[I played through the game 5 times; Route A, B, C, D, & E and watched all 5 endings.]

A compelling story combined with well-written and interesting characters, that is bogged down by some of the most tedious quest design in gaming.

The combat is incredibly flashy, however, it's all style and no substance. The difficulty is either mind-numbingly easy or mind-numbingly boring due to the health scaling.

The resources required for weapon upgrading are incredibly grindy and don't even make sense. What the hell is Nier using eggs, necklaces, bracelets, broken pottery, and pearls for? Like. Seriously?

The side quests are sooooooooooooooooooo boring. Holy shit. Baffingly boring fetch quests that don't even have interesting written or characters seen in other RPGs.

What moron designed the Fyra tour? Genuinely one of the most grating, poorly designed encounters I’ve ever experienced in gaming. It's skippable, yes, but having skippable content is generally meant for speedrunners, not a way to skip horrendous content that's included in the game.

If you're willing to push through piles of trash to find some tidbits of fantastic content then this is the game for you.

Any section that involves electricity is just ridiculous. The stun/damage mechanic is so poorly designed, which means that going through the "stealth" electric drone section is infuriating.

Technical issues (even on PS5) means that hitches are a common occurence.

* Unskippable cutscenes and end credits means that going back through the game to get missed collectibles/trophies was a pain.


Conclusion: If you're looking for an immersive walking simulator just go play SOMA.

Going into the game I knew next to nothing.
I saw two screenshots. That's it. I didn't know it was a puzzle game, that the main mechanic/gimmick was "fast-travel", nor the setting.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the experience. The fast-forward/rewind mechanic just felt tedious and unrewarding.

The visuals of fast-forwarding/rewinding were neat though.

Not for me.

Negative: Everytime a Tailing mission comes up I feel my eyelids getting heavier. These make every mission grind to a halt and make me incredibly bored.

Positive: The Completion List is a huge improvement over Yakuza 0's. I still wish they'd quit pushing their crappy arcade games (keep ones like Outrun & Kamurocho of the Dead, but things like Virtua FIghter 2? Oh my. What a horrendous game).

Negative: The Chasing missions are also incredibly boring. You're doing something at least, compared to Trailing missions. But overall the game would've been better without them, or if they were reworked to not be so on-rails.

Positive: The writing & storytelling for this game continues the trend of Yakuza games having compelling characters, witty dialogue & interesting side characters. Anybody who's looking for a game with good side-missions should checkout any of the Yakuza games.

Neutral: The goofiness. Personally, it works for me. But if you're expecting an incredibly gritty Japanese detective game than it's best you look elsewhere.

Negative: Who at RGG greenlight the idea of thugs being constanly sent out to swarm the map, all the while you have a passive-aggressive person messaging you, doesn't matter if you save Kamurocho 1,000,000 times, they'll still message saying they're disappointed you didn't help out. What a joke.

* Negative: Repeating speech bubble dialogue is frustrating. Seems they weren't able to write enough (or at least more) unique dialogue to make it not obvious when you're seen the dialogue before. Reminds me of licensed games where it has one or two pieces of dialogue that constantly repeats whenever a certain action occurs.

Overall I'd recommend the game. It has enough interesting content, albeit weighed down by some annoying oversights and poorly designed content that makes it a worthwhile play.

The writing in this game is some of the worst I've ever seen.

The characters are spewing quips nonstop, the dialogue has tonal issues all over the place, and is constantly trying to make the player care for the characters (e.g. Caroline).

Grace, Super Spesh, Anya, and BJ are some of the most insufferable characters I've ever listened to.

The hub is incredibly pointless.

I do have two positives however.

1) Using a UFO to revisit Venus is neat.
2) The NPC dialogue while traversing areas is neat. Reminds me a lot of the Arkham games.

Just go play DOOM.

The story and characters are about as bland, generic and uninteresting as can be.
The game has plenty of great parts, but as a whole it doesn't come together. A bargain bin of mostly competently made AAA stuff, but nothing that reinvents the wheel or anything that'll make you go, 'Wow!'.

For a game that's focused on climbing, however, the climbing is beyond frustrating.
Playing on the hardest difficulty (Deadly Obsession), means that checkpoints don't exist and saving only happens at pre-placed campfires.
This is an issue due to the constant fear that Lara just will not grab the ledge.
While Uncharted gets hate for it's hand-holding climbing, it's better than this, where you're actively punished for trying to be a badass.
Shame.

I've heard good things about the DLC tombs, however, so maybe I'll check those out when they're discounted next.

Wow. If the purpose of this sequel was to be an infuriating, beyond tedious game then it suceeded.

But if that wasn't it's goal?
Then it flopped HARD.

Can't recommend this to anyone. I enjoyed the previous one, and would gladly recommend that. But I can't recommend this.