short meme review: something like "bro.... kiryu was so depresesd . .. dude........"

actual review: what gave me a lot of doubts about this game for most of my playthrough can really just be reduced to the problems that plague the yakuza series as a whole (at least prior to 0) -- a cluttered, formulaic, and tiring story with too many uninteresting (usually antagonist) characters, exposition dumps and plot twists, repetitive and often unsatisfying combat (this was improved on massively with 0) that can sometimes be torturous rather than challenging, and a general feeling of a lack of finish in a lot of places (the substories are always great content but repeatedly doing them really shows how one-dimensional the game's settings can be; the blindingly white rooms that Haruka frequently performs in are the most prominent example, and the character animations in conjunction with text-based dialogue are a total meme). so i can ignore them --- especially when everything that's left over stands as the most ambitious the series has been with its classic formula.

i'll just put it this way: you could definitely beat the main story of this game in a day if you wanted to. (as i'm making my way through this series, i prefer to get the main story out of the way before i enjoy most of the bonus content, which might not be the most enjoyable way to consume these games but whatever.) once that's out of the way, you could clear out every substory in Kamurocho and already feel impressed by the volume of the game. then you realise there's still more than 60 substories to do with the 4 other characters. once you do all those, you then realise you haven't really done a lot of taxi driving (it's fun, trust me). then you feel like playing a rhythm game. then you realise there are a lot of cool items you could unlock by hunting as saejima, and then you realise you haven't even touched the baseball stuff. then you realise there are 5 different cities and they all have cabaret clubs and their own little minigames, and there's a major incentive to visiting different restaurants, and you can train your character not only to learn new moves but also to get better at using weapons and unlock new ones that you can make with a bunch of weird items you can get in a massive variety of ways, and there's a lottery and coin locker keys and a treasure hunt and i haven't even mentioned the victory road tournament, and then there's more shit i forgot about idk. obviously side content is a staple of the yakuza games but i think this is the shining example. there's so much STUFF to do, and most of it doesn't even suck. in terms of content it's a major step forward for the series, which would only get better afterwards with the victory lap that is Yakuza 0. one of the absolute pinnacles of "it's the little things".

i won't talk about the story much because it's good to avoid spoilers and stuff i guess and no i'm just bullshitting you i had absolutely no idea what was going on a good amount of the time. but there are some cool parts. kiryu's character is explored very well here - he's getting old, man. he's been through some cataclysmic shit and he's made some mistakes. he isn't happy. shinada is himself. haruka also manages to be a little less one dimensional (i like her a lot more than this sentence implies). and saejima and akiyama are still pretty cool. everything else is a mess but i'm used to it. yakuza game. Yes.

the random encounter system seems to be at its most egregious here, but whatever, more leveling for weapons i guess. it'd improve with 0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0G355dqZyg
can see why this is apparently the weakest of the main series although i wasnt aware of that until i finished it and i do like it quite a bit
no spoilers, but the patterns of the main series stories really show and start to suffer towards the end of this. between this and yakuza 4 this Zone of yakuza might be the most absurd it gets story wise, though i haven't played 5 or 6 yet
really charming Okinawa overworld is what i think seals this as good-great for me, of course you aren't necessarily bombarded with things to do but it's a chill area and has a lot of appeal to me. the day care stuff feels pointless at first but also has a lot of charm, really love haruka etc etc. there are a lot of things i could say about the last leg of the story on this but i'll save my energy for now. good game

oh yeah the combat is kinda annoying but once you Git Gud its alright