I've never seen a game shit the bed so badly right at the very end. Like it betrays its own themes in its post-credits scenes and rushes to get to where it wants to be (the end of kiryu's journey) without putting in the legwork.
It sucks too cause the rest of the game is pretty great; the substories are stellar, the combat is good(found it much better than Y6 which surprised me) and the new characters are pretty good for the most part. That being said it leaves a lot to be desired for the "supposed" end of an era, particularly in how it treated its legacy characters:
Haruka did not deserve this, specially after how 5 characterized her and Kiryu.
Akiyama gets essentially rebooted Again?? and barely does anything in the plot and then shows up at the end in a suit like he's been there the whole time??? Which tbf is pretty Akiyama-core.
And then just so many characters from previous games that are just not here or barely acknowledged, that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Also wtf why is the champion district closed. and the whole are around kamurocho hills too? Are we ever gonna get to see the inside of that Shopping mall? lmao
I loved hanging out at the bar, the harpoon fishing, the voiced cutscenes...Kudos for making the Amon fight available without finishing all substories too ig. But theres just a lot of little things that feel like they forgot about yakuza 5 when making this lmao. Like, in 5 theres this missable substory(until premium adventure) for saejima where he hangs out with the dojo guy(sodachi was it?) and there are these guys strong arming him into selling it, and he never yields and then saejima beats them up. Neat little thing right? Well then in this game, he meets kiryu and he's super jolly to have sold the dojo and gotten a shit ton of money, just to excuse the gimmick of him wandering around kamurocho for you to fight lol. This wouldn't be a huge deal for me(a lot of yakuza games have inconsistencies like this), but it feels like a small case study of what's to come, considering how Yakuza 6 ends with Kiryu abandoning Haruka and the rest of his family for no real reason after an unnamed government guy shows up whos never been mentioned before trying to threaten him into silence and being KIRYU HIMSELF that came up with faking his death to protect them... it just. Really feels like they didnt play Yakuza 5 man lmao.
Honestly if i was basing myself on the ending alone, it'd be a 2 star review for me, but i can't lie that the game is truly fun and the story until before the credits is pretty good too with its themes of family.
TLDR lets hope Gaiden and Infinite Wealth fix this :]