This is a weird game for me. I really like the yakuza series gameplay a good majority of the time, but this one is probably the worst and/or weakest one next to 3. I found Brawler to be unremarkable, Gunner was too simple for my liking and realistically the most overpowered style in the game, Wild Dancer is one I used for half the game, but after that it felt to weak. Sword Fighter was my go to style for the 2nd half of the game, as it is the most well balanced and has the blocking ability. The Bosses in this game were really annoying to deal with. I found them to be bullet sponges that take a long time to deal with. But the biggest problem I have with the Game is the Trooper system. The Trooper System is cool in theory, giving you boost to your stats for a limited time, but the problem is that they are tied to almost everything stat wise and it dosen't help that Health Upgrades give you an atom size increase. But this game isn't all bad, I liked the story a lot in this game with twists and characters I didn't expect, the game is really good looking, they don't show the penis in the bathhouse fight, and the music slaps. Just a game that has more style then substance overall.

Pretty fun story and characters were fun too, the combat was kinda mid and I didn't really lie any styles apart from wild dancer which is a peak Yakuza style. Wish more time was given to Mine and Saejima's counterparts tbh, although, Majima's counterpart, Okita, was great in the moments he was in (very reminiscent of Majima in mainline games), the side content was kinda boring too tbh, substories were pretty uninteresting if I'm being honest. Ending was pretty weird until the post credit scenes as well, at least the fight at the end was cold af. Overall, If u just do the main story and some side content you'll enjoy it.

i assumed this game was gonna be just ok since its just a silly spinoff but this game completely shattered my expectations
while this game might have one of the weakest offerings of side content in the series, and some other problems, the actual main content is some of the best in the series, with also what might have been the best plot in the series, and one of the most creative handlings of a story loosely based on real events ever
man this game is so good, combat was pretty fun too
as for some criticisms a lot of the systems in the game are not the best, the side content is meh at best, and there are a lot of problems that come from the new engine that were really annoying, terrible menus and weird overworld movement being some
but fuck man this game is so good i liked the story and the plot so much its so so so good

[5/28/24]

A historical piece with Yakuza characters, not to be confused with a period piece with Yakuza characters. I'm a big fan of the samurai flick tropes on display here.

Funny as it is to say, I think this is one of the better stories in the series. Helps when you have literal history as the original author. Seeing which characters were set to be portrayed with the likeness of past Yakuza characters leads to dynamics between them and our Kiryu lookalike that I wish so desperately came to be in the mainline entries.

Being based on 19th century Japan, the combat is primarily sword-based, although you get the Dragon of Dojima style and a gun to mix things up. Not really much you can be creative with here when you get all your styles really early in, one of them just using both the sword and gun. The upgrade system is one of my favorites, though. Get grey orbs on leveling up and put them in one of four skill trees, but level up any style and you get a colored one you can swap the grey one out for. You could either continue committing to a style or evenly distribute skills as you go, so the progression feels as open as Yakuza 0.

Some parts of the game feel like they were taken from the RPGs. They don't mix that well. I tolerate the trooper system and the odd magic angle they take in some boss fights, but the whole time I felt like it belongs in another game where it would fit way better. It has its own progression system and leads to having to make builds for each fighting style. I'd like it more if it was one larger, universal set of troopers split between active and passive abilities; they have abilities not seen in the skill trees, so it wouldn't be redundant. Weapons and defensive gear can be given buffs that increase a stat by a percentage value, too. This game even has damage numbers for some reason. I heard this aspect of the game, or at least the troopers, didn't exist in the original version, so I'm more confused than anything.

At the end of the day, my biggest takeaway is that identity theft was rampant in Japan, you gotta be patriotic as shit, Mine would have been such a bro, and that I have a thing for samurai. I'll get to SamSho and the rest of Kurosawa's filmography one day...

As someone who generally loves RGG games flaws and all, I just can't recommend this game whatsoever. Like a Dragon: Ishin! is a mess of a fanservice game with little substance and one of the worst grinds I've ever seen in a single player game. That's what this game serves for explicitly: fanservice. Which would be absolutely fine, I absolutely LOVED Dead Souls myself, but that's because that game wasn't a predictable slog.

The game's story gives itself away so fast, and I can't tell if it is because of just lazy writing, or because of the new recast (for Christ's sake why did they decide to make Ryoma's brother Shibusawa). Speaking of Ryoma, he's just such a dull and stupid protagonist. Now I know that this was around the time they started making Kiryu more naïve, In 5's case because he was losing everything and 0's was that he was only 20, but BY GOD is Ryoma dumb. Most of the narrative is him just letting his naivety get in the way of his quest and it's so frustrating to watch. The characters are predictable, If you know how they act in the main game, that's how they act in this one, I don't know how you can make Goda and Akiyama boring, but they managed to. The only character in this game that was any bit interesting was Hijikata, but that is because we haven't seen Mine in a grip and it was interesting seeing him take up a leadership role independent of Daigo (at least to the point I got up to).

The combat is just flat out the worst in the series, there's hardly any weight or oomph whatsoever, you can just spam attacks with no repercussion. Also the gear score system is just awful, it turns the game into a slog and just makes the combat one of many, many, MANY things you have to grind for. Seriously it seems like everything in this game is a grind. Want a new weapon? Grind! Want to do substories? Grind a friendship meter! Want to do the main story? Well you better enjoy starting 10 substories on your path to the next mission marker. It utterly gutted any interest I had with the game whatsoever.

There are much better RGG games, much better sword/gunkata games that came out around the same time Ishin! did (both in its 2014 release and the new release). I'm glad this game got released to the west finally and I still would LOVE to see a Kenzan! localization just for the sake of game preservation, but this game wasn't for me whatsoever.