I feel like I'm gonna gain some enemies with what I'm about to say, but this is my least favorite Yakuza with the original. It's way too ambitious for its own good, with almost forty hours worth of story and five freaking playable characters. The story is way too complicated to follow, even for Yakuza standards, it just keeps spitting new information at you during every dialogue and cutscene, hell the whole fucking story of the final boss is told to you right before you face him. It's also kind of bland? Kiryu's and Saejima's parts are boring as hell, and even if Haruka's offers some much needed variety, I would argue it doesn't get truly good until Shinada's part, which is the most interesting one and has a lot of wonderful characters. The choices for the final bosses are also confusing, with the exception of Saejima's every single one feels either underwhelming or kind of weirdly matched (spoilers here but Baba vs Shinada is the biggest asspull of this franchise).
I may seem like a hater of this game, but I enjoyed it a lot, it's a Yakuza game for God's sake. The combat is as fun as always and revisiting these characters from time to time and discovering new ones is always a pleasure. I just don't get why Yakuza 4 is so underwhelming for so many people and this is a fan favorite.