I generally enjoy the vibe of this game. The serious tone of the main story spiced with some goofy characters and substories is generally up my alley... if it was a movie or tv show. The open world and general gameplay(including combat) really didn't impress me.

The sub stories are amusing at times but feel too inconsequential for me. I'd be much more willing to go out and complete all of them if they tied in with the main story or were long enough to span the whole game. Sub stories flowing into each other would also be effective. As it stands though I just did a sub story here and there.

The combat is fine but it can't carry a long open world game like Yakuza.
The many unlockable abilities do very little to change up how you approach combat, and neither do the new enemies. Heat actions also become old quite fast.
I think many people just settle into 1 or 2 favourite styles for both kiryu and majima and dont bother with the rest. The game doesnt do a lot to make you use all your styles, generally you get by perfectly fine if you find a style for crowd control and one for big damage one on one encounters like bosses. What I used for Kiryu and Majima is, respectively, brawler & beast and breaker & slugger. I havent bothered searching out the secret styles since ive heard they're tied to very tedious side content.

Other than that my problems mostly extend to open world design in general, I simply dont enjoy standard open worlds. Traversing huge game spaces is tedious for me, and these games tend to be filled with meaningless stuff to make them look more dense than they really are, most egregious example in Y0 is the random thug encounters.

Cute lil game I guess. Kinda plays itself with how the "platforming" is just point and press a button with infinite error margin plus the puzzles and chase sequences being so funneled and lenient you couldve made them cutscenes and not lose much player agency.
Art direction and ost are top tier though, and interacting with the npcs brings a lot of charm to the world. I just wish there was more actual game "meat" to it.
The game has pretty severe issues with its frame time stability considering how short it is, but I assume itll get fixed in a later patch as is increasingly more common nowadays with new releases on pc unfortunately.

Its fine.

short and fun. The original game bored me but this one kept me interested enough to play through all levels, I cant quite put my finger on why though. I'm way past the point of being entertained by the VR novelty factor so that shouldn't be the reason I found Superhot VR more compelling. Maybe the gameplay concept just lends itself much better to you being "physically" in the world. Every action is done with your body; all the dodging with the motion tracking, lining up your shots instead of pointing your crosshair, punching people, throwing objects, etc. It simply forces you to be involved.

Fully playable on yuzu at 60fps, very smooth as it is no longer bogged down by 1995 hardware.
The game itself is quite underwhelming. The story sucked ass and the mechanics feel like playing a compilation of previous Platinum games but with less depth. I almost started drawing W101 shapes with the right thumbstick. The levels start to blend together after a while, especially the astral planes. I can only stomach so many sci-fi cityscapes with a purplish-blue hue splattered over them. Anything to do with the astral planes is tedious. The worst instances of "platforming" and "puzzles" are concentrated there.
Platinum games still has no idea how to break up the combat in their games without forcing you into gimmicks that overstay their welcome before theyre even introduced.
The one stand out thing is the ost. Some really great stuff here, I'd almost put this over bayonetta and nier automata.
This might be my least favourite platinum game after Vanguard, but to vanguard's credit it had a bit more personality than astral chain. At least the mc actually speaks there.

Went back and actually finished cause I had that itch. I dont say this often; this is a real fun shooter. This is coming from a guy that has hated every third person shooter in recent memory. Only minor complaints are the lack of gyro aiming support and the lacklustre air mobility, really wish adjusting your character in the air was much more snappy and precise.

Returnal has solved my main gripe with other roguelikes, which is the repetition in levels. If you beat the main boss of each expansive biome in Returnal, youre allowed to take a shortcut to the next level without forcing you to run through all the same rooms again. This kind of design made all other roguelikes I tried a real slog past the first few dozen attempts. Returnal skips the needless busywork, providing a fresh new attempt every single run while not hampering the core of what makes up a rogueli(k/t)e.

Here's to hoping the pc release will allow simultaneous keyboard and controller inputs, so I can easily add in gyro with steam input.

Pretty much your average modern cinematic game. Features all the usual shit like an inconsequential crafting/upgrade system, basic stealth and combat mechanics, and uninteractive segments where you just walk or push some object waiting for dialogue to finish. Occasionaly you come across an interesting puzzle section and maybe a well designed area you need to stealth through, but theyre not the majority of the experience. The last few chapters in particular were a slog; both in gameplay and in the sudden silliness of the story. Main saving grace for this game is decent character interactions and solid art direction.

Fun. Ive only played Y0 from the RGG games so it's the only one im comparing it to.
I was more interested in Yagami as a character than kiryu, the game not being divided into separate stories also helped to keep the pace going.
The combat also kept me engaged for much longer, jumping off walls and over enemies to initiate attacks is a very compelling mechanic. I just wish crane style was much more useful outside of some specific situations, tiger style seems to have most of the meat while crane feels incomplete in comparison.
I was largely bored with the side stories again, theyre still inconsequential to the main story and simply arent interesting on their own merit.
Im excited for lost judgement, I hear they improved the combat even more.