Kiryu has mostly been that "one last job" form of action star, continually dragged back into the war between clans, defeating one who represents an ideal opposite to his own, then heading off into the sunset once more. What makes Gaiden so special is how it eschews this for a much more suffocating and bittersweet tone. Kiryu isn't just being manipulated by forces greater than him, he's completely trapped by the people who control him.

He knows that he made the right decision, and he forces this façade up constantly almost as a defense mechanism, knowing that he can never go back to the way things were. Yet the cracks still show, he still wants to go to great lengths to save people, he still is willing to throw his life away when it means just keeping one person alive. It's immensely compelling watching him try his best to lash out against the circumstances he's placed in, knowing that the Dragon of Dojima is yet to be fully tamed.

It's fitting then that the ending isn't Kiryu beating up some slick asshole that had been manipulating him all along, rather he fights against the dying flames of the Yakuza path he once walked in life. While it is as epic as any other of these games endings, there is a sense of melancholy to it. At the end of the day it's just another job, a symbol of the old dying for the new. Yet as we watch the barrier Kiryu has put up finally break down in the end, there is that certain sense of satisfaction that other endings in the series have brought. He can't fix everything, yet the only way for him to go is to keep walking forward, remembering the people who he has fought for in the past and who he still fights for today.