TL;DR - One of, if not the best story in the series. Gameplay can be rough and might be a bit too simple for some, but it's well done for a first attempt at an RPG from a usually-action/platformer studio. Great game, not perfect.

Don't mind the Shelved marker. I plan on coming back to this game later to beat the shit out of the superboss, as is tradition with this series for me - but after 80 something hours I need a bit of a breather. I'm mildly disappointed at how easy the superboss was. I know there's a harder one but... I'm not grinding to level 99, and I'm not willing to get destroyed by enemies 20 levels higher than me.

I have so many thoughts on how incredible the story is, how wonderful Ichiban and the party is (ESPECIALLY with Party Chat, Table Talk and Bonds, genuinely a genius 3-way set of mechanics to pour so much personality into every party member without taking the main storyline off-course), how this game's story beats with humanity through its veins - but there are absolutely people who articulate the thoughts I have way better, and will do it way better again, than my dumbass running on 3 hours of sleep and an energy drink writing this at 4am because I have the day off. All I'll say is, Ichiban has absolutely earned his title as protagonist. Maybe I'll do a story version of this later when I'm not running on fumes.

So, how about I complain talk about something else instead? I feel, paradoxically enough, the game is both too simple and too complex under the hood. Flipped where it shouldn't be.

By too simple, I mean this in a few ways. For one, balance is all over the place. There are literally skills that trivialize the game by wiping out entire groups of lower-tier enemies, do insane damage to bosses, fully heal your team, for very lenient MP costs. One of the best skills in the entire game is a 6MP light attack where one of your party member causes head trauma to one guy - but it crits like mad and scales a little too well with who it's paired with. I wiped out an infamously tough boss, 10 levels under where I should be, because I just beat their skull in for 6MP a few times. Summons also vary wildly from absolutely broken to questioning what the point of it is outside of wiping fodder.

There are also elements like a sizable chunk of modern day RPGs - but not enough variety in those elements that aren't blunt/blade/bullet. With very few exceptions do party members get skills with inherent elements attached to their unique job, and those skills are usually incredibly weak. There are universal jobs that do have these elements attached, but it's only half of them. Only 3/4 have skills that are actually learnable. They're only AOEs with medium MP costs, and not anything special outside of the huge damage they do, basically the same attack with an elemental reskin and an animation change - and really, a too-large chunk of the enemy roster is weak to electric and only electric, which is what takes the absolute longest to get. I would've loved the unique jobs being more focused around certain elements - hell, 2 of them are based around blade and bullet in late game - but I guess I can understand why, since at that point why would you swap jobs if you can just swap team members instead?

These problems and, barring 3, there's unfortunately a lot of nothing bosses in this game. One of my favorite parts of prior games were the bosses because outside of a few outliers, they were bespoke and well designed. Sure, other enemies later down the line can use watered-down versions of their movesets, but there is no feeling like learning a Yakuza boss proper on the harder difficulties (without cheesing it with something like Tiger Dropping their max range attacks). It really forces you to think around the rules they can break and what rules you can bend. There are few of those in 7, and the next rung down the ladder from the 3 unique boss designs are "it's a normal enemy with more HP but they can also block attacks for a turn!" It's... not the greatest, honestly since these damage sponge bosses are so simplistic.

By too complex, I mean it in ways that it should not be. One of my biggest annoyances was a party member getting stuck on the smallest piece of geometry and completely whiffing because, for some reason, attacks work off hitboxes and not just flat damage. Not the biggest fan of this, because I don't think RGG's pathfinding on NPCs has literally ever been good and it definitely hits the hardest in this game seeing my party members get stuck for literally 0 reason. This has happened in boss fights where I was literally 2 good powerful hits away from a clear, only for Ichi to get stuck on a potted plant or a desk, whiff his bat swing skill, and then get instadowned. Same with both the parties and enemies moving on their own. I like it on paper and it can be rewarding at times, but most of the time it just wastes time before they teleport to the target or breaks the AI. I've had the final boss of the game interrupt a huge attack because one of my party members walked behind a wall right before it happened, making the AI break and giving me a free 4 turns... except one of the turns was bugged because of that party member's AI also being broken, doing their ability in place and wasting the turn.

It is also probably the grindiest RPG I have played in a while; it does call back to YK7's inspirations in classic RPGs, but there's a reason most of those started implementing more frequent save spots/save features in dungeons and ways to catch-up newer party members to current ones that are more interesting than "do the battle arena 10+ times". I'm personally used to it, but to say I wasn't still a bit annoyed by it was a bit of an understatement, especially when the first "recommended" grind is in a very, very late part of the game and for the average player will probably be 10-20 level ups needed to even stand a chance against the boss and get set on track for the rest of the main game. Among a list of other things like maxing jobs, which is a slog and a half, or weapon upgrading, which is an absolute nightmare in of itself unless you're doing loads of side stuff or you're completely locked into material grinding for the entire game and then some. You're gonna be hunting down very specific enemies for a long, long time unless you get very lucky. Maybe "complex" isn't the word for some of it, but rather "busy", since a lot of this is exactly that - busywork - but there are just some very strange complexities where there shouldn't be.

It is very flawed, but don't get me wrong - it's still fun, just incredibly basic. Outside of the grindy snags the game has, I was still honestly having a good time. It helps that most special attacks snatched heat action QTEs from the previous games to keep you paying attention and, honest to god a welcome surprise, timed blocking from SNES era RPGs. The variety within jobs is also great, at least once you get a lil further in the game. While a lot of them are vastly outclassed, it's still entertaining to mix and match to make dumb strategies. Musician was one of my favorites due to an ability that stacks when you have multiple in the party, and the goofy, purposefully crappy singing from each party member when using an ability. Host/Hostess was another, making entire waves of enemies drunk and fighting each other was just so dumb but so fun. Enemy types are also WILDLY varied and great to figure out with a few notable exceptions, unlike a lot of bosses - and those 3 bosses that I mentioned earlier are easily some of the best in the series. It's admittedly a bit too simple for my tastes - I am a big fan of experimentation in a lot of rpgs - but it's also just varied enough to warrant testing some things out to see what the limits of certain jobs are even if I'm not going super in depth. A good foundation to build on with Infinite Wealth. Hopefully.

With this being RGG's first attempt at an RPG, it's incredibly rough, but I can turn a bit of a blind eye to a lot of it's problems since the team clearly has love for the genre. Like I said about a previous game in the series, I'd rather the series make mistakes and find ways to iterate in their own fashion than be manufactured in such a "perfect" way that you can smell the corporate on it. A drastic shift in, well, everything would not have happened if this was the manufactured "perfect" Yakuza - it'd just be a worse, hamfisted, repeat of 0 since that game is what made the series finally break out into the greater world. Or it'd be Kiwami 2 again because that game sucks. Instead, we got a team genuinely stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something wildly different than what they've ever done with their best foot forward. Admittedly, they stumbled a bit, but that's whatever.

I would absolutely say this game's worth a playthrough. There are absolutely abrasive aspects of the game that will take some adjusting and might be deal breakers for some, but sticking with it through the rough bits only makes it better, both gameplay and story wise; as long as you're not going for 100%. In which case, good luck!