Now this is how you do open world!! There are so many games more "open" than this and yet have no personality or life to them. The game lives or dies on this, to the point where if this was just a beat em up, it probably would just be a 3 star game. The whole story's backbone relies on immersion and its protagonists, so the substories really are the reason the game's so good! The gameplay is easy to learn but a bit tricky to master, which I'm glad about because I am not here to get good at it. It's satisfying and that's enough for me. The only major complaint I have is that it's a tad long. Some parts of the story dragged for a bit, and by the end, I was burnt out.
I hear that the franchise doesn't reach another high like this until the turn-based games, but I have a feeling that as long as I like Kiryu, I'll have a good time.