There so much good in this game, but still some things that need to be addressed. It felt like a step back compared to 7 with the story. Bryce was such a nothing burger of a villian and Ebina did not appear enough to truly feel like a villian. His breakdown at the end of the game was a good performane but felt out of place given his prior actions. While most yakuza games don't have good villians, 7 and gaiden had some amazing ones, so this sucked to see. I also did not enjoy hawaii that much as a location, it felt very odd to me since it was for sure one of the better locations in the series. I think the stemmed from the size and also look. The locations in these games feel too clean for what is going on.

At this point in the series I am already getting tired of some of Ichiban's characterization. I really like that he is forgiving to a fault but I do not like when the reason he has to forgive someone is because he is an idiot. His scene with Eiji at the end of the game was incredible, but the reason it all happened in the first place is that he is "stupid and oblivious". This has grown old already after 2 games. I want to see genuine growth like kiryu had from 0-2 and felt like I didn't get that. However, there are times when Ichi really shines, his ability to understand people's hearts makes for such good moments, so when he is oblivious to someones actions it just feels dumb, we already did that in 7. I also feel like the cast was too big and some characters were shoved in just to be in the game (Saeko and Zhao). Also the romance in the game just sucked, not enough time was spent on it, and it is very anime tropey which leads to an unsatisfying conclusion. (I am fine with tropes if they are done well, this was not).

I loved how they handled Kiryu in this game. However, the killing of Hanawa was such a "WTF?" moment. He was shaping up to be a great character from gaiden but being killed off in 8 made no sense. I also really like where the daidoji are headed and hope to see more from them in the future.

Lastly, I felt like the whole radioactive waste plotline was shoehorned in. Why not make kiryu have cancer from smoking, and the reason why everyone wanted lani is because the pendant had a potential cure for cancer. Reveal at the end that it was all in vain, but thats okay as the time we spent together is enough to give Kiryu the hope to carry on. This would've paralleled nicely with Eiji who Ichi gave hope towards a better life, same with Chitose and Tomi. Sometimes all you need is to fight hard to keep on living, something kiryu had to do many times before.