Tough game to settle my opinion on. On one hand: I adore the new combat changes, the game has such charming writing still, and the amount of shit to do is great. On the other hand: The game's pacing is mad inconsistent, some of the changes hurt the tone of some sequences, and by God there is too much to do sometimes.

I think when it's all said and done, Remake is a bit stronger overall, but Rebirth is still such a great game. I absolutely adore the last 3 hours of this game's main story, killer stuff from start to finish.

I played like a solid two hours of this game before I decided it wasn't worth more than that. Movement is probably the biggest compliment I can give this game as the actual combat isn't very good. The act of moving my characters felt better than the norm, but that is it. Characters don't feel good to attack neither having some very sluggish attacks. Combos felt rather restrictive with not much in the way of fun feeling stuff to experiment with. I feel like I had to research most of the characters I played too as not a lot was immediately intuitive.

The game also lacks a lot of flair instead opting for a very visually dull game with equally lame super attacks. The story is very rote for a licensed anime fighter too. Voice work on top of that kinda sucks in both languages being very bland performances compared to the anime showings. The two hours I spent were already quite draining and I did not want to play more after that.

There are a lot of improvements from 7 in here. The movement around the map is a lot better, you can move in a limited space in combat now to setup for stuff better, and the random debris Ichiban could use to attack with is now much more accessible and usable by everyone. With all of the improvements, some stellar new characters, and a hot new setting; Infinite Wealth on paper seems like a killer game.

Unfortunately, it probably comes at the cost of one of the weakest Yakuza stories ever. It's a very messy narrative with an intro that would put Persona 4's to shame. It jumps back and forth after a point in a very obnoxious splitting of events and the antagonists of this game outside of two particularly notable ones are pretty terrible. While some aspects like the remembrance chapters appeal to someone like me who's been playing these games since 3, newcomers are probably going to find it hard to connect to some of those scenes too.

Despite my complaints, this game is still very good. However, I don't feel it outright usurps 7 and in a decent number of cases I think it's honestly weaker. Less than the sum of its parts is a phrase that comes to mind. Also for as funny as the idea of Sujimon and Dondoko Island are, I did not enjoy contributing hours of my time to two thoroughly dull minigames. The money I got for Dondoko Island came in handy so that was at least worthwhile. I really dislike how much minigames play into this one in particular. Hope a future game can be a bit more focused, because coming off of Man Who Erased His Name left me wanting something more... whole, I suppose.