So uh, I don't know what happened here. I've been playing through the yakuza series and even though I was so-so with Judgment I've had a good time with all of them so far. Kiryu is one of my favorite characters in all of gaming and while they certainly weren't without faults I thought all the other games were at the bare minimum pretty great. This ones not. In fact, its bordering on being a bad one. I imagine not many share the sentiment but to put it simply while playing this I was just straight up not having a good time.
The first issue is the plot. Its really really really (and I cant stress this enough: really) stupid. Now, the previous yakuza games have had their fair share of silly moments but Yakuza 4 goes past that. The moments arent dumb fun, they're just plain dumb. The same exact plot twist happens MULTIPLE times, and it was already barely believable the first time. Not to mention some incredibly baffling character decisions and poor writing. I am gonna refrain from going deeper into this to save my remaining braincells but the amount of time I stopped paying attention to the game to text my boyfriend about how stupid what just happened was, was astronomical (he's currently playing through it too, he's enjoying it more than I am at least!) Beyond the frequent stupidity was that the actual plot was just kinda boring? and uninteresting? Out of the five or so main antagonists, only one of them was actually interesting and they didnt even make it to the end. Out of three that are in the finale, one of them is about the most pointless character ever and nothing is done with him, while the other two are incredibly dull and forgettable. Then theres our new protagonists. And honestly? All of them are interesting. I wanna know more about them. But Yakuza 4 only gives you 4 chapters with each of them, which is absolutely not enough time to get attached to them or any of the side characters in their respective stories, so the big meetup in the finale while cool didnt really felt earned and the whole game I was just waiting for daddy Kiryu to show up. (it was glorious when he did) But as awful as the plot is told, I cant say I disliked all of it. There were a couple moments, particularly the end of Tanimura's section that I really liked a lot and at some point I had even considered giving the game as high as a 4/5 (before the disappointing finale) but.. if only the bad plot was the worst thing about the game. No no, that award goes to the gameplay.
Yakuza 4's final boss consists of said boss running around the arena shooting you while you 10 armored goons, some with knives, swarm you, stun lock and knock you down constantly. He respawns these endlessly until you are able to defeat him first. This is what I believe to be the worst final boss fight I've ever partaken in. Bloodborne while blindfolded would be a less infuriating experience. Now Yakuza 4 isnt the hardest game, as you have a large inventory you can easily stock up with healing items and essentially stall your way through the whole thing. But I would be lying to myself If I said I had a fun time with the combat. If the final boss was the only example of garbage game design, I could be pretty forgiving. But what if I told you: the entire game is like that. From bosses that spam evade to stunlock you from behind and then repeat the same combo over and over again knocking you down (this is literally every boss) to swarms of enemies that just spam grapple you and, because of course, one of the sections ends with an hour long fight full of bullshit grapple enemies and shotguns that you do indeed to have to restart in its entirely if you die. This section happens right after I began getting invested in the story. As you can imagine, after finally getting through it I wanted nothing more than for it to be over
Now, there are some redeeming qualities to the game I haven't mentioned. Obviously its not the worst thing ever as a 2.5 isnt exactly the worst score. The music is fantastic and the music reminded me of Danganronpa(non-derogatory) and this is the first of the series to my knowledge that actually lets you skip the mini game tutorials, which after forced golfing in Y3 was very appreciated. There were also a handful of genuinely funny scenes. But these dont make up for the rest of the game and if anything only make my disappointment in it greater. After this review Im gonna try to remove Y4 in its entirety from my memory. I beat it on normal difficulty, and I wont ever be beating it again. I hope Yakuza 5 is better, I'm still looking forward to it.

Also I couldn't figure out where to add this in the review, but nearly every finale taking place at the millennium tower is really getting old. It doesnt really affect story quality but it is way overdone and makes it hard to take seriously

Trophy Completion - 21%
Time Played - 20 hours 53 minutes
Nancymeter - 49/100
Game Completion #24 of 2022
March Completion #3