Yakuza 7 is a great first attempt at an RPG from RGG Studio, but compared to the other games in the series, it is a weak entry. The story is absolutely the best in the entire series here and the combat, while strange as hell to go into when you get off the back of Yakuza 6 or Judgment, is actually enjoyable especially with the way you are rewarded for being fast to attack. It also has some of my favourite boss fights ever, and not just in the Yakuza series. However that's not to say the combat is flawless, as it has some bad balancing where some party members are absolutely broken and some just aren't ever viable once you have the ability to swap out members. There's some weird jank as well where attacking party members can just get stuck on objects and have their positions reset after like 2 minutes of walking into something, this is a common occurrence.

My main gripe with this game, which I'd never think in a million years I'd have with a Yakuza game, is the music. Unlike pretty much all entries, this soundtrack is very forgettable or just downright horrible, and the tracks that are good here are maybe a handful of original tracks, and then tracks this game pulls or remixes from past entries. I don't like the direction this series is going in with electronic music, when it's done well in games like 0, Kiwami etc it is fine, but here it's terrible.

And don't get me started on that random 20 level grind that you have to do in chapter 12.

Overall I enjoyed this game but it is very flawed, and I hope they can fix these gripes I have in the next entry (and Lost Judgment will probably be a million times better because of beat-em-up combat)