I originally expected this to have more emphasis on problem solving but it really is leaning more into the other Yakuza games and they tossed in 20 tailing sequences that make Assassin's Creed look considerate of your time. I did tolerate it because I really like the series at this point, but I must imagine what someone feels when this is their first game.
The combat is pretty good, with shades of Akiyama in the moveset. Bonus points for the first DE combat I enjoyed. Sadly, with no coliseum equivalent here and no climax battles, I can't help but feel we're losing out on a lot of combat gameplay. The drone racing was amazing and possibly the most difficult minigame in the series so far. The sidecases were great when they didn't ask you to tail people or get spliced into the main story (which makes them feel like filler). Unfortunately, that takes out more than half of them. The friend system was also interesting, and then you realize each restaurant/shop has one, with multiple ones being the same. Girlfriends are introduced here as a more personalized hostess while also being just worse in general. Half your girlfriends are half your age making it so fucking weird. Y6 at least had a unique minigame, whereas here they turned it into stupid texts. You could take your hostess on dates to karaoke to see a video of each of them in a certain song. Now you take your gf on pointless activities with nothing special about each of them. The loss of karaoke really didn't help how I felt about hostess/gf. Chases now are auto-run, with most of them not even having you catch up to them. I miss actually throwing bottles at them and cutting corners rather than just qtes.
My most hated aspect of the game was the stupid Keihan gangs. This shit gets spammed all the time and always alerts you with a text. During the event, it's rare to take one step without running into enemies. Of course, once the event is over, you must then be told by text over and over for the entire game. The random crafting materials out in the world made me feel like a little kid running to pick up a piece of candy. They're easy to pick up but also just seem so pointless when I didn't really interact with any extracts. Sure, some of them are used for drone crafting, but it was much easier to buy them at Ebisu. It really just feels like there is a lot of padding compared to the other games.
I did like Yagami and his buddy dynamic with Kaito reminded me of the great parts of Y0 with Kiryu and Nishiki. Too bad they didn't decide to put more effort into this. Imagine deciding to leave the Kaito and Yagami fight as a filler sidecase in the main story for no reason. Even with the other sidecases in the story not being voiced, it was a huge disservice to have this one lumped in. The rest of his allies were pretty good with no complaints, and the story was enjoyable with a solid mystery that sticks the landing.
I know these don't really matter for most players, but I have to complain about the final quickstarter projects. Even if you do everything else in the completion list/trophy and game the VR each time you are forced to go in, you will still need around 10m more yen to fully complete. It's just another hour or so in VR to get it, but at this point you really shouldn't need to grind for more. I was even gaming the quickstarters for the entire game, letting the meter fill to 50% before contributing.
They removed Puyo Puyo in the remaster and replaced it with Virtua Fighter 2 when you can already play Virtua Fighter 5 & Fighting Vipers...
The combat is pretty good, with shades of Akiyama in the moveset. Bonus points for the first DE combat I enjoyed. Sadly, with no coliseum equivalent here and no climax battles, I can't help but feel we're losing out on a lot of combat gameplay. The drone racing was amazing and possibly the most difficult minigame in the series so far. The sidecases were great when they didn't ask you to tail people or get spliced into the main story (which makes them feel like filler). Unfortunately, that takes out more than half of them. The friend system was also interesting, and then you realize each restaurant/shop has one, with multiple ones being the same. Girlfriends are introduced here as a more personalized hostess while also being just worse in general. Half your girlfriends are half your age making it so fucking weird. Y6 at least had a unique minigame, whereas here they turned it into stupid texts. You could take your hostess on dates to karaoke to see a video of each of them in a certain song. Now you take your gf on pointless activities with nothing special about each of them. The loss of karaoke really didn't help how I felt about hostess/gf. Chases now are auto-run, with most of them not even having you catch up to them. I miss actually throwing bottles at them and cutting corners rather than just qtes.
My most hated aspect of the game was the stupid Keihan gangs. This shit gets spammed all the time and always alerts you with a text. During the event, it's rare to take one step without running into enemies. Of course, once the event is over, you must then be told by text over and over for the entire game. The random crafting materials out in the world made me feel like a little kid running to pick up a piece of candy. They're easy to pick up but also just seem so pointless when I didn't really interact with any extracts. Sure, some of them are used for drone crafting, but it was much easier to buy them at Ebisu. It really just feels like there is a lot of padding compared to the other games.
I did like Yagami and his buddy dynamic with Kaito reminded me of the great parts of Y0 with Kiryu and Nishiki. Too bad they didn't decide to put more effort into this. Imagine deciding to leave the Kaito and Yagami fight as a filler sidecase in the main story for no reason. Even with the other sidecases in the story not being voiced, it was a huge disservice to have this one lumped in. The rest of his allies were pretty good with no complaints, and the story was enjoyable with a solid mystery that sticks the landing.
I know these don't really matter for most players, but I have to complain about the final quickstarter projects. Even if you do everything else in the completion list/trophy and game the VR each time you are forced to go in, you will still need around 10m more yen to fully complete. It's just another hour or so in VR to get it, but at this point you really shouldn't need to grind for more. I was even gaming the quickstarters for the entire game, letting the meter fill to 50% before contributing.
They removed Puyo Puyo in the remaster and replaced it with Virtua Fighter 2 when you can already play Virtua Fighter 5 & Fighting Vipers...