This goes down as my favorite of the Yakuza series so far. They took everything that made Yakuza: Like a Dragon so much fun, and then fine tuned it to make it even better here. The addition of movement during the turn based combat sequences really adds a lot to the game, as does the ability to slot in skills from other jobs to customize each character.
This game also does a great job of avoiding having you fall into the trap of just treating each combat encounter identically in several ways. First, by splitting the game up into a Japan and a Hawaii half, you have two different parties who control differently to play with. Secondly, by having each job provide permanent bonuses for being upgraded (both by having skills unlocked or just direct HP, MP, etc bufs), you're encouraged to cycle characters through multiple jobs. Finally, they also do the standard thing of having different enemies be weak and strong against different moves which forces you to change things up.
Dondoko Island and Sujimon league were both great minigames (although the actual act of recruiting Sujimon left a little something to be desired). Having never played Animal Crossing, I was surprised how into Dondoko Island I got - I basically did not leave the island once I arrived in Chapter 6 until I had gotten it to 5 stars. I do wish it was more customizable as a resort than as, well, Kamurocho, but it makes sense how RGG was able to reuse assets to save development time when building the game.
The writing here is top notch, and I loved the Hawaii portion of the game - it captured Waikiki perfectly IMO. The new protagonist characters were all great additions, as was Yamai. However, the main villains in the story didn't hold up as well as other Yakuza villains in the past, and that led to the main plot falling a little bit short for me.
This game also does a great job of avoiding having you fall into the trap of just treating each combat encounter identically in several ways. First, by splitting the game up into a Japan and a Hawaii half, you have two different parties who control differently to play with. Secondly, by having each job provide permanent bonuses for being upgraded (both by having skills unlocked or just direct HP, MP, etc bufs), you're encouraged to cycle characters through multiple jobs. Finally, they also do the standard thing of having different enemies be weak and strong against different moves which forces you to change things up.
Dondoko Island and Sujimon league were both great minigames (although the actual act of recruiting Sujimon left a little something to be desired). Having never played Animal Crossing, I was surprised how into Dondoko Island I got - I basically did not leave the island once I arrived in Chapter 6 until I had gotten it to 5 stars. I do wish it was more customizable as a resort than as, well, Kamurocho, but it makes sense how RGG was able to reuse assets to save development time when building the game.
The writing here is top notch, and I loved the Hawaii portion of the game - it captured Waikiki perfectly IMO. The new protagonist characters were all great additions, as was Yamai. However, the main villains in the story didn't hold up as well as other Yakuza villains in the past, and that led to the main plot falling a little bit short for me.