I suppose this being a step down from Yakuza 0 is technically true, and it's true in pretty much every aspect of the game, but I feel like I was way oversold on that idea. Kiwami was a great time, and doesn't feel like the skippable entry in the series that I had heard it was. The story is quite entertaining even if it's not on the same level as 0, and I felt it was enhanced quite a bit knowing some of the characters' backstories from 0 as well, though that's a double edged sword with things like Majima's character changing drastically between games, or some characters that were important in 0 being killed off without much attention given to them. The combat was a lot of fun to me. It's nearly identical to 0's, and I'm not sure exactly what the differences even are, but I found myself enjoying it a lot more here than I enjoyed Kiryu's combat in 0 at least. Maybe it's just sticking with him the whole game gave me time to actually learn his combos and moves better rather than perspective swapping a lot. Kamurocho, despite being the same map, feels a little smaller here. There just aren't as many side events and minigames, and the substories feel substantially weaker for the most part. The Majima Everywhere system did add some fun to exploring, and I enjoyed the fights themselves, but I wish there was more unique dialogue to it, or more of the situations that felt hand crafted like the party one, or the zombie movie. It's possible I missed some more like that as I didn't go for 100%. Anyways, fun game overall, it kept my attention enough to play through it pretty quickly even if I mostly focused on just the main story.

Hey look at that I finally finished this game. So, this game is very close to being a near perfect game for me. It is missing or lacking in a couple of areas that keep it from being a 10/10 for me. The story, while being slow at first, eventually picked up and hooked me with the ending being a perfect way to conclude the events of this game but also set up for the future. The ending is a heart throb that will pull on your heart strings. The combat is good, I don't have many complaints. I do wish the styles were more fleshed out and had better combo options. It also isn't great that you have to grind for hours to gain more moves, I wish they took less time to obtain. This game at times did struggle to keep me fully engaged but that may be more of an issue on my end. The cutscenes and mandatory side content at times drawed out the game a bit too much for me. There was also these weird comic book style cutscenes that appeared like 4-5 times and were really weirdly spaced out. Maybe I would have better appreciated some of the elements of the game had I played the series in release order but I still enjoyed this game a lot.