I really wanted to like this game like everyone else does. The story is probably one of the best in the franchise up there with 0. Unfortunately, the gameplay sucks fat wieners. I often see this game brought up in how to make turn-based combat engaging but I fail to see how. It's like playing FF 3 or 5 but with paper mario timing QTEs. There are not enough jobs to play around with and having to go somewhere instead of being able to switch on the fly sucks. Game also falls into the problem of having a whole bunch of moves but none of them mattering, you will be doing the same old attack and heal you do in old FF games. I dislike how in jrpgs, tactics like taunting the boss to hit one of your dudes never works. I'm so confused why so many jrpgs just never let you status effect bosses, like who the fuck am I going to taunt if not the boss. So instead, it's just the same old attack up and defense down, unless you wanna play a roulette of wasting your turns to find out if any status effect actually works. There is also insane levels spikes which is part of the reason I hate the gameplay change. Hypothetically, in older yakuza games, if you were struggling with a boss, the option of "getting good" is always available. You could no hit bosses, there was no need for grind. It was a way for skill expression but now it no longer exists. During the Majima boss fight, Saejima will one shot you and it will target Kasuga every time so it will always be a game over, unless you level enough to tank it or use the sacrifice stone the game gives you at the start, which I did. The player is ultimately gated by their levels and thus prevents the skill factor from expressing its true potential. But to get back on track, the game is simply not engaging during its combat in the slightest, it has a good chunk of mechanics but so much of it is meaningless. My personal favorite rpg that isn't an action game is persona 5 and even that has more depth. Because the later encounters will force you to use the games mechanics on a high difficulty. This is a game like older rpgs where you suffer through the combat to get to the story. It's also strange how the game needs you to have party members but like halfway through the game, it just feels strange how these people in your party are still helping you. Like during these emotional moments like Kasuga confronting Ryo, and then Zhao is just staring at you in the background like this isn't some real personal stuff. The side activities are fine here, I feel like it's kinda tired at this point, like how many times can I sing baka mitai? Don't even bother trying not to do Ichiban confections considering there's a part in the game where it just tells you to get 3 mil, that was so fun (it was not). I've never skipped main cutscenes in yakuza until now, there's so much padding in the story that is just awful to sit through. Enemy encounters are not very diverse. There's also a lot of smaller issues that's too much to name. It does come off like I fucking hated this game, but I gave it a 6/10 so I do like it, it's just on the level of a game like FF8 for me, good but HEAVILY flawed.