Out of PS3 era yakuza, I'd put it at better than Yakuza 3 but worst than Yakuza 4.
It's probably the best playing of the 3, characters feel at their best in this game and characters get a lot more cool indivual actions of ways to use it, and this game has the LEAST amount of shitty grindy fights, but they're still there and it's still the yakuza boss problesm where they armor/combo break you through everything no matter how or when you hit them, leading to boring fights where you dodge and then do a pathetic amount of damage and maybe get a heat action off. But it's pretty fun to enemies that aren't like this.
The plot overall feels like a mess. I actually like most of the characters individual arc plots, but they often end up feeling kinda unbaked and then oddly wrapped into the main plot. Shinada's is probably the worst of them, where the idea of his plot actually rules but it's super rushed and then ass pulls its way into kiryu and gang's tojo hijinks. God I wish Shinada got his own game ala judgement, so much lost potential.
The main plot feels extremely convoluted and by the end I still only vaguely get what the main antag was trying to do. There's a lot of bizarre heel turns and ends like a wet fish with me still confused and wondering about X and Y. It's got some cool shit in there, but also its one of those games where I feel if I went through all of the cutscenes a second time I'd viciously pick it apart. It feels like it has traditional JRPG plot beats, its bizarre.
It's decent. Also I got really invested in the Saejima hunting minigame for some reason, even though I normally don't get too into the yakuza side game stuff like the carburant clubs. Infact a lot of the side stuff in this game is pretty good, and also feels like RGG doing proof of concepts for stuff like a RGG hunting or RGG idol game, and some of them are kinda cool. Yakuza 7 kicked ass so I guess between that and this games surprisingly detailed side games I think its proof that RGG doesn't need to make action games to make cool games.
It's probably the best playing of the 3, characters feel at their best in this game and characters get a lot more cool indivual actions of ways to use it, and this game has the LEAST amount of shitty grindy fights, but they're still there and it's still the yakuza boss problesm where they armor/combo break you through everything no matter how or when you hit them, leading to boring fights where you dodge and then do a pathetic amount of damage and maybe get a heat action off. But it's pretty fun to enemies that aren't like this.
The plot overall feels like a mess. I actually like most of the characters individual arc plots, but they often end up feeling kinda unbaked and then oddly wrapped into the main plot. Shinada's is probably the worst of them, where the idea of his plot actually rules but it's super rushed and then ass pulls its way into kiryu and gang's tojo hijinks. God I wish Shinada got his own game ala judgement, so much lost potential.
The main plot feels extremely convoluted and by the end I still only vaguely get what the main antag was trying to do. There's a lot of bizarre heel turns and ends like a wet fish with me still confused and wondering about X and Y. It's got some cool shit in there, but also its one of those games where I feel if I went through all of the cutscenes a second time I'd viciously pick it apart. It feels like it has traditional JRPG plot beats, its bizarre.
It's decent. Also I got really invested in the Saejima hunting minigame for some reason, even though I normally don't get too into the yakuza side game stuff like the carburant clubs. Infact a lot of the side stuff in this game is pretty good, and also feels like RGG doing proof of concepts for stuff like a RGG hunting or RGG idol game, and some of them are kinda cool. Yakuza 7 kicked ass so I guess between that and this games surprisingly detailed side games I think its proof that RGG doesn't need to make action games to make cool games.