Wow this is like shockingly really bad. Like damn, for a console with so many bangers and hidden gems I was surprised how awful this game is. First off what is with the art direction in this game it’s so ugly. Everything looks like it was hit with a goddamn cartoon frying pan. Second off, these levels man. I think the general concept is stellar, 2.5D worlds you can go in and out of the foreground. Sounds great to me right? It’s terrible. The movement from Bug is so stilted and stiff and going anywhere always feels like a challenge. Doesn’t help these levels are so fucking long and the boss designs really don’t help matters. Idk man, only look into this if you are like me and are really curious about the Saturn’s history. Otherwise, just play any other game from the console it’s not worth it.

This game is so good, but it has a huge drawback; the pacing.

There's a looooot of padding in this game.... the dungeons/levels/chapters you're going through are agonizingly long with very little interesting environment to look at. I felt myself bored to tears at times with some of the levels, and it's really unfortunate because there's some things this game does really well.

Another misstep is that the companions you collect that give Mario his special abilities are painfully stale opposed to the colorful cast of characters in Paper Mario 64 & Thousand-Year Door. Its really unfortunate that this game is doomed to be compared with it's predecessors in such a way, but it's really shocking that they couldn't come up with more visually interesting partners.... Especially since the villains in this game have REALLY good design. What happened?

Despite all of that, this game redeems itself with one aspect-- the plot.

The plot is good. Really good. The dialogue is incredibly witty and entertaining as well. Peach, Bowser, and Luigi are given really great characterization and you can tell the writing team put in their A-game for this one.

The gameplay is alright. They took out the strategy aspect of it. As a fan of the last two Paper Mario games, I remember being incredibly disappointed that they nixed the turn based combat, but with how long the game is I can see why they did it. I try to be a little kinder about it now, but at worst its just nothing to write home about. You hop or pound enemies to fight them and they explode into coins. Its a much more streamlined battle system.

This game should be played!! It's a story you don't want to miss. Pushing through the long bits is worth it, in my opinion, but if you can't well... look up the cutscenes on YouTube or something.

Anyway. Mr. L.

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.

Somewhere around Yakuza 0 the series crossed an invisible line into being really good. The only exception to this is Yakuza 6, a stumble that the developers now try to correct.

Can't say I blame them, as Kazuma Kiryu's ending was lacking in many regards, and Gaiden does show that Kiryu can still provide an entertaining and unique story.

The story is likely the best part of this game, as developers are fully committing themselves to writing memorable characters and moments without going too much into incomprehensible conspiracies that we saw during Yakuzas 3-5, where you could barely remember what was happening even as you played the game.

Gaiden might be a shorter entry, but it creates some really memorable scenes and characters. However, as it was originally planned as DLC for Yakuza 7, there's a very clear focus on combat that gets stale after some time.

It seems developers wanted to give something to players who disliked turn-based system of 7 and instead forced way too much combat into this title, as most of the side content is now based on you beating people. Yes, even moreso than previous entries.

Quite a few sudestories see you venturing out only to beat up a few groups of hooligans or a mini-boss and I believe there are about 5 actual side "stories" in this game, which is a frustratingly tiny amount.

Doesn't help that the biggest side attraction in this game is a coliseum. It has a lot of options this time around, but it's still more combat. There are usual minigames, but if you want to unwind and do something more productive, your biggest choices are beating people and beating people but with a twist.

Combat in this game is fine and often funny, with Agent style providing a lot of comedy as Kiryu can now do some insanely cartoony tricks. It's always fun to look at, and after a while I completely stopped using the classic "Yakuza" combat style in favor of James Bond Kiruy.

Exploration received a new feature thanks to this style, too. Now you can grab items from far away which means many items can be placed on roofs and around neon signs, which is a really, really smart decision. Yakuza's virtual tourism was often undercut by you looking at the ground to find various shinies, but now the game rewards you for staring up at beautiful enviroments, too. And I'm sure a few real-life advertisers are happy about it. If this wasn't for this mechanic, I'm not sure I would've noticed big Uber Eats logo, but thanks to my spider gadget I'm now aware of the Brand.

Gaiden is one of the better Yakuza titles, but even with its short 20-25 hour playtime (provided you want to experience a lot or even 100% it) it does become stale. Aside from combat the biggest attractions are the returning Pocket Circuit and an incredibly uncanny hostess minigame that's now even more awkward to play! Unfortunately, though, both of them don't have much story to tell unlike some hostess chats or Pocket Circuits of 0 and Kiwami 1.

That said, it's still a Yakuza game. It still provides one of the better open worlds out there and manages to keep you hooked. I've recently played some open-world games that I called "checklist games", and while this game is possibly the very meaning of that (with you completing actual checklist of substories and in-game achievements for your new friend and receiving points for everything done) it's the variety that helps it. I've spent an hour playing poker and had my fun with golf and karaoke. I've enjoyed completing challenges for pool which otherwise I wouldn't even touch. Even if they are returning mechanics, it's still wonderful to see a game that offers you so much to do off the main path since so many others just plop you onto a much bigger map and leave you with samey quests and collectibles to find. Even if Gaiden has very few actual meaty quests, I feel like they're a hundred times more memorable than nearly anything I've encountered in other games in part thanks to punchy and witty writing.

Before this game, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see Kiryu return, but it convinced me that maybe this old man who only seems to get dumber with time does deserve a better exit.