Ranking the Yakuza games has always been difficult for me, because they're just all so damn great. Most people will say that Zero is the best one, and I agree. But 4 has a special place in my heart  --  it's the one I come back to again and again, for various reasons. It certainly helps that it's starting out so chill and noir, with Akiyama, my favorite character of the series, basically just walking the nightly streets of Kamurocho in the rain, taking care of business and stirring shit up. Sure, the story has some of the series' most tone-deaf and/or straight-out bizarre cringe moments, but for me that's part of the charm.

I love how the game expands and focuses on one city district specifically, all the different kinds of people it inhabits, all the secrets beneath (and above) its surface, and how no single person could discover them all. I also love how it does a thing that I wish more open-world (and Yakuza) games would do: keeping the main story short and briskly paced, while filling the side content with subplots that explore the characters' backgrounds and feel like a meaningful part of the narrative.