Now i see why Kojima is held in such high regard, this 2001 game explores the themes of identity, omnipresent algorithms controlling human thoughts, echo chambers on the internet, fake news, the derivative nature of sequels and the choice between liberty or the greater good of the human race. It's hard to call this game as anything else other than visionary.

The gameplay is pretty good too, it's a direct improvement on Mgs1 in pretty much every sense, it's not super refined or anything but it works for what it tries to do.

P.s. the intro's music is stuck in my brain, it's too good

Short little game with goofy voice acting but better than people give it credit for, it's crazy how well it recreates the atmosphere of Berserk, i liked the story cause it feels just like an arc of the manga and i liked how the villain and his wife mirrored Guts and Casca.
The gameplay is alright, the sword feels pretty good but i feel like it should oneshot every base enemy for it to be really the Dragonslayer, the bouncing off walls can be annoying but positioning can prevent this and the charged and jump attacks aren't affected anyway, but really you're supposed to use the unarmed moveset or your other tools, my favorite of them is the damn arm cannon, it feels good like a cannon should.
Bonus points for using qtes in an inventing way cause succeding or failing a qte changes the part of the level you're gonna face.
The lives system is pretty annoying though, i used savestates ngl.

Bad remake, doesn't resemble the original at all and it makes things way worse, how do you turn one of the best games in this i have no idea. The amazing combat of the ps2 game is gone, now you'll have to endure the new messy and unfinished physics engine, i hope you like ragdolls and your combos stopping everytime an enemy blocks. Everything is copypasted from other games in the series, the combat is from 6 and the minigames are from 6 and 0, they didn't even try to remake the original game's unique minigames, which brings me to all the cut content, the cut soundtrack and all the dumb jrock instead of the melancholic jazz. This game is piss easy too, it sucks cause it makes some bosses way less memorable, especially the final one and Hayashi(this is unforgivable).
The only good part, that's original from this game at least, was the final bouncer mission.

Play Yakuza 2 instead.

This game is fantastic, i have a lot of fond memories playing it and replaying it recently i still think it's good, i like how tight and focused it is, the game doesn't waste your time with grinding or padding.

The city is fantastic, you can see how they wanted to recreate the shady aspect of the red light district of Tokyo, the fixed camera works to its favor to show off the city at its best, it really does seem like a dangerous place full of scammers and thugs, it's also filled with little details like you can find the fake Mizuki or the white color gang hideout before the main story mentions them.
They also used the rain and snow really well in certain moments of the story, atmosphere isn't just a meme.

The combat is good and i'm tired of pretending it's not, sure it can start out pretty basic but you'll get everything you need during the course of the game, it really feels like Kiryu is becoming a more skilled fighter during the course of the game. I also really like how good it feels, it's a mix between the animations of your attacks, the enemy reactions to getting hit by your combos and the sound design being really crunchy, every game's combat after Yakuza 2 didn't feels quite as good as this imo but they were good in different ways.
I also never see anyone talk about how good Kiryu's moveset actually is, something about it is just really iconic, his kick is in the front cover for a reason.

The story is beautiful, i like the mistery and how everything unravels, my only complaint is that the death scenes for most characters aren't handled that well, that's certainly something they got better at in later games. Nishiki itself already worked in this game imo, the loss of his sister, Yumi and Kiryu all in a short time made him change and that's stated pretty clearly in game. I don't feel like the cutscenes added by Kiwami really add much to his character, instead they only made him look pathetic. 0 does a much better job at making you feel for Nishiki than Kiwami does.

Regarding the substories, it seems the first Yakuza has a reputation for having bad substories and i can't say i agree, sure most of them are scams but there's quite a bunch of more elaborate ones with cutscenes and all, i especially like those tying into the main story like The fake Mizuki or the Yakuza's wife(the rain and thunder in the background are so kino). Plus there is some light hearted substories here too, it's not like humour was invented with 0, it's just that this game has a different tone.

The music is good but that's true for all the games in this series so i won't talk about it more than that.

Edit: As of 25/06/2022 the restoration patch to get the japanese dub is actually out and it works perfectly, thank you Sylwahan

Great combat though grappling is way better because it negates the counters completely but combos are fun to do as well, the bosses are HYPE especially because of the announcer, best character.
If you're into sport/fighting anime the story is really enjoyable as it's structured in a similar way to those, it really clicked with me because it feels like every arc is focused to a different antagonist and each time Tatsuya learns something new after fighting him, but i can understand why others might not like this type of storytelling.
As for the sidecontent, i like the jobs minigames while the cats collecting was a bit ridicolous(even if it's kinda satisfying), the substories are almost all fights, i feel like the game didn't need random encounters considering how many fights you already get into with the substories.