenger seat for a lot of events he went through in the first game, which i think works really well for a game that's supposed to be the end of his tenure as the sole lead of this series (more on that later).
very much a game that i enjoy but one that i don't find intensely remarkable most of the time. in terms of enjoyability though, the ending is where my thoughts on this game become more complicated, and while it really doesn't impact my thoughts on the game that much it's still something that constantly irks me and i find very hard to divorce from this game.

there's this pervasive idea in the yakuza fanbase that 6 was meant to be an end all be all finale to his character, that this would be the last time we would ever see him. however this idea falls apart pretty quickly; even while playing the game it becomes obvious that either this assumption is full of shit or that kiryu just got the worst send off ever, and to this day you'll see people upset about kiryu's inclusion in the post-6 like a dragon games. more than any other game in this series when like a dragon 8 was revealed there was this vocal fan outcry, people were upset that kiryu was coming back as a protagonist in this one and the more and more time i think about i just don't get it? on its own terms, as an ending to the individual game it's fine, but it's such an awful way to hypothetically conclude our time with this character and it's just perplexing to me that a non negligible amount of fans felt like kiryu's inclusion in games like 7, 8, and gaiden were even capable of "ruining" it. did kiryu fans really want his story to end with him once again falling back onto his deepest fatal flaw? the one thats been haunting him since the finale of the first game in this series? kiryu is constantly running away, he feels like people and especially the people he loves only get hurt when he's around, so he keeps running, and him not learning from that and just doing it again is supposed to be the final send off to this character? this grand finale that the newer entries tarnished? never has the fanbase of a series made me more happy that the loud voices in fandom are not the ones in the writing room because never before have i seen such a widespread misunderstanding of a character and his arc than with kazuma kiryu after yakuza 6.
hopefully as we get more fans in this series after the release of 8, a game that actually has what feels like a natural finale for the character, the idea that 6 was not only supposed to be a total finale for the character of kiryu but that it was a even a remotely good one for him dies down and yakuza 6 discussion can finally shift solely to how it has the worst version of kamurocho in the series, just like god intended.