This review contains spoilers
This time we have 4 playable characters. Everybody is different, everybody is new! Maybe we can call this yakuza soft reboot even? Why did I say this? Because from this point on yakuza stories stops to reference previous game's story and characters, they still have a "remember/reminisce" option for some reason. But they are not important in the main story that much. If you thought yakuza 3 have little connection with 2, you can happy to know that yakuza 4 only remember one unnecessary person from 3 and forgets every one of them. This desicion will bite them in the ass but whatever let's look at the end product shall we?
Story
This game's story is about 2 characters past and other 2's struggles. First is Akiyama, he is a moneylender that, have an unfortunate things happened to him when he was a bank employee. After the yakuza 1's money raining ending(this connection is just for fanservice btw) , he used all the money he found to become rich, then decided on helping other people. One day founds a girl that needs a lot of money and decides to help her just because she resembles the person he knows from his bank employee days (I am not kidding this is his whole motivation). After helping her, he realizes that he starts to suspect from this whole event because at the same time there is strange killings happening around town.
After we saw Akiyama, game goes to an another new character and that is Saejima, majima's sworn brother. He is in the jail because of the yakuza clan war happened in his past and he is arrested with killing 18 clan members. He is trying to find what really happened in that day. After an someone from yakuza 3 helps him to escape, he founds a way to arrive back at kamurocho and learns what happened to his old clan.
After that we play as a dirty cop called Tanimura. He is addicted to gambling but also focused on finding what really happened in that clan war like Saejima, he learns that how police tries to cover what happened that day so he tries to find who is trying to cover things, also for whom. After almost getting the truth, unfortunately some of it slips right away.
Then Kiryu comes in, why? Because "Hamazaki" wanted him to help Saejima, also show papers to him that shows things about yakuza 1's bad guy's money connected to Saejima's prison. For that reason kiryu decides to leave his orphanage and this destroys both the story and his character progression with it. I am sorry for saying this but story is so off the rails that not even cool moments can save this game. Firstly yakuza 1 connections doesn't go anywhere interesting, they are there just to force Kiryu out of orphanage, also why the heck Kiryu decides to believe "Hamazaki" is super stupid to me, he acts good now so let's believe him I guess? Also Kiryu's builded up character from yakuza 3 wasted in my opinion... why? Because Kiryu in y3 not just go to kamurocho for knowing that there is someone looks like his old father goes around killing people, he goes there because also his orphanage is in danger. But now decides to go there just because he heard yakuza 1 bad guy connected to this case... such a letdown...
Also the "whole mystery"? What happens to that... of course stupidy happens, because game decides that best way to explain to mystery is making every builded up person a betrayer and with that destroys every build up. I am not even talking about the infamous rubber bullets. I am talking about the build up, I have not seen a game that decides to destroy their own build up in such a bad way just to plot twist everyone. Not just that, for me characters are a downgrade as well, because this time group is huge of course and everybody somehow important to the mainplot, because of that game have no time to build up anyone and that just makes things worse. Not just that, there is a lot of potential for some of the antagonists but game doesn't uses that, you don't even fight with some of them(shibata, katsuragi etc.), just to do plot twists I guess. There is a lot of cool wow moments like previous games of course but game decides to become a janky plot twist machine for some reason and that's a clear downgrade in my opinion. I thought yakuza 3 gets stupid, this is even stupider unfortunately.
Gameplay
This time you can play as 4 characters aaanndd... no one feels fleshed out unfortunately.
First Akiyama, he is probably designed for new players because he is the spam-button character of this game, he feels pretty fun with yakuza 3's returning wall juggle/wall bounding system. But that's all it is. Spam the same button to win.
Second is Saejima, he is the charger of the group. Also have the longest combo in the yakuza franchise, unfortunately he is sooo damn slow because of charging requirement. His combos are so slow in fact that crowd combat becomes a chore with enemies keep interrupting your combo with attacking from everywhere. I really hated playing as him.
There is also Tanimura, he is the defensive character in the group. You have 2 different grapples and different parrys as well. But also the smallest health level. Also his combos feels janky with how slow he punches. I think the idea is that parrying then comboing enemies but the problem is characters turn so fast in this game, it's probably because this is the botched remastered port but still, playing as him feel aggravating to me with parrying endlessly to wait for an opening. If there is no wall near you, you can do jackshit because of the fact that enemies can turn fast like I said. Also his final boss is the worst boss I have ever fought in yakuza... no in gaming even. What the hell was that?
Also of course there is Kiryu, he feels almost the same from yakuza 3 so I don't think I need to explain him. But playing as him reminded me how many tools Kiryu had compared to the not so fleshed out other playable characters. Maybe that's the intention I don't know
So for me combat is a mixed bag unfortunately.
But there is couple of improvements from yakuza 3
-Minigames not necessary for amon finally! Including hostess's!
-Kamurocho is bigger now...(actually that's not big of an improvement because new places are... pretty empty to say the least)
-less but more focused substories!
-game have a better action and slow time balance than yakuza 3
-new minigames, like dojo training.
but also I have some nitpicks as well
-like I said newly added locations are pretty desolate
-no new map
-you have to unlock every character's skills from zero everytime when new character becomes available(except kiryu)
-Amon is a pushover in this game, a giant disappointment
-Some substories feels like artificially longered with forcing you to go between places constantly
So yeah that's my opinion. For me this game is one step forward but two steps back. Feels like not enough fleshed out and at the same time tries to suprise everyone with constant roadblocks. With this game I stopped playing main titles for a while unfortunately. That's how much the game burned me.
Story
This game's story is about 2 characters past and other 2's struggles. First is Akiyama, he is a moneylender that, have an unfortunate things happened to him when he was a bank employee. After the yakuza 1's money raining ending(this connection is just for fanservice btw) , he used all the money he found to become rich, then decided on helping other people. One day founds a girl that needs a lot of money and decides to help her just because she resembles the person he knows from his bank employee days (I am not kidding this is his whole motivation). After helping her, he realizes that he starts to suspect from this whole event because at the same time there is strange killings happening around town.
After we saw Akiyama, game goes to an another new character and that is Saejima, majima's sworn brother. He is in the jail because of the yakuza clan war happened in his past and he is arrested with killing 18 clan members. He is trying to find what really happened in that day. After an someone from yakuza 3 helps him to escape, he founds a way to arrive back at kamurocho and learns what happened to his old clan.
After that we play as a dirty cop called Tanimura. He is addicted to gambling but also focused on finding what really happened in that clan war like Saejima, he learns that how police tries to cover what happened that day so he tries to find who is trying to cover things, also for whom. After almost getting the truth, unfortunately some of it slips right away.
Then Kiryu comes in, why? Because "Hamazaki" wanted him to help Saejima, also show papers to him that shows things about yakuza 1's bad guy's money connected to Saejima's prison. For that reason kiryu decides to leave his orphanage and this destroys both the story and his character progression with it. I am sorry for saying this but story is so off the rails that not even cool moments can save this game. Firstly yakuza 1 connections doesn't go anywhere interesting, they are there just to force Kiryu out of orphanage, also why the heck Kiryu decides to believe "Hamazaki" is super stupid to me, he acts good now so let's believe him I guess? Also Kiryu's builded up character from yakuza 3 wasted in my opinion... why? Because Kiryu in y3 not just go to kamurocho for knowing that there is someone looks like his old father goes around killing people, he goes there because also his orphanage is in danger. But now decides to go there just because he heard yakuza 1 bad guy connected to this case... such a letdown...
Also the "whole mystery"? What happens to that... of course stupidy happens, because game decides that best way to explain to mystery is making every builded up person a betrayer and with that destroys every build up. I am not even talking about the infamous rubber bullets. I am talking about the build up, I have not seen a game that decides to destroy their own build up in such a bad way just to plot twist everyone. Not just that, for me characters are a downgrade as well, because this time group is huge of course and everybody somehow important to the mainplot, because of that game have no time to build up anyone and that just makes things worse. Not just that, there is a lot of potential for some of the antagonists but game doesn't uses that, you don't even fight with some of them(shibata, katsuragi etc.), just to do plot twists I guess. There is a lot of cool wow moments like previous games of course but game decides to become a janky plot twist machine for some reason and that's a clear downgrade in my opinion. I thought yakuza 3 gets stupid, this is even stupider unfortunately.
Gameplay
This time you can play as 4 characters aaanndd... no one feels fleshed out unfortunately.
First Akiyama, he is probably designed for new players because he is the spam-button character of this game, he feels pretty fun with yakuza 3's returning wall juggle/wall bounding system. But that's all it is. Spam the same button to win.
Second is Saejima, he is the charger of the group. Also have the longest combo in the yakuza franchise, unfortunately he is sooo damn slow because of charging requirement. His combos are so slow in fact that crowd combat becomes a chore with enemies keep interrupting your combo with attacking from everywhere. I really hated playing as him.
There is also Tanimura, he is the defensive character in the group. You have 2 different grapples and different parrys as well. But also the smallest health level. Also his combos feels janky with how slow he punches. I think the idea is that parrying then comboing enemies but the problem is characters turn so fast in this game, it's probably because this is the botched remastered port but still, playing as him feel aggravating to me with parrying endlessly to wait for an opening. If there is no wall near you, you can do jackshit because of the fact that enemies can turn fast like I said. Also his final boss is the worst boss I have ever fought in yakuza... no in gaming even. What the hell was that?
Also of course there is Kiryu, he feels almost the same from yakuza 3 so I don't think I need to explain him. But playing as him reminded me how many tools Kiryu had compared to the not so fleshed out other playable characters. Maybe that's the intention I don't know
So for me combat is a mixed bag unfortunately.
But there is couple of improvements from yakuza 3
-Minigames not necessary for amon finally! Including hostess's!
-Kamurocho is bigger now...(actually that's not big of an improvement because new places are... pretty empty to say the least)
-less but more focused substories!
-game have a better action and slow time balance than yakuza 3
-new minigames, like dojo training.
but also I have some nitpicks as well
-like I said newly added locations are pretty desolate
-no new map
-you have to unlock every character's skills from zero everytime when new character becomes available(except kiryu)
-Amon is a pushover in this game, a giant disappointment
-Some substories feels like artificially longered with forcing you to go between places constantly
So yeah that's my opinion. For me this game is one step forward but two steps back. Feels like not enough fleshed out and at the same time tries to suprise everyone with constant roadblocks. With this game I stopped playing main titles for a while unfortunately. That's how much the game burned me.