It was certainly one of the weakest entries but was still pretty enjoyable. The cases are solid but never reach the average level of quality in the other games often due to a lackluster conclusion, lack of ingenuity on Apollo's part, or predictable twists. The 3rd case is a nice microcosm of the game's quality since it has an interesting premise and the twists (Lamiroir/Machi's abilities to see and speak, the reversal of the song lyrics) are intriguing and make for a good mystery. It also has plenty of fun back-and-forths between Apollo and Gavin. However the case was bogged down by an unreasonable amount of flashbacks, very weak killer motivation, and some baffling unanswered questions (if it's quickly established the murder was done with a revolver that would dislocate the shoulder of an untrained adult when fired, why are you trying a child who's completely uninjured?). Regardless, while most of the cases suffer from these types of issues, the first case is one of the stronger ones in the series so I definitely give it credit for that. The characters are as charming as ever with the exception of the unnerving reporter in the final case. Gavin is a fun prosecutor who's full of personality but he helps Apollo too much and I even like hobo Wright despite it being silly that they let him oversee the new judicial system after being discharged for forgery. Apollo and Trucy have really good designs but for all intents and purposes they might as well be the old Phoenix and Maya (though Trucy at least has the magic aspect which earns her a few points in my book). While Apollo is generally competent, it does feel like others take a lot of the glory from him, Phoenix especially basically solves the first and last cases which really devalues Apollo's protagonist role. I also thought the choice offered at the end of the last case was very silly since nobody in their right might would ever vote Vera guilty unless they were just curious about the bad ending. The decisive choice in JFA's last case was much stronger. Apollo's bracelet gimmick is interesting but a lot of the time it feels unreasonable that the witness in question would confess things just because Apollo saw their eye twitch when they mentioned the murder weapon. The music is still great as always and the 3DS's HD version of the game looks unusually fantastic compared to the weird-looking filtered sprites in the HD trilogy.

I had my doubts for this game when it was initially revealed due to the turn-based gameplay, but it ended up being one of my favorite Yakuza games. The gameplay is surprisingly smooth and enjoyable despite it being the team's first foray into turn-based combat. Battles rarely take too long and the fleshed-out job system allows for plenty of variety. The environmental aspect of the combat is neat and hitting enemies with nearby objects is satisfying but there were plenty of times characters would either start way too far from the fight and have to waste time running to everyone else on their turn, or party members/enemies would get caught on walls and run into them for 10 seconds before teleporting to their targets which was annoying and awkward. It was also annoyingly difficult to avoid running into enemies on the map which became a nuisance when they were too low-level to grant meaningful exp. Difficulty was largely well-balanced aside from Majima, Saejima and Kiryu which forced me to grind for a couple hours. The characters were a big part of what made the game great. The entire party is very likable and I ended up having trouble choosing who to put in my party because I enjoyed all of them. Ichiban is a very endearing protagonist and his hard-headed and overbearing yet charismatic nature was a welcome breath of fresh air after Kiryu's stoic personality. Watching Ichiban, Nanba and the others grow over the course of the game was great and really aligned well with the genre shift to JRPG. The story is continuously engaging with plenty of twists and turns (although the coin locker twist was hilariously silly). They actually managed to keep the political aspect of the story interesting by having Ichiban directly linked to Masato and it made for a very emotional final confrontation and ending. I would say the only weak parts of the story were that the party's motivations could feel unconvincing at times since there's really not much reason for the player to care about Nonomiya, and the section focused on the Ijin Three went on for a bit too long. Aside from the main plot, the substories are as fun as ever and make it a joy to go around the massive map of Ijincho. The vocational school and its trivia quizzes were also a very fun inclusion. The management minigame was kind of fun but I didn't really like how it was the only way to get a substantial amount of money for most of the game, especially since money is far more important in this game due to the need for equipment. Lastly I need to note that I played the game with the english dub since dubbed yakuza is pretty fresh and I play most games in english anyways. The dub cast did a great job, particularly Ichiban and Nanba's VAs who really sold their characters in the emotional moments. The only one who really noticeably fell flat was Kiryu and that's even putting aside the weirdness of just hearing him in english. I was impressed that they went through the trouble of dubbing the karaoke songs as well but most of them were pretty awkward with Adachi not even sounding like his speaking voice. Nanba's Baka Mitai was pretty good though. Other gripes would be that a lot of minor characters like grunt enemies and cutscene crowds weren't dubbed which can be kind of jarring. Overall I had a great time with this game and would gladly play a sequel with Ichiban going forward.