The PS2 era of gaming was the perfect balance between games made as works of art and ideas first and the money and budgets being small enough to not be frowned upon by suits if anything deviated from the video game equivalent of Oscar baits but high enough so the potentiel of these ideas could be realized and not be held back by limited technology

This game is exactly that but released in 2019. Everything oozes soul and personality but with the polish of 11 years of game design and graphical advancement since a good but flawed DMC4. It's everything me pre-2019 would've asked for DMC5 and more.

What a colossal disappointment.

Ok it's not that bad. Everything with Kiryu is great especially chapter 8 (except the end that shit is ass, his final boss is good but feels like Ichiban should've fought him). New party members are cool and I like the gameplay improvements (still not a fan of having to go to a specific location to change jobs but there are more of them and money isn't as tight as in 7). Hitting dudes richocheting into other dudes never gets old. Same as having a physical character comboing into a mage to get them back some mp (there's even risk into it since enemies target the closest guy to them which would be said mage if it's their next turn).

The game feels like it was made back when length was a factor in game reviews. There were some cutscenes where I checked my phone or zoned out which never happened before in any other yakuza game. I don't know if it's due to the dialogue itself or just the length of the cutscenes but it really feels longer than it should. But somehow the ending feels rushed with a lot of stuff either forgotten about or that feels like we should've known more (Eiji becoming public enemy n°1 for example, did Ebina expose him because he wasn't useful anymore ? Was it Chitose ? Somebody asked who was running the Tatara channel and she said it was him ?)

Antagonists are also a big wrong in this game. One is Aoki but worse in every way and one is a generic cult leader. I guess there's a 3rd big one but him not appearing in the final chapter but instead in the ending cutscene where Ichiban talks no jutsu him (happens a lot btw, even for him) and he says sorry and it's fine apparently.

There's a lot if weird inconsistencies (Chitose casually using the Tatara channel despite Eiji having control of it and using another voice actor, the Geomijul unable to find a famous streamer but hijacking a government satellite, Nele Island running out of the space for the waste being a twist despite the thing being visibly half full in 2 months once you enter the cave)

The Daidoji are also not beating the shittiest group in the series accusations. What a wet fart of a character Hanawa is I can't believe Yokoyama said he was important what a fucking liar.

I like this game simply because it does something I wish more anime games would try to make : their own story within the universe of said anime instead of being the anime you've already seen but worse. That shit is usually non-canon anyway so who cares if it's bad and tons of naruto shippuden games already make the first naruto vs sasuke an epic showdown instead of Sasuke curbstomping Naruto for 5 minutes like in the manga. It's not even that here it's decent, some cool moments here and there nothing to really complain about.

It's a shame that this game is so sloooooooooooow. The menuing takes forever, the maps are way too big for how bland they are (or 3-5 tiles movement is too low) animations are unskippable and are looooooooong. The leveling system is also really annoying and unbalanced. Some characters are busted (Gin, your protagonist especially speed Fujimaru who pretty much deletes the map in bankai...), others are ass (Chad, Jidanbo).

Cool game with cool ideas but on god play this on an emulator with speed up