complicated feelings towards this one. overall i did enjoy it, the story was nice enough and i really liked rikiya and mine. the gameplay manages to be pretty awful at times which is surprising coming right off the back of yakuza 2 which i thought was really fun, you'd think they'd expand upon that system and try to make it better but it just feels.. weird? it's like it was intended to be just slightly faster, but because every enemy is blocking all the time it feels way way slower. idk.

regarding the story. i did like it but it's absolutely not without its issues. the first half is imo amazing, it's a perfect break from the high stakes finish to yakuza 2. ryukyu is a lot of fun to explore and spending time helping your kids out instead of saving kamurocho or whatever is really good. after that though i don't know how fond i am of it. this game has some really really bad pacing issues that i think are definitely at their worst in the latter half, some chapters are less than an hour long. i don't want them to pad them out with side shit that feels unnecessary like yakuza 1 did a lot, but idk. i don't think the shorter chapters work. worst of these is definitely chapter 9, it's effectively just an infodump and it's like. the least interesting one ever. it ends almost immediately after that too like ugh idk it just feels so odd.

in regards to the characters. the good ones are imo really good. rikiya is amazing, joji, tamiya, and nakahara are cool, and i like mine as an antagonist, even if he might not be as good as his predecessors (ryuji specifically. i think i prefer him to nishiki). i also liked kiryu's kids a lot. they're cool. unfortunately a lot of the rest of them (and even some i liked) felt super underdeveloped. mikio doesn't really do enough in the story. which is weird given how he's there from the start. i also thought kanda and hamazaki felt kinda weird in their appearances but i imagine hamazaki will be getting more in yakuza 4. aside from them i really don't think there were many other characters i really have anything to say about.

that'ss about it i think. the side content was cool. revelations are funny. hitman quest was cool until that BITCH ARASE showed up. Good game. i think i prefer y2. excited to see what the Yakuza 4 get up to in the next one.