People like to pretentiously harp on about how "intentionally bad" aspects of this game are and while there is some truth to that, there is nothing intentional about the controls and camera.
Aside from that the on-foot gameplay is just even shittier Dynasty Warriors, it's tedious but nowhere near as bad as some people make it out to be. The dragon gameplay is... fine but not something that I'd ever willingly play again.
The music at least somewhat makes up for the gameplay with a cool sound collage of classical music that does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of atmosphere.
Many import story concepts (pacts, goddess, seals etc etc etc) are barely explained (if at all) and with how the verses and endings are structured it makes the story needlessly confusing to borderline nonsensical at times (ending C for example). Aside from some cool visuals and fun dialogue, there's just not a lot there and it's overall pretty uninteresting.
If this wasn't a Yoko Taro game I probably wouldn't have ever played it and certainly wouldn't have finished it.

Replayed this after playing all the other games some things didn't hold up.
There's broad structural issues with this being a prequel, a lot of things don't connect to Yakuza 1 in a way that makes sense, most obvious being Kiryu and the Dojima Family. Kazama makes Kiryu and Nishiki join the Dojima Family instead of his own and it's never explained why, at least in universe, because the real reason is that they were a part of it at the start of Yakuza 1. But what really makes that stupid is that the Dojima Family are the main antagonists of 0 and Kiryu now has to randomly rejoin the Family in the end despite all the shit they did, also patriach Dojima should obviously hate him (but that's not the case in 1).
Aside from that, the story itself is easily the best one to come out of the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, it checks so many boxes without succumbing to too much stupid shit.

Money as a progression system for a game that takes place in the bubble era is obviously a neat idea but the execution is just so beyond fucked.
Street Encounters are a waste of time from the start of game since the money you get from them becomes irrelevant as your ability upgrade costs shoot well into the millions.
The main way to make money is through Mr Shakedown. From chapter 5 onwards he'll waltz down the street with a billion yen bounty on his head, no setup required. Sure it's a "hard" fight but nothing else comes to close to that type of money.
The fight isn't even hard per se, it's just tedious since his entire gameplay is basically a big slow rock that doesn't react to your attacks at all and 1 or 2 shots you if he gets a hit in. The real way of dealing with him is equipping a weapon and heat spamming or shooting him death, the cost of the tauriners/weapons is a drop in the bucket compared to the money you're raking it.

Biggest gripe with the combat is that Kiryu's 3 styles lack identity compared to Majima's more distinct flashier styles. They boil down to fast punch n kick, medium speed punch n kick and slow mostly punch some kick.
There's also many bizarre stipulations on skills relating to specific heat level that are generally counterintuitive and pointless. Attack speed scaling with heat almost makes heat actions feel bad to use.

Dragon & Tiger is the most needlessly convoluted approach to a crafting/equipment system I've seen. Endlessly sifting through menus trying to find whatever parts you need and then it's still RNG whether you actually get them or not. While you don't have to interact with the system too much (even for all the achievements) it's still worth pointing out how crappy it is.

The side activities and mini-games are pretty underwhelming. Even just completing all the substories is a pain the ass because of the roulette wheel that is the Telephone Club and the massive times sink of the Cabaret Club. Don't even get me started on cat fights, god forbid 100% this game.