For the love of god this series needs a new writer.
Kasuga gets cancelled by a Vtuber and then Joe Sawashiro (who totally didn't murder the Seiryu Clan chairman in the last game) shows up to tell him that his mother has been alive in Hawaii all along. He flies there and after meeting Kiryu who's also trying to track her down for the Daidoji faction, Kiryu reveals his terminal cancer diagnosis. The reveal is fine but they attach this goofy backstory of him working at radioactive waste facility and there being an accident, it's just pointless and ruins the impact of the scene.
For the next 7 or so chapters you run around Hawaii randomly looking for clues to Akane's whereabouts while the game constantly tosses you into lengthy tutorials for one of it's many WHACKY side activities. Not only does that negatively impact the pacing but the overall silly tone really clashes with the more serious aspects of the story. One second I'm looking at the Dragon of Dojima, on his last legs with a defeated look in his eyes and next second I'm on a random island playing animal crossing learning about furbys called "Gachapin" and "Mukku". Past Yakuza games obviously had silliness but that was usually better placed or contained to optional sub-stories you could do whenever.
It is only in chapter 9 that Kasuga has the brilliant idea to go to the place where Akane's picture was taken and ask around if anybody has seen her. This then leads them directly to her because a random Tattoo lady was hiding her on a boat all along. As anticlimactic as that may be you'd think the plot could at least move forward now but it never really gets anywhere, it just keeps tripping over itself.
The antagonists are such a complete let-down.
Dwight has this really cool and imposing design but then literally pisses himself minutes after being introduced after which he is not seen for 90% of the game. He only shows up again in chapter 13 where he is beaten twice and then eaten by a big shark.
Eiji reveals himself as a double agent for Dwight. Turns out the Arakawa family framed him and ruined his life so he joined people who are 10x more evil than any Yakuza to "destroy the Yakuza" (whatever that means since they're dissolved). When Kasuga of all people, points out the stupidity in that he just responds with his silly maniacal giggle, what an awesome character. He proceeds to threaten Akane just to torment Kasuaga so you have to run through Yamai's dungeon a second time to fight some nameless grunts while Eiji's on a skype call laughing at you. The entirety of chapter 11 is a waste of time and after that he is not seen until the final cutscene where he's randomly back in Japan, rotting in an apartment and after a talk he gets escorted to the police by Kasuga.
Yamai is probably the closest to being an interesting "antagonist" but the story fumbles his character so insanely hard. In the first half he just shows up every so often, goes "mmmmm Kiryuuuu-saaannnn...." and then you need to fight him and after the 5th time it get's a little repetitive. Once he becomes an ally he's just a safehouse until chapter 13 where you go to Japan with him. There you get a scene that finally explains his history with the Tabata Family and the scene itself is fine but it's chapter 13 out of 14 why are we learning about this guy's backstory that has absolutely nothing to do with the main conflict? He then walks off into the sunset and is never seen again.
Bryce turns out to not even be an insane cult leader, instead doing all of this simply so he could profit off Nele Island as his private island with things like waste disposal. Lani and her stupid amulet, the very thing this story revolved around from the opening cutscene, end up as a useless macguffin. Bryce straight up says they don't matter at all because he has enough influence and power regardless. LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After the fight Chitose does a goofy Vtuber stream where she exposes Bryce to the world and admits her wrong doings. I get that they try to be "trendy" with these games but all the Vtuber segments are pretty insufferable and here it's especially out of place.
Ebina's revealed to be the bastard child of Arakawa and Yuriko Hikawa and after his father massacres the Hikawa Clan he obviously grows to detest him. Unfortunately he slept through the events of the last game so now that the Tojo/Omi are dissolved and Arakawa is dead he sets his sights on the Yakuza as a whole and engineers this whole nuclear waste plan to (i think) kill Yakuza in the most convoluted way possible. He randomly renames the Seiryu Clan to "Bleach Japan" despite there being no connection to the original Bleach Japan. The public wouldn't even have a good reaction to that name after the events of the last game, it's completely pointless and comes off as some pathetic callback to a better story like they're going "Remember Bleach Japan? Yokoyama remembers." As underwhelming as all that may be you'd think he'd at least be Kasuga's final boss but no, Kiryu fights him because he is still the CEO of Yakuza.

The pacing and structure of the plot is just a complete mess.
In Chapter 12 Kiryu goes out to the middle of nowhere to fight Daigo and the gang because he needs them for a "Second Great Dissolution" since the first one in the last game just wasn't enough and we need to do it for real this time!!!! The fight itself is really cool but it's all so random and disjointed, it's chapter 12 and they're giving you an update on the aftermath of 7 and how they also got fucked over by the Vtuber.
Kiryu's section as a whole barely has anything to do with the main story. His life links seem like they were written completely separately since in all of them Kiryu is still believed dead even if they're inaccessible until after the Vtuber expose. Like Haruka would know he is alive in chapter 12. Despite that they are by FAR the best aspect of the writing.

There is an overall lack on tension, it almost feels like none of the characters even give a shit about what's going on and granted most of them have no reason to care since they have nothing tying them to the story and are only there because Ichiban/Kiryu are such cool dudes. Like in chapter 13 Joongi-han just randomly shows up in Hawaii because he's bored and feels left out so you go hang out and buy some new clothes for him. This is chapter THIRTEEN out of FOURTEEN. In later chapters you get sections that can't be described as anything other than padding like Kasuga having to "Run From Bryce's men" which translates to running across the whole Hawaii map that is now filled to the brim with enemies or when Kiryu decides to just walk around Kamurocho a bit and do optional memoirs except they're not optional now and a part of the main story now despite being completely unrelated.

The Daidoji Faction deserves special mention as they have to be single worst thing about this franchise, a comedically incompetent and inconsistent shadow government. During the Hawaii section, Kiryu not only tells everyone he meets (including japanese citizens) that he's Kazuma Kiryu, legendary Yakuza that's supposed to dead but he also straight up tells them "yea I work for the deep state". Back in Japan he is then just allowed to run around freely in Kamurocho? I guess since he's dying it's chill that he could expose their entire operation, the deep state sure is nice. Well then in Date's life link after he sets up Kiryu to meet Haruka they torture and threaten to kill him to remind Kiryu that they're a serious organization that's NOT to be messed with... sure.
The best part is Hanawa, after Gaiden spent so much time setting the character up, here he just gets gunned down by a random unnamed grunt in the most unceremonious way possible. Ichiban then video calls Kiryu and shows him Hanawa's bloody corpse only for Kiryu to have 0 reaction whatsoever, completely stone faced, he does not give a shit. It is only after the scene is over that you get one of those "memoir" pop-ups with mellow cheerful music that was obviously shoehorned in last second where Kiryu goes "Hanawa you were a cool guy I'll finish this fight for you!" to make it seem like this character mattered and Gaiden wasn't a complete scam.
Hanawa 2.0 shows up in the Finale to tell Kiryu that despite his identity being completely exposed and breaching their contract, it's actually chill and they won't shoot up the orphanage because Kiryu is such a cool and handsome agent. They even offer to protect Akane and Lani who at this point are completely useless to the story. Love how they pull a complete 180 after every scene.
In the end Kiryu is allowed to "reclaim his name" so at least we can all pretend none of this ever happened.

The ending scene is just the cherry on top.
Ichiban finally confesses his love for Saeko properly, all is happy in the world until he ruins it 5 seconds later by revealing a cliché "I LOVE SAEKO" shirt and she runs off. After so much build-up, ruining a big character moment with a shitty punchline is just disgustingly insincere.
Kiryu does get his name back but we can't even have a scene with Haruka, nonononono just a little tease!! Buy Like a Dragon 9 to find out more!!
As a side note, so much focus lying on Kiryu really undermines Kasuga as the "next" protagonist.

tldr
Past Yakuza games had their own identity with largely self contained stories while Infinite Wealth is mainly just following up on stuff from the last game like the great dissolution and beyond that it's genuinely creatively bankrupt. It's a whole lot of nothing that's stretched INCREDIBLY thin over 14 chapters only for the ending to then somehow be insanely rushed. The 2nd half especially feels so strangely chaotic and incoherent yet there's no actual substance, seems like they had a list of random trending topics they wanted to mention (nuclear waste, vtubers etc) but they don't delve into any of it and there's nothing tying them together. The endings for Kiryu and Kasuga aren't only unsatisfying, they essentially make this journey + Gaiden completely inconsequential as we're left exactly where we started.
In a way it's a masterclass in bad writing and planning.

While not tied to the main story, drink links return and they're just plain boring and forgettable, especially for the returning characters since you learn nothing new about them. Saeko had the only entertaining one because it followed up on Kasuga's confession and she had a great dynamic with Kiryu. Beyond that, if you max out a bond, you get a sort of "secret drink link" where you again meet the character at Revolve/Survive and they basically tell you "Hey you're my best bud". These scenes are literally <5 long seconds with voice acting, they're bizarre.

For this being the first Yakuza/LaD game to leave Japan, I was disappointed with their approach to language/voice acting. After the opening sequence in Hawaii with Tomizawa and the police, Kasuga's inability to speak english becomes completely irrelevant as 99% of Hawaii just happens to speak fluent japanese. Was hoping for more of a fish out of water story. Most characters that speak both japanese and english have 2 voice actors which obviously don't sound alike but I'd say it's still better than the few that only have 1 voice actor like Bryce and Tomiwaza where the VA can barely speak english despite them playing an american.

Just like every past Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, Infinite Wealth has lighting issues. Most noticeable in Hawaii during day time where the lighting is so blown out it almost looks white while the shadows are strangely dark, it can make the characters look really fucked up as well. Of course there's also no gamma or contrast settings. It's always a shame when lighting "ruins" an otherwise beautiful and detailed game.

-Gameplay
The combat improvements are what salvage the experience. Really wasn't a fan of 7's janky and overly simplistic combat and they basically did everything I wanted by adding tons of mechanics and letting you move characters.
One thing that still bothers me is the AI movement and how it relates to proximity based skills. The AI loves nothing more than to spread out as far as possible, for enemies that makes your AOE attacks, especially the "path" ones, annoyingly useless at times and for party members who also spread out when you're not controlling them, it ruins a lot of healing/buff abilities, good luck hitting Hero's heal on more than 1 member outside of small arenas. Past a certain point you're better off just calling poundmates constantly because their cost becomes irrelevant and their AOE attacks actually just hit every enemy. Would like to see them redesigned as more of a rare last-ditch mechanic rather than something you use every fight to quickly clear grunts.

The job system on the other hand still needs a lot of work. Letting you pick which skills to inherit was a obviously good change but the jobs remain unbalanced, some jobs like samurai give you so many useful skills while a good third of them are just completely pointless (breaker lol). Same thing applies to how the damage types are spread out, for non-character specific jobs there's only 2 electricity skills with both of them being magic while there's like 15 fire/water skills. No male job has debuffs or team wide ailment healing either.

Just like with the game's predecessor, there's no difficulty options apart from New Game+ (which is paid DLC LMFAO!!!!) so the game ends up being way too easy (again). There aren't even any difficulty spikes this time, it's just complete babymode.

There's not one but TWO (THREE if you count dlc) auto generated dungeons because every RPG needs them I guess, not sure why since they are downright terrible 99% of time and Infinite Wealth is no exception, in fact it might be at the bottom of the barrel. Bland layouts as well as extremely basic mechanically it's just a boring slog but my favorite part have to be the doors! Doors doors doors, I love opening doors a million times that close after an encounter!! On PC there's a mod that just simply removes them and it makes the whole experience 100x better. Wonder why they were there in the first place? You also can't fast travel to the ladder after finding it early which is something Persona 3 incorporated like 20 years ago. In terms of aesthetics and music the first 2 are incredibly bland with only the DLC being at least somewhat distinct.
The other story dungeons are passable albeit calling them dungeons seems wrong when they're generally just basic hallways with not much of anything going on.

The side activities are too numerous to mention but the 2 big ones are Sujimon and Dondoko Island.
Sujimon is like a Pokemon Go rip-off. During the introduction you're told about all the crazy suji mechanics and suji places that are all over the map. There's a lot to it but the Sujimon battles themselves are just incredibly simplistic and boring. Sujimon only have 1 normal attack and 1 special attack and for the special attack you have to spin a fucking roulette wheel where if it lands on blue the attack just misses on most targets, feels like you're better off spamming normal attacks. Doesn't help that the sujimancer job sucks.
Dondoko Island isn't even really a side activity. It's a full fledged Animal Crossing + RollerCoaster Tycoon game that has no connection to anything else with the only reward from it being some pocket change. Beyond the forced hour long tutorial that's part of the main story, it's pretty enjoyable but due to its disconnected nature I almost forgot it even existed.

tldr
Ignoring some relatively minor complaints, it's impressive just how much the writing drags Infinite Wealth down. This could've been a 9/10 even with a passable script.

Yakuza 6 ends with Kiryu refusing the Daidoji's hush money instead promising them he'll disappear completely and "die" for them so that the orphanage can finally live in peace.
Cool, great ending.
This game starts with Kiryu being a Daidoji agent who is held prisoner by the faction with them actively threatening to murder the orphanage at every turn... How did we get here? None of this was mentioned at the end of 6. Why do the Daidoji have him walking around town when he is supposed to be dead? What does the supposedly super powerful shadow government even get from having Kiryu as an agent when he obviously doesn't wanna corporate?
The Daidoji faction suffers the same fate as many other Yakuza/LaD antagonists where they're presented as super intelligent and cunning but in reality are just dumb as shit.
The rest of the story is just Yakuza 7 dlc that tries to explain how Kiryu was able to show up in that game. At only 5 chapters long the game is quite short but the issue is that those 5 chapters are padded to hell and back with uninteresting, fetch quest level tier content.
The Akame network and to a lesser extent the Castle are complete inconsequential slop that is just there to stretch out ~2 hours of content to ~15. Even in universe Kiryu just helps out with the Akame network because he has nothing better to do while waiting for her to bring him to the Castle. You could remove both of them and Nishitani and the narrative would not be impacted.
The Watase family buys Kiryu's freedom -> They welcome Watase -> Shishido betrays you etc.
On that note, Shishido's betrayal as a whole feels so flat. His introduction is cool and instantly paints him as a big player in the story but for the rest of the game leading up to the betrayal he is just a minor character that even Kiryu doesn't care about. Him representing the old yakuza who don't want to/can't move on from the life also feels redundant because it's stuff 7 already touched upon which again further cements Gaiden's lack of identity or originality.
His fight is pretty sick tho.
At the end both him and Nishitani are taken in by the Daidoji to become agents (again not sure why they do this shit) probably never be to be seen again. At this point I'm hoping the Daidoji faction as a whole just magically disappears from the series.

It's never explained how Kiryu was able to show up in the later part of 7 wearing his iconic red-white suit and fight Kasuga at the Geomijul hideout. Not surprising because clearly none of this was planned and it makes 0 sense.

The combat is certainly better than Yakuza 6/Kiwami 2 but the Dragon Engine is still as janky as ever. It's hard to really put into words but everything from hitbox/hurtboxes to attack interactions just feels so insanely inconsistent. Every time I revisit the older titles I am instantly reminded how much more functional the combat used to feel.
The new Agent style's main gimmick are the 4 gadgets which were cool at first but you quickly realize just how useless they are.
Both drones and firefly don't synergize with Kiryu's gameplay whatsoever and straight up just suck. What even is the intended gameplay pattern with them? Am I meant to run in circles and spam drones for mosquito damage? How do I prevent the enemies from just walking outside the firefly blast range? They're fun ideas but poorly thought out.
I straight up forgot the rocketboots or whatever they're called even existed.
This only leaves the spider, which you'd think would really come in clutch with how much the enemies love to block but uh oh it doesn't work on bosses, elite enemies and bigger enemies (not sure what the exact rules are) and the spider's AOE capabilities are outshined by Extreme Heat Mode making all 4 gadget essentially useless.

While the ending scene is really well done and it alongside Kiryu's and Hanawa's bond are the highlights of the game, it in no shape or form justifies a 50$ price tag.
Gaiden's existence and Kiryu's inclusion in 7 just spit on Yakuza 6's ending and show RGG's inability to close out the "Kiryu saga" and move on.

After playing Infinite Wealth I can say that Gaiden is completely pointless and Yokoyama is incapable of planning anything.

Probably some of the worst writing I have witnessed in video games, maybe even fiction.

Everything in the plot revolves around the hit back in 85 until that gets resolved by the absolutely asinine rubber bullets twist (which they reuse later where it's just as stupid) and Katsuragi is shot in the head after which it becomes irrelevant.
Issue is, now the writers had 0 idea how to wrap up this nothingburger of a story so Akiyama literally goes "fuck it let's put 100 billion yen on the top of milenium tower and see who shows up."
The story is so insanely unremarkable there's genuinely nothing to else to say about it.
The antagonists are embarrassing, what did Kido or Arai even want? why is Daigo even here? and Munakata doesn't even deserve to be mentioned.
I was thinking of just skipping the final cutscene because I could not stand listening to this drivel anymore.

Probably the best part about the game are the movesets of the playable characters, they're diverse, they suit the respective character's personality and they're all just fun to play.
However this is the only nice thing I can say about the combat.
The enemy AI is so aggressive that you can basically never combo anyone in group fights because enemies will constantly interrupt you and while they do very little damage, it's immensely annoying getting stunlocked for like 15 seconds.
The grappler enemy type is especially dogshit because they love nothing more than chain grabbing you and forcing you to mash A/X to break it (which seemingly gets harder to break with each consecutive grab), I died 3 times during Saejima's prison section because I essentially got stunlocked by one of them while 3 other enemies were pummelling me to death.
I should sue RGG because this shit has given me permanent thumb damage.
The bosses aren't really all that noteworthy and the game is overall quite easy (albeit very annoying at times) but I do have to give a special shoutout to Saito for the absurd difficulty spike he provides at the start of Kiryu's part with his annoying moveset that has almost no openings whatsoever and you have to fight twice back to back alongside a bunch of his henchmen and then Munakata, the final boss, who is nothing more than a sacred tree armor check and even with that his henchmen are still a pain in the ass to deal with and the fight as a whole remains unremarkable, up there for one of the worst bosses in the series.
Some of the sections in this game leave me genuinely 110% convinced they don't playtest these games whatsoever.
Aside from combat, Saejima sneak sections where he has to hide from the cops are noteworthy because they make no sense, police are positioned in ways you should be trapped but turns out cops can only see what's 1 foot away from them, it's just a shitty stealth game.

Yea the protags are cool, some of the the substories are kinda fun and the rooftops and underground are nice additions but beyond that Yakuza 4 is as bad as a Yakuza game could be.

The most obvious change from previous game is the stylistic shift in character designs, more realism and less weird doll anime look. Realism with ps2 hardware was no easy feat and this is not a Capcom game so unfortunately these models do not end up looking great. For some reason the characters look like they have a lower overall polycount than they did in the first game (hands with fingers are replaced by these ps1 era blocks, no teeth in mouth etc) which results in the ingame cutscenes really not being a pleasure to look at.
While the art style does hold up better in the pre-rendered cutscenes, those are few and far between and despite me not liking 1's look either, I'd say this is kind of a downgrade.

Maybe to go along with the new aesthetic, half the game's Voice Actors were recast and its also just a complete downgrade across the board, went from honestly great all around voice acting to the classic robotic English JRPG voice acting with chaos' nasal voice being probably worst offender.

The combat changes essentially boil down to 1's combat being boring and 2's being tedious, pick your poison.
The combat simply lasts too long during random encounters due to you dealing 0 damage if the enemy is an neutral state and combos requiring you to first charge for multiple turns.
It does have its moments during more drawn out boss fights but the game will still find ways to piss you off. The returning roulette wheel ends up feeling completely out of place in this game, trying to sync your multi turn combo so you land on the bonus points when you finish the enemy while also playing around the newly added random slot which can roll into reverse boost!!! giving boost to the enemy instead ends up being really annoying.
Enemies naturally have a boost gauge of their own which they seemingly use randomly so even if you get the perfect set up the boss can just boost before you knock him up (this also overrides whatever boost was already used by the player) and ruin your plan.

On the plus side, Xenosaga 2 has by far the most robust side content out of the 3, it offers an actual quest log (crazy!!) with 36 quests some of which are really fleshed out and some that are complete dogshit (4 and 32 especially) alongside 3 pretty lengthy post game dungeons.

The narrative puts a lot of focus on Jr and Albedo's relationship (to a point where Shion and KOS-MOS become background characters) but it doesn't really end up adding much to what I would consider the least interesting part of episode 1.
The pacing also feels really weird with the events of the story unfolding in this somewhat abrupt fashion. You're jumping from place to place and it all feels kind of disjointed and nothing really gets any room to breathe. This especially applies to the "main" antagonist who shows up -> speaks like 2 lines of dialogue -> fights -> dies.

Due to the focus shift, it isn't until the final cutscene where we get actual development on some of the things Episode 1 set up and this pretty much leaves Episode 3 to do all the heavy lifting.

The story is pretty good for the most part. It already has a leg up on a lot of the other Yakuza/LaD stories simply by not having massive pacing issues and/or nonsensical plot twists that'll melt your brain. Despite that I can't say I was too invested in it and most of that has to do with the new protagonist, Kasuga.
Throughout most of the game he moves the plot forward by constantly making the most nonsensical, high risk low/no reward decisions possible that happen to work out thanks to his incredibly thick plot armor and the power of the friendship. It gives the whole story this weird comedic unserious tone. He basically just waltz into every organized crime HQ in Ijincho and they all hear him out for no real reason despite him an his gang (pre Joongi/Zhao) being a bunch of unaffiliated nobodies. In past games Kiryu at least had the Tojo Clan affiliation and his status later on that made people respect him. Realistically they could just blast Kasuga's head off and not lose anything or suffer any consequences. The silliest instance of this is when he decides to break into Omi HQ for literally no reason other than to meet Arakawa a day earlier than scheduled. Even the other party members are bewildered as to how this peabrain can't follow simple instructions. But hey, Majima and Saejima are randomly there and Arakawa then fills the gang in on their big dissolution plan so I guess it all works out in the end!
Kasuga is just uncompelling to me, his personality reminds of a shitty shonen protagonist.
There's some other things that don't really add up.
Why did Mabuchi make Nonomiya's murder look like suicide? If Saeko wasn't on the phone with Nonomiya and then sought out Ichiban later his suicide wouldn't have gotten investigated further and thereby not achieved anything.
Why did nobody (especially the tech-savvy Geomijul) think to record Ogasawara's long-winded confession? The 2nd in command of Bleach Japan is admitting to everything and the recording would've then also disproven the narrative that he died in the fire. What makes this even stupider is that in the final confrontation against Ryo Aoki they DO use video recording to expose him.

Due to the larger cast, many of characters aren't fleshed out enough. This applies to some party members but especially Omi antagonists who (apart from Jo) have nothing going on.
Adachi and Nanba were pretty great but Saeko ended up disappointing to me. Her main motivation of avenging her boss comes off as weak when compared to other characters who hold more of a personal grudge. This is amplified by Mabuchi fading into irrelevance as the conspiracy unfolds and her then not really mentioning the boss anymore. She also doesn't get any scenes where she's the focus or even contributes anything major.
After Zhao and Joongi Han get recruited they basically become background characters as well with the latter only existing to serve as a fighter stand in for Seonhee because Kasuga can't fight her since she's woman!!! They even reuse a model from Yakuza 6.

After the "not so great" combat of Yakuza 6/Kiwami 2 I very much welcomed a change in direction but unfortunately the turn based combat is overly simplistic, beyond basic weakness exploitation there's nothing to it. It feels like a rough draft that needed some more stuff attached. There's also a fair bit of jankiness mostly relating to AI movement and inconsistent or lacklustre AOE ability hitboxes. It doesn't end up mattering all too much because the game is overall very very easy, I have no idea why they decided to make difficulty options a new game+ only thing but I'm not a fan of it.
There are 3 (more so 2.5) massive difficulty spikes in the form of boss fights, Majima & Saejima, Kiryu and lastly Tendo. The first 2 fights are great despite the insane spike but I can't say the same Tendo. He essentially serves as the final boss since the actual final boss is more so just cinematic. Not only does Tendo's character suck since they never gave him a proper backstory or anything beyond "boxer who wants to make it to the top" but his fight is a chore as well. He has a billion health and 2 phases, during the first phase he basically does nothing but once he's down to 50% hp (this takes forever even when exploiting his weakness) he enters phase 2 and starts spamming a guaranteed one shot move, cool. Fortunately Kasuga has an ability called "Peerless Resolve" which allows you to survive a KO and up until this point it's completely useless but here it's ESSENTIAL. There's really nothing else to the fight.

As a final note, all the underground dungeons are a slog and Subterranean Castle might just be single worst song in the series.

Story
The general outline of the story is great, easily the most invested I've been in a Xenoblade game.

However the execution is super messy.
The game just does a pisspoor job at explaining anything
How can Noah and Mio exist? N and M are Moebius and being Moebius obviously takes you out of the cycle.
What's the deal with those Annihilation Events? It seemed like a major plot point until it was randomly dropped halfway through the game and nobody talked about it anymore.
What's up with Noah's "super special and unique" Lucky Seven/Sword of Origin and how does it relate to N's Sword of the End?
etc etc etc

Then around chapter 6 you are given an info dump/explanation regarding Aionios/Origin which somehow ends up leaving you with more questions than answers
How are Melia and Nia (as well as Shulk, Rex and Riku with DLC) just present in Aionios? How did they get there? When did they get there? Are they separate entities?
How was origin even built? It's so much more "technologically advanced" than anything present in the first 2 games and supposedly only a few decades have passed.
How was it even meant to function if the worlds themselves collide destroying everything? Can it also magically generate the planet out of thin air?
etc etc etc

The game is also super unclear about what the intended end result of origin was/is meant to be (Were they even planning on only making 1 earth or keeping the worlds separated entities coexisting in the same universe?) or what would happen to Aionios and the people from the city who were born there (this is only answered in the final cutscene where it is revealed that the lost numbers essentially fought to erase themselves but only Monica and Ghondor were aware of that (what?)).
What makes all of this even more annoying is that Nia supposedly knows everything yet the party (for plot convenience) doesn't ask her anything.

While the ending scene itself is beautiful, still not knowing what actually happpened to the worlds/world in the end left me feeling pretty unsatisfied.
All in all it feels like there is an entire game's worth of plot just kinda missing and the DLC they released barely answers anything but yet again leaves you asking more questions.

Another issue is the dialogue.
In usual Xenoblade fashion the party characters love constantly repeating the thing that was just said to them, gets a little annoying at times.
The pre/post battle cutscene dialogue that happens when the party fights a big bad guy just downright sucks, especially the one liners (noah has maybe 1 good one) and now its 6 characters saying some cheesy nonsense about the power of friendship or whatever and it just drags on and on while never adding anything.

Some of the party members also could've used some development, aside from the obvious Noah and Mio, Taion is the only other character with actual plot and a side story that both further develops the world and his character while the other characters don't really have a lot going on.
Eunie is used to set up the whole cycle plot and nothing beyond that.
Lanz has the whole guilt over Joran plotline which is alright but really overstays its welcome when they play the same Joran dying cutscene 20 times throughout the game.
Sena has confidence issues (?) which feel completely arbitrary and surface level especially when she later compares herself to Shania who actually has some depth to her character. (Side Story: Sena is barely even about Sena)
Beyond that the overall group dynamic is quite well done and i would consider it a big upgrade over the previous entries even just for the fact that no character is immensely annoying this time around.

Visuals
The game is obviously visually amazing but what makes it even more impressive is that its running on what's essentially 2 ram sticks from 2009 superglued to a piece of cardboard. Only minor complaint I'd have is that the face shadows can look a little rough at times, especially when its snapped to the middle of the face creating this harsh contrast between the lit/unlit side.

Music
Its a Xeno game.

Gameplay
Loads of improvements across the board, load times, map design, menu design, navigation etc etc. Game just simply feels so much better to play and monolith's growth as a studio with each entry is quite noticeable.
However it wouldn't be a Xenoblade game without a bunch of silly mistakes!
The game has an overleveling issue, even if you don't eat any food that gives an XP bonus and never use the rest XP, you're going to be noticeably overleveled just from doing the hero quests. Not sure why they chose not to include the "expert mode" function from DE or make downleveling available from the start.
Somehow the currencies in the game are completely useless, Gold 100% Useless, Gemstones largely useless and throughout the game are constantly invalidated by a higher tier being introduced. Even if you're diligent with gathering/slaying, gemstones will never be the thing you lack to craft a gem, they might as well not exist (this applies to ether as well).
The only currency that matters are Nopon Coins.
Also I think the game would've been fine without the addition of stuff like trailing missions.

Combat
Don't like the class system, while it does offer you complete control over party composition it results in the party members not having any gameplay identity that sets them apart from one another beyond minor, honestly insignificant base stat differences. The characters do have affinities for classes but that only impacts how quickly they learn the class and has its own issue of being horribly balanced across the roster (Noah has awful affinities overall, Taion has godlike affinities in pretty much everything and Lanz somehow has the best overall support affinity (?)).
Combat as well simply feels so much smoother, even just for the fact that there is no more snail movement like in 2 and the newly added dash ability. The AI controlled party members also feel more reliable and the ability to take control of any character at any point is a neat touch albeit not all that useful.
Their approach to melding the combat of xc1 and xc2 is also done quite well despite the Keves characters kinda getting the short end of the stick.
Xenoblade 3's "flagship" combat mechanic, the Ouroboros forms, while cool visually, end up being somewhat invalidated by chain attacks due to the fact that the chain gauge will fill up before you reach lvl 3.
Speaking of which...
Chain attacks simply ruin the game.
No idea how the developers thought the damage was fine, especially when you unlock the Ouroboros orders (for which you don't even have to be in the Ouroboros form) you will simply kill anything from any hp% without much effort or party optimization as soon as your chain gauge is full. Like why do Hero orders not take up a charge of the chain attack?
This essentially invalidates the whole Enraged mechanic all the bosses have because it does nothing while you're in a chain attack (therefore also invalidating burst as a status).
Chain attacks also feature pretty lengthy animations for the Ouroboros orders, which at first are pretty cool to watch but after watching them play a hundred times they definitely lose their luster and you start wishing for a skip option.
The music doesn't help chain attacks either, the chain attack theme itself is fine but unfortunately it cuts off any music that was playing, including boss music, which is just really annoying (this doesn't apply to the final boss for whatever reason, meaning the functionality is already there and giving you the option to outright disable it or just disable it for all boss themes wouldn't have required much effort).
Speaking of annoying...
I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier! I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier! I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier! I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier! I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier! I'm the girl with the gall! Hear that Noah? Lanz wants something a bit meatier!
Post battle dialogue on the level of the previous games just wasn't in the budget i guess.

TLDR Xenoblade Moment
Nail all the big aspects but fuck up a bunch of silly things that end up preventing the game from achieving greatness.

Much of Yakuza 6's development time was spent on the Dragon Engine so the game is a lot smaller in every aspect especially if you compare it to 5 it's like 1/10th the amount of content. On the plus side 6's story is nowhere near as bloated and convoluted as 5's was. For the first half it's pretty enjoyable, Kiryu running around trying to figure out who fucked his daughter and stumbling upon a massive conspiracy involving the Saio Triad, Jingweon Mafia and Yomei Alliance. It's pretty standard Yakuza stuff with a great cast of supporting characters. But in the 2nd half all of it just falls flat and the pacing becomes messy, Big Lo of the Saio Triad gives up on trying to kill his half japanese grandson and the whole Saio Triad just fades away. The Jingeon Mafia gets dealt with during the stupid boat section that feels completely out of place and end up being nothing more than mere henchmen, they just seem like a complete afterthought. After that you're basically told "alright go to the Millennium Tower and wrap this shit up" without any sort of of build up or tension. Once you're at the top the 3 main string pulling antagonists greet you via Skype video call, Iwami, Sugai and Koshimizu who are all just incredibly unremarkable downright Yakuza 4 tier antagonists. Koshimizu randomly betrays the other 2 without there ever being much of an explanation, I guess he was tired of being their lapdog or something. Then you have Sugai and, gun to my head, I could not remember 1 thing about him other than him being the acting Tojo chairman. Last but not least Iwami, who maybe had like 10 lines of dialogue throughout the game with him and Kiryu not even interacting once before the final confrontation. He's only targeting Kiryu because the evil Daidoji deep-state are mad he exposed their cool boat. The ending cutscene is definitely a highlight and would've been a good bittersweet conclusion to Kiryu's saga but that's not what this game turned out to be and every game that has come out after tries it's hardest to spit on this ending.
The main strength of the story are the supporting characters, the new group in Onomichi has a great dynamic which really isn't all too surprising considering this is the stuff the series has always excelled in. Now as for returning characters, you mainly just have Akiyama who for plot convenience has to be completely broke because as it turns out, having a guy with infinite money around is not a good idea! Other fan favorites are missing and in Majima's case I'm starting to think Yokoyama (or whoever) just downright hates him.
Yakuze 4 -> Gives Saejima a summary of what happened while he was in jail and is then just locked up for the rest of the game.
Yakuza 5 -> "Dead" for 99% of it and only shows up at the end to randomly fight Saejima.
Yakuza 6 -> In jail for 100% of it.

Now for the combat, the only positive thing I can say is that the Dragon Engine's physics are occasionally funny but aside from that it's an annoying clunky piece of shit. Words really can't describe how much worse the engine's combat feels. Beyond that you have the new progression system which isn't helping the overall experience either. The exp bar has been replaced by the gut gauge which forces you to constantly open up the menu to check if your stomach is empty in which case you then have to run (or walk thanks to the dogshit sprint) to the nearest restaurant to gobble up some food and get your silly little colored orbs. Fighting itself doesn't give you jack shit as it just empties your gauge faster. Said colored orbs are what you then use on your upgrade paths which is where the system REALLY gets good!! The stat increase skills were simply a bad idea, specifically attack power. Your base damage is so obscenely low and putting orbs into it early is bad because the game also offers upgrades like increase the overall amount of orbs you get and other QoL things which you'd obviously wanna prioritize. The maxed out attack should've been the base instead and the skill itself removed alongside all the skills in the "other skills" section. The game also LOVES throwing big crowds of enemies at you but they forgot to give you tools to deal with them. None of your moves have any sort of protection and the charge attacks specifically are just an invite to get stunlocked. With the physics and everything else, Kiryu's entire kit feels so pathetically weak and dysfunctional but hey, the environment tends to be filled with things you can pick up so I guess they don't expect you to use your abilities anyway.

In reality this game is more like Xenosaga 4 because between 2 and this game you have to play Pied Piper (Japanese only mobile game for which only the script is available in English) and watch A Missing Year (free flash movie originally only released in Japanese but at least there is a full fan translation) and only then can you (maybe) understand what is happening in this game!


Probably the biggest issue with the narrative is that Shion is downright insufferable throughout this entire game. Her irrational and erratic actions are what end up driving the plot for basically the entire old Miltia section and when she insists on going back to her ex-boyfriend whom had been shown to be an evil manipulator and little else. Beyond that she is also insanely rude to all her allies for no reason while they're risking their lives trying to save her dumbass while also giving her no pushback whatsoever.
All of this resulted in me really not caring about the character or her "happy" ending, Allen deserved better....

Because of the series shrunk down nature (and Xenosaga 2 barely developing the overall story), 3 is left with the herculean task of having to explain everything and resolving this gargantuan story and naturally this does result in some issues.
The pacing on disc 2 is the obvious one.
The series 2 main antagonists, Yuriev and Wilhelm, who were shrouded in mystery for the first 2 games, pretty much get dealt with immediately as they step into the spotlight.
Yuriev, for one, overall ended up being a very one dimensional character and his death was just kind of anticlimactic especially when Albedo randomly shows up reincarnated as a Testament only to die again 30 seconds later.
Wilhelm ends up being the big bad string puller who is really behind EVERYTHING but he only reveals his cards in the last hour where he gives you a 30 minute mega info dump which is downright impossible to comprehend due to how much stuff is being unveiled. Once you wrap your head around it after reading the wiki/Xenosaga III Perfect Guide for an hour, it is pretty cool. :)

While you're going through the final planet, Michtam, all of the series' minor antagonist conveniently come flying at you 1 by 1 wanting to fight you to the death (even Hermann and Richard show up lol). It ends up feeling a bit too forced especially when Margulis and Pellegri have no reason to fight you anymore after Willhelm told them the truth.
Some aspects of the story are also just outright dropped, Jin's backstory with Margulis and Pellegri, for one, is never elaborated on despite it being heavily teased throughout episode 2 and 3. Maybe they were planning to make another pied pipper type game idk.
Considering it was initially planned to be a 6 game series, this is probably the best they could've wrapped it up.

The game's presentation ends up being both visually and audibly the peak of the series.
After both 1 and 2 made some rather questionable stylistic decisions in regards to character designs, 3 really nails it with a more expressive stylized approach than 2 while not looking as nightmare inducing as 1. The addition of character portraits to ingame cutscene textboxes also allows them to better communicate emotions however due to budget/hardware limitations the game will often abruptly swap between pre-rendered and ingame cutscenes mid scene via an awkward fade to black transition load screen. The most jarring instance of this is during the final pre-boss cutscene where it ends up swapping back and forth every ~30 seconds and it ends up kinda killing the tension of the scene.
A bunch of voice actors change once again, some returning from 1, some new and it again reinforces what a massive downgrade 2's cast was.
The OST also has by far the most amount of memorable tracks on it.

Another game another combat rework!
And it is passable...
Erde Kaiser just runs the game (even the first version which is very easy to get)
Random encounters amount to just Erde Kaiser -> get boost gauge -> aoe special to finish enemies for bonus points!
Erde Kaiser breaks pretty much everything and the EP cost is irrelevant because the game gives you so many ways of regaining it. Its so efficient that past a certain point you're better off having a character with low EATK use Erde Kaiser so it doesn't outright kill the enemies. Doing anything else just ends up feeling silly especially when the enemies do hurt and can break your characters within ~2/3 hits IF they are given the chance to attack.
At least there is no more roulette wheel and the random encounters don't last minutes like they did in 2, so i guess its an improvement!
The boss fights aren't great either, they all follow the same pattern of doing literally nothing until they're ~25% hp where they get mad and if you're not careful, straight up 1-shot a character/the entire party (if you have higher tiers of Erde Kaiser, which are not hard to get, you can completely ignore bosses).
The mech fights however are definitely the best they've been and while that's kind of a low bar to clear, after Lv3 anima and getting ample energy for attacks, I ended up preferring it over the on-foot combat. The customization ends up being really impactful and some of the later fights can at least get somewhat engaging.

Ultimately Xenosaga as a series is marred by Unfulfilled Potential. Over-ambition and creative ideas meet the harsh reality of budgets and hardware limitations (and a few silly design mistakes).