Kind of a mess but I ended up really liking it. I feel like it's hurt by having to be "the final yakuza game!!" because while I like the story's hard focus on family and connecting to each other, it's a story that doesn't feel targeted at Kiryu really. Tons of the drama revolves around a specific character who doesn’t feel like he gets to do much because Kiryu’s the main character, therefore he has to do everything. Vaguely spoilery screenshot but this line is a perfect example of what I mean, if this were a film or whatever where they didn’t need to think about who you’re directly controlling I think a lot of this would go completely differently. It’s not helped either by Kiryu not really having much more character development? 1-3 and 0 develop him while he’s a bit more in the background for 4 and 5 uses his overpowered-ness in a cool way while he’s not directly placed as “the main character”. Here though, I love him but he’s just killing any drama. I’m not the type to constantly go “ehehe i bet this will happen” but I kind of knew how a lot of scenes would go just because of Kiryu’s presence, nothing bad seems to happen around him. When he does get genuine pushback, especially at the end, it’s really cool! But for a lot of this I felt like his main drama was “how can I make this about me” when I wanted it to focus on the others more because they’re great! The fact that I’ve rated this 4 stars then spent the whole post complaining should emphasise just how much I loved all the Onomichi characters and the game’s direct character focus. The big “Yakuza conspiracy” side of this plot felt like it was pushed to the side a bit more and I kind of like that (mostly because I’m dumb but also) because it just felt like it had time to breathe and clearly play with each of the character’s relationships.

The dropkick is so good as well. Good stuff.

edit: it's slowly sinking in that this is the last direct kiryu yakuza, i'm gonna vomit tears, i've been playing these since 2019