Come for Yakuza's standard goof-troop shenanigans and crimeboy melodrama, stay for the occasional willingness to meet Ichiban’s gang of miscreants on the level, with a minimum of judgement or sentimentality. I wish there was more of it, because it’s the backbone of some of the best bits of the game: a job system with a penchant for casting your motley crew as service industry workers, crime syndicates built and run by people who had nowhere else to go, a story that raises its stakes as it knocks more and more characters to the margins of society. Though the last third gets bogged down in fanservice and choppy pacing, the finale remembers what made the rest of the game tick – Ichiban’s weeping when he realizes he can’t help but see the villainous mastermind as his equal is a magic trick that rarely gets pulled off this well.

It’s not perfect and the combat system especially needs some polish, but look, man, I’ve been laid off twice in the last four years. We live on a melting iceberg, it’ll come for you too. In the meantime, give me more of this.