This is definitely the best game in the series compared to the games that came before it. It has the most story (and a pretty good one too) and best general gameplay. The party changes throughout the game, which is cool. You can recruit monsters eventually, which helps pad out the lack of proper party members during some parts of the game, but it never feels overbearing or all that difficult to get decent Monsters to use. If you want specific ones it might take a while, but some of the best ones are very easy to get. This is the first in the series I played pretty much entirely without using a walkthrough, and it was nice being able to either know where to go or be able to figure it out reasonably quickly. The soundtrack was good, combat feels similar to DQ4, and the world is pretty fun to explore. Party chat was really cool in some spots. The story itself was surprisingly unique compared to most other rpgs I've played, which was nice to see. It was still somewhat simple in nature, but there are multiple memorable scenes that will stick with me for a while. Probably one of the least grind-heavy games I've played so far in the series. Sometimes the game could feel a bit too easy, but it was generally just an enjoyable experience throughout. I could easily recommend this to anyone who has yet to play it.

I think the game is leagues better than DQ3, at least in my experience. The characters are much more fleshed out, even if they could be even more fleshed out. The story seems to be much more present in the game than in the first three, and there's a lot more music and bosses than those games as well. I like the chapter system introducing characters before they join the main party a lot. It makes the start of chapter 5 cool as you want to hurry and gather up a team of characters you've had before. I do wish they had done a better job with the Hero's story though. I think they should not have shown us the Hero at the start to not just jarringly switch to a whole different character out of nowhere. They could've also shown glimpses of the Hero between chapters to fix this. Combat in DQ4 was generally enjoyable. I really liked the ability to swap your party out freely in certain battles, as that made it feel pretty different from the older games. I like the ease of grinding exp later on in the game from the Metal Slimes, although money is still annoying to grind for. Chapters 2 and 3 can drag a bit in certain sections, but otherwise I enjoyed the pacing. I wish chapter 6 added more stuff to do after getting the 9th chosen, as they expect you to grind a bit too much if you want to see their full potential. I didn't hate fighting any of the bosses like I did in DQ and DQ3 for the annoying final bosses. Overall, a solid entry, and a surprisingly good title to come from the NES, even if the version I played was somewhat reworked.

Overall, the game was really fun and had a lot of cool content. The game is even bigger that Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which is surprising since Yakuza 7 was already a decently big game. Yokohama was a bit less interesting to explore this time around, as not too much has changed since 7, and aside from some of the old minigames that return, there's not a lot to it. Hawaii is the real focus here, and it was honestly really cool to explore. The map is similar in size to Yokohama, and is as fun to explore as Yokohama was back in 7. The gameplay is an evolution of the rpg combat introduced in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with the addition of enemy guarding (and grab skills to counter it), player movement during combat, and a revamped skill inheritance system from different jobs. Once you reach a point further into the game, you will start to have an additional party member that sits out during fights, but the tag-out system allows you to swap characters into the fight when you need them. While this was introduced in the previous game, this system feels better in 8 due to your limited access to character variety. Since your party will have no more than 5 characters, swapping characters is more meaningful and I found it both fun and useful to use it often, much more than in Yakuza 7. Each class feels generally better than it did in the last game, and there is more reason to use classes other than a character's starting class now as well. Skill inheritance now allows you to bring over nearly any skill you want from another job, with a limitation on the total inherited skills. This can be used to better customize jobs, and gives you a reason to level up more jobs and max your bond with your party members. Movement in battle is really cool, and it adds a lot of strategy to fights that Yakuza: Like a Dragon didn't have. In general, combat in 8 is just a better version of 7's combat. Finally, the story for 8 was a pretty solid entry in the franchise storyline. It's cool to see Kiryu work through his struggles left over from the previous game, and getting to see his interactions with Ichiban was really cool. I think the main antagonists are fairly cool, although they don't make it to the greatness that other characters reach in some previous games, like Ryugi Goda from Yakuza 2 or the Dojima Lieutenants from 0. That being said, they do add to the story and it is cool to see how the plot unfolds. One of the highlights here is Kiryu's story and substories, which often involve him connecting with characters from his past again. This is something fans have wanted for a long time now, and many important characters from his past are either seen directly or mentioned in reminiscence. Another highlight has a new character, Yamai, who is able to become a very memorable and interesting character throughout the game. Overall, I really liked this game, and I plan to go back to play through the post-game Dungeon and maybe even New Game+.