This review contains spoilers
Probably the best actual "game" in the Yakuza/Judgment universe, gameplay wise. However, I had a few critical notes I wrote after beating it that I never posted:
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.