Peak gameplay pre Dragon Engine era, the 4 styles and fast switching between them allows you to perform some really fun and nasty combos on enemies, it's very rewarding once you get good with it. The biggest gripe is that to get there you need to engage with the grindy, unfunny, and random Majima Everywhere system which kills a lot of this game's biggest strengths by having such a daunting requirement in order to be able to use Kiryu's base style from the first 5 games and his best one here.
The game loses a lot of the original atmosphere by having a cheap rehash of 0's city and lacks any of the strong lighting or fog effects the first game had, the cinematic angles in the fixed camera city were very limiting but they were crucial in setting the tone and scale of the city. Convenience can be nice but I think presentation sometimes has better value.
The added Fish scenes I personally don't think were good and the story worked fine without them but for 0 fans I don't think I mind them, I did laugh though as everything is just too conveniently cruel to him, at a certain point he deserves it.
Overall it somehow feels worse than both 0 and 1 by limiting the convenience of playing through 1 and losing its presentation and being a big asset flip of older RGG games and especially 0 but it also manages to be a better version of those by providing much needed upgrades and improvements to the combat with Kiryu himself. It's not my first pick for experiencing this story but I don't think it's a bad replacement for the original.
The game loses a lot of the original atmosphere by having a cheap rehash of 0's city and lacks any of the strong lighting or fog effects the first game had, the cinematic angles in the fixed camera city were very limiting but they were crucial in setting the tone and scale of the city. Convenience can be nice but I think presentation sometimes has better value.
The added Fish scenes I personally don't think were good and the story worked fine without them but for 0 fans I don't think I mind them, I did laugh though as everything is just too conveniently cruel to him, at a certain point he deserves it.
Overall it somehow feels worse than both 0 and 1 by limiting the convenience of playing through 1 and losing its presentation and being a big asset flip of older RGG games and especially 0 but it also manages to be a better version of those by providing much needed upgrades and improvements to the combat with Kiryu himself. It's not my first pick for experiencing this story but I don't think it's a bad replacement for the original.