it's a great game overall, big improvements gameplay-wise, and the main cast is as charming as ever
the story and setting however, I have problems with despite enjoying it quite a lot, ESPECIALLY kiryu's side
the memoirs and life links side content were great things to add to the end of kiryu's story, but I can't help but feel like they should've maybe been part of the main story because this game needs HEAVY readjustment character progression wise - it takes OBSCENE amounts of time to level up literally anything in this game except job levels and maxing ichiban's personality and getting one of kiryu's awakening paths to 10 felt insanely grindy, even while being a completionist.

the progression has no tempo, I went from being unable to safely pay for taxi rides almost halfway through the game to having more money than I could spend after finishing dondoko island, and grinding levels in order to finish the 2 dungeons was painful due to having to manage the levels and gear of two parties instead of one, and this was even more of a problem when getting kiryu back to japan - I never got a chance to play around with saeko, nanba and seonhee's jobs, because I had no money and getting money as kiryu was impossible as the only thing you have is part-time hero which only gives 10k-200k yen per limited battle, so all the gameplay fun I had playing around with jobs in ichiban's party was replaced with feeling crippled until way later and forced into using everyone on kiryu's side's built-in jobs. I could go on and on about problems with progression since it was my least favorite thing about the game. I'm a sucker for playing the launch build, but if anyone at RGG actually reads this, please readjust everything, it's never been this bad.

the story is pretty good overall, there's lots to love but the ball was dropped on multiple occasions, such as making hawaii a main locale, which after finishing the game makes me think that it might've just been for the marketing and farming "haha what the hell is yakuza even about" from people. I was with it initially, and I loved chitose and tomizawa all the way, but after a point it's clear that akane and lani meant absolutely nothing for the story anymore, and it's a shame because the game DRAGS while the cast tries to find them in hawaii. I found palekana and bryce in general very stupid in general, and even stupider when the people we were trying to get from them ended up not mattering at all, and the whole mystery around the cult and nele island is solved in a split second by joongi, which is the only character in the main cast that i dislike still, hacking its location, how convenient.
the setting also introduced a bunch of new issues with the japanese dub of the game, where supposed native english speakers have their japanese voice actors struggle reading lines, when it could've been very acceptable to just swap their lines to the english dub version, that i couldn't bring myself to play with because of yong yea's terrible performance as kiryu. it was near impossible to take characters like bryce seriously when a native white man in hawaii couldn't utter a few words in english
the twists with eiji and the tatara channel were great, and I LOVED yamai, but I just wish I could say there was a reason for the game to be set in hawaii at all - even during the final battle, which probably should've had the protagonists swapped by the way, ebina basically says that bryce was fucking stupid and his waste disposal island was going nowhere which says enough about how relevant anything left in hawaii still was by that point in the game. having the party split into two in two different countries made the story and gameplay progression suffer a lot for the sake of marketing, but the game sold well as a result and i'm glad, since this game acted more like a bridge between yakuza 7 and 9 and a way to end kiryu's story finally, it just could've been better, but an ichiban only yakuza 9 will definitely be a banger.

the music was great, had lots of fun with the side content, especially sujimon and the combat was WAY less buggy than 7's, which would have my characters lock up in place trying to cast constantly. I did however get a bug that would make kiryu freeze up for 20+ seconds and miss his attacks VERY OFTEN, which was annoying but I didn't mind it as much as all the issues I had with 7's gameplay.

no more kiryu and no more exotic locales in the next game (please), it'll be a banger