Kind of an inverse of Judgment where this has some of the best gameplay in the series but the story is a lot more mid than the first game.
Possibly has some of the most versatile combat in the series. All of the different fighting styles are a blast to play around with, though it doesn't quite feel as frantic as Y6 and some enemy encounters towards the end are a bit annoying. The boxer fighting style specifically is a huge change of pace for this, and it makes you genuinely feel like you're playing some kind of brawler/boxing game hybrid.
This game smooths out a lot of the edges of the first Judgment, to the point where it feels a lot closer to a mainline Yakuza game. The stealth segments are significantly less plentiful, which is great because those really brought down the first game. The chase sequences are also less common as well. You spend less of the playtime doing things like using drones; the investigation sequences are still pretty common, but they're more straightforward and akin to bits in Ace Attorney.
I guess the problem that does come with some of this is that it ends up feeling more forgettable amongst the series. The gameplay here really feels similar to Kiwami 2 in some regards. I guess that's kind of a hard problem for this franchise to overcome but it's still there.
The story is.....hm. The main players and villains feel revealed too early on to grip me the way Judgment's did. I also think it's kind of incoherent thematically since the main bad characters of the game kind of have a point even if they went too far, and what theme I can juice out of it feels like the game is saying that Japanese law needs to be tougher on bullying as a crime, which.....I don't really agree with? I mean bullying is a problem, but the systemic issues that cause it are more rooted in underfunded schools and poor home childhood home life caused by our economic material realities and overworked parents. This game doesn't really go into any of that and sometimes feels like the equivalent of a middle schooler starting an "End Bullying" campaign at their school. But I'm probably reading into this too much; this game clearly went for a soap opera-ass story like a lot of the earlier Yakuza games and isn't thematically as interesting as the first game. And it very much succeeds in this regard! The characters are a lot of fun, it's constantly doing interesting things in its story, the emotional beats hit. I'd describe it as fun but disappointing. The game is still better than the first though, by virtue of just holistically being more fun.
Possibly has some of the most versatile combat in the series. All of the different fighting styles are a blast to play around with, though it doesn't quite feel as frantic as Y6 and some enemy encounters towards the end are a bit annoying. The boxer fighting style specifically is a huge change of pace for this, and it makes you genuinely feel like you're playing some kind of brawler/boxing game hybrid.
This game smooths out a lot of the edges of the first Judgment, to the point where it feels a lot closer to a mainline Yakuza game. The stealth segments are significantly less plentiful, which is great because those really brought down the first game. The chase sequences are also less common as well. You spend less of the playtime doing things like using drones; the investigation sequences are still pretty common, but they're more straightforward and akin to bits in Ace Attorney.
I guess the problem that does come with some of this is that it ends up feeling more forgettable amongst the series. The gameplay here really feels similar to Kiwami 2 in some regards. I guess that's kind of a hard problem for this franchise to overcome but it's still there.
The story is.....hm. The main players and villains feel revealed too early on to grip me the way Judgment's did. I also think it's kind of incoherent thematically since the main bad characters of the game kind of have a point even if they went too far, and what theme I can juice out of it feels like the game is saying that Japanese law needs to be tougher on bullying as a crime, which.....I don't really agree with? I mean bullying is a problem, but the systemic issues that cause it are more rooted in underfunded schools and poor home childhood home life caused by our economic material realities and overworked parents. This game doesn't really go into any of that and sometimes feels like the equivalent of a middle schooler starting an "End Bullying" campaign at their school. But I'm probably reading into this too much; this game clearly went for a soap opera-ass story like a lot of the earlier Yakuza games and isn't thematically as interesting as the first game. And it very much succeeds in this regard! The characters are a lot of fun, it's constantly doing interesting things in its story, the emotional beats hit. I'd describe it as fun but disappointing. The game is still better than the first though, by virtue of just holistically being more fun.