God, do I adore this game. Replaying it has made me realize how truly brilliant the story is. It's so consistently engaging and emotional, and balances the new party cast very well. Your first four members are people you meet and then learn about, but your last two you learn about long before they join. They're all some of my favorite characters in the series, such wonderful characters. I've even grown to love the combat. I'll admit that it's pretty barebones, but I love how it still feels like Yakuza. It has the absurd brutality Yakuza is known for, a variety of animations and classes, and I like how it incorporates qtes into it. I enjoy the positioning aspect of skills, even if you can't directly position your character. I love how the game uses the combat to show how Ichiban thinks and how much different he is to Kiryu the previous protagonists. Ichiban is not afraid to like what he likes and embrace his inner child, and I think that's really beautiful in a time where adults liking anything even remotely childish is frowned upon. The final fight perfectly shows this, literally throwing the bat down and switching classes to show the desperation he and the villain have. There's definitely some dumb bullshit in the story, specifically one character, but I love how he's used so I don't mind. The last three chapters of this game are so smartly written, and they're probably some of the best planning from a Yakuza protagonist. This entire game is a treat, but the end is probably my favorite part. That's not even mentioning the fun side content and new world. A lot of the side content is about how people are drawn to Ichiban's kindness, literally shown in the business minigame(best in the series?) and Poundmates. I could honestly talk for hours about how this is the perfect continuation of mainline Yakuza. I really think that switching mainline is such a breath of fresh air, and works so well with this game. Love it.

After completing my fifth playthrough this game, my first ever maddening run, on Blue Lions, I can safely say i still love this game. I love how much freedom you have with your characters. I love how the combat feels, the story, the characters, the acting, the music, everything. Is this game perfect? Fuck no. Is this game my favourite? Undoubtedly. Not many games make me feel like this. I don't think I've ever had as much fun on a Fire Emblem final boss as I did fighting the Husk on Maddening. It forced me to create a wholly new strategy from the rest of the game, and I loved it.

Ghostrunner 2 steps up the gameplay and left me wanting more motorbike! The story, however, is pretty mediocre. The actual themes are pretty interesting, but a lot of it is conveyed pretty poorly. A lot of talking to characters that don't feel fleshed out enough, but that's nothing new. The themes of life vs. consciousness rock, even visually portrayed they're great, but all of the humans are just so blah. I actually like the other Ghostrunners, as they have some decent characterization, but they really need to work on conveying a story in a more interesting way. This game is so fast that slowing down to walk around a hub area is a bore. It also chooses to lean a little more into standalone parkour sections, which I'm fond of. I'd say all the pros make it marginally better than the original.