This game is fantastic, but its crazy to realize this story existed before 0. Yakuza 0 adds so much background to pretty much all the characters in this and makes it much more impactful. I heard kiwami added more nishiki scenes and I think that also adds much more of a hit. This game is just so sad to play after 0 because you basically watch Kiryu lose his whole world. Its funny how this game makes 0 feel a lot more lighthearted despite that story being incredibly tragic too. For the first story in the franchise, I think it was a great start, but its nowhere near as refined as 0.

I did every substory and a lot of them were just people trying to con Kiryu, like theres literally a 4 or 5 substory quest line where this same group of men keep coming back to try and make Kiryu pay for "injuring" someone he bumped into, so some stuff felt a bit padded. I loved Majima Everywhere it was just fun to see him a lot, but he doesn't really have much involvement in the main story otherwise, but I understand that wasn't the original vision for his character anyway. Amon's fight in this game was so god damn hard and I genuinely believe it is impossible to beat him without using tiger drop.

Overall this game is a weaker entry than 0 for sure, but this WAS the first yakuza game at least in terms of its story and I think it was pretty great for the start. I recommend starting with 0 because it just fleshes out this story so well