Good god, am I glad this game got remade.

I don't really have much new or interesting to say about it: the story is great, Kiryu is a treasure, Haruka is an angel, the combat is rough, the English dub is endearing but not necessarily good.

It ends up being a pretty fascinating game to look at after you've played the other games and see how different certain aspects of it are. Maybe the most interesting thing was the localization and dub and how much that can change the tone of the whole game to where it occasionally feels like a parody of a Yakuza game.

More than anything, this game made me appreciate the Kiwami remake so much more. I already really liked that game but now I like it even more. It adds several scenes that are critically important to adding depth to characters that are relatively flat or poorly characterized in this original version. Go play Kiwami.

If you've never played a Yakuza before, do yourself a favor and play Kiwami instead. But if you've played them all and are desperate for a little bit more then this game is a fun thing to check out.