Yakuza 4 is one of the most "hell yeah" games I've ever played, which is pretty admirable considering I view it as being one of the most average games in the series, which really isn't as bad as that sounds given the worst Yakuza gets cough Dead Souls cough is 6/10.

Starting off with the story, I think with the glaring exception of one of the later parts, most of the plot I find to be really good or at least enjoyable:

Part 1 does an excellent job of setting up some of the initial mysteries concerning the disappearance of Arai & the Shibata Family murders, along with featuring a protagonist is so wildly different from the series other heroes with his cocky and smug aura, along with being able to provide the more smaller, ground level crime politics insight you couldn't get with a large than life figure with Kiryu.

Part 2 is home to a really tense prison break (which is admittedly a fairly steep difficulty spike on a first playthrough), followed by one of the most hype fights in the series early days, with back to back emotional beats that all land perfectly with me (those scenes in the coliseum and reuniting with Sasai always make me tear up). Top everything off with an incredible Majima fight and it's easily my favourite section in the game, with Saejima easily standing as my favourite character in this entry thanks to the emotional core he carries through out his section and how his blunt and out of time attitude can work to make him threatening, funny, or heart-bleedingly earnest.

Part 3 is sort of a mixed bag and it seems to be where the story often derails for certain people. The main culprit for that is due to this section primarily being dedicated to answering most the questions that were setup during the first two parts, along with raising a few new ones that are answered either later on or in Part 4. This approach can be a double-edged sword, as whether you like it or not is heavily dependant on if you liked the game's story as whole, which I'll save my thoughts on for later. But there is one problem I have with this approach, namely that due to Part 3 dedicating the vast majority of it's run time to answering a lot of these questions, it ends up leaving very little time for the strong character moments that the first two parts got, which ends up making Tanimura, at least to me, feel like the only Yakuza protag where you have to do his side content in order to get anything from his character other than the bare minimum, to the point where I'd argue the only strong character scene in the whole of Part 3 is Sugiuchi's confession at the very end.

Then there's Part 4 which, if you know anything about this game's plot, you know this the weakest section of the game. It does have a few stand out moments, specifically when they play with Kiryu's indestructability, with stuff like him fighting against the entire Ueno Seiwa Clan as insurance he'll be too tired to kill Katsuragi when he gets to the end, but overall it's riddled with odd character choices and, whilst I do think the fight itself was cool, the battle against Akiyama & Tanimura is probably the holder of "dumbest justification for a fight" in the entire franchise. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Kiryu was made playable at the last minute to avoid scaring away older players, and all the weird decisions was a result of needing to find a way to awkwardly crowbar him into the story. On top of that, I don't really like Kiryu's characterisation in this game, as I feel they kind of played into his sagely wisdom side a bit too much. I can see what they were going for, as by this point in the series Kiryu had reached the stage where he wanted nothing to do with the Tojo, but he can come off pretentious and the almost complete removal of his more negative traits makes it really hard to buy that he's former yakuza legend.

Finale is great... I don't really have much to say, sometimes something is just really cool and you don't need to justify why.

For my overarching thoughts on the story, I think it's pretty good... once you can figure out what the hell is going on. Personally I enjoy the overarching mystery that's built up and I think the twists present are enjoyable, but it does suffer from an issue of text overload, where so many things are being thrown at you, so much of which foreshadows and hints towards future reveals, that it's easy to get lost on what the game is actually trying to tell you due to the lack of conciseness. Now when the pieces are all put together I think it does a tell a very engaging conspiracy, and on repeated playthroughs you can see how many things from across the story hint to events at the endgame, it's just the game can often struggle with communicating what pieces are even relevant to the puzzle. The only other complaint I have is a feel a lot of the supporting cast are noticeably weaker than previous entries, because outside of characters I already knew and cared for like Date & Haruka, and a few exceptions like Hana & Sugiuchi, most of them I don't really feel much for, either because they get so wrapped up in the mystery that it becomes hard for me to get a grasp of what their actually like, some examples being Arai & Yasuko, or they're just kind of generically evil and really forgettable like with Katsuragi & Munakata. It's not a deal breaker, but they're a definite far cry from the myriad of stand out personalities present in the games both before and after this one.

Moving on from the narrative and on to gameplay, I think 4's combat is ok. It's pretty much just Y3 except the enemies don't block every 2 seconds and your attacks actually do a decent amount of damage, with most of the characters playing well and doing a good job standing out from one another.

Akiyama's speed and taunt heavy style is good for beginners and expresses how whilst he is tough, he's not quite on the same level as Kiryu or Saejima, since he specialises in one-on-one fights and can struggle against large groups (without the right upgrades).

A lot of people tend to not like Saejima's fighting, as he's effectively a prototype/worse version of Y0's Beast Style, but since I've always enjoyed playing as brick walls that just tank through everything and hit like a truck, I actually rather enjoy his gameplay, aside from the aforementioned difficulty spike during the prison escape.

I think Tanimura's style is very interesting, being a defence oriented character in a beat-em-up, and I think his gimmicks work well and offer a nice change of pace from the others. It's just a shame his bosses are terrible, and effectively force you into ignoring the gimmicks that make interesting in favour of just spamming easy to perform heat actions. Doesn't ruin him overall, but it is still a rather sour note for the character.

And as alluded to before, Kiryu plays almost the exact same as he did in Y3, with him serving as the all-arounder with the most options. Only real complaint I can have with Kiryu is the fact that he has so many heat actions by this point that his combat can become a bit braindead by just spamming them in every fight, though that's more of a player option thing, and it along with him starting the game with various upgrades already unlocked does help embolden the idea that he is a significant step above the rest of protags in terms of fighting prowess.

Nothing too crazy to write home about with the minigame selection, though I do always enjoy some Boxcelios. Side campaigns are a fairly mixed bag, with Fighter Maker being OK, Police Scanner & Gang Encounters are mostly just fights with a bit of story attached which are admittedly fairly charming with Scanner helping expand the universe a bit, & Hostess Maker is still just as bad and boring as it was in Y3.

Substories are all together pretty good, some highlights being the ones with overarching stories, as well as one-offs like Akiyama dealing with a guy trying to impersonate him, Saejima finding out Kappas are real, Tanimura playing russian roulette, & Kiryu's run-ins with various characters from previous entries.

I actually really liked the training masters, Saigo's missions are really tough but his banter with Akiyama is incredible, the Master's missions are great if for no other reason than getting to see Saejima destroy boulders with his barehands, Nair's sparring battles get repetitive but I really enjoyed her story line, & then Kiryu's training missions just being a bunch of incredibly basic fights really brings home how he has truly mastered the Komaki fighting style.

Finally I want to talk about the music, and my god does the game have a great soundtrack. The more jazz focus of Yakuza 4 is incredible, with songs like Infinite Handcuffs, Whiskey & Rhapsody, Nervousness, Spicy Brass Squad, & Rebellions being great examples of this sound. On top of that, there's also some great more traditional Yakuza songs, like Massive Fire, Smile Venomously, Material Delights, and the all-time classic that is For Faith, plus it's other variants. This game also home to my favourite version of Majima's theme with Recieve and Bite You, and one of my favourite karaoke songs with Machine Gun Kiss.

Overall, I think Yakuza 4 proves to be a very strong proving ground for how the series could tell a story revolving around character's other than Kiryu, and whilst being far from perfect, I'd still say this is my favourite game of the PS3/Remastered Trilogy, as whilst it doesn't reach the same highs that Y5 can, and Y3 had a better supporting cast, I think this is the most consistently good out of the bunch, plus it's hard to hate the game that introduced both Akiyama and Saejima.