I think this is one of the best jrpg gameplay experiences I had. Variety and freedom in combat is simply OUTSTANDING

This is my second final fantasy (first was ff4) and what can I say that did not be said? This game franchise is awesome.

Combat
Ffv uses job system that is different than ff4. What job system means is, there is multiple jobs that you can select for all of your characters. You can make everyone a magician or bard or dancer or knight or samurai or monk etc. Also once you level up a job, you unlock more skills that job has. There is so many variants and neat thing is this is not the greatest part. This time, game lets you equip one more learned skill on top of your selected job. Do you know what that means? You can mix jobs together! Possibilities are endless! Knight that can sing magical songs, magician that can punch really hard, monk that can dance and many many many more...
That is also probably it's greatest downfall for beginners. Because more options makes the game more overwhelming as well, also game sucks at teaching you what jobs does what and what skill can be unlocked with them, there is an optional teacher that shows how things work but on a surface level. So that results with you looking at a guide to learn which skill does what so you can do your dreamy build. I have to say this kind of turned me off at first. Then I decided to push on after seeing a lot of positive reviews and I am glad I did, because this game made me grind voluntarily just to see which skills, which combinations, which techniques to execute and experiment with and that is the biggest compliment I can give it for (because I hate grinding)

Story
Compared to the gameplay, story is much more basic, even more than ff4 I think. Yes when we look at the surface level they are similar good guys vs bad guys story but what ff4 does different is, it makes the character's much more fleshed out, for some reason ffv doesn't try to flesh them out the level ff4 did, main characters only get only 1 or 2 small chapters about them what it more cares about is it's goofy moments. There is a lot of goofy comedic moments in this game even more than ff4 and new expressions characters have helps in that regard greatly. Unfortunately and that is, unsatisfactory enemies and not connecting to the characters. What I mean is, when the story is not that serious, it's hard to invested for the fight of the big baddy. I didn't had any motivation to take him down, because I felt it's not gonna improve my experience. Then I forced myself and finished it, so just to not miss out anything, but I don't know if it was worth it. Felt like marking the checklist for me, so I get it when people say they like ff4 more. But I don't agree ffV is lesser than that, after all everything comes to personal taste and question is this: do you rather see an engaging story or gameplay focused story. Even if I like the engaging stories, ffv fun story is really entertaining one as well, so don't worry about any disappointment or anything like that.

World
Like the ff4, there is optional town's to visit, small side quests to see, but this time there is more of them like optional summon fights or finding hidden pianos or hidden special items or learning magic songs from town people.

Also like ff4, there is boats to ride, flying ships to control, animals to master. Only not nice thing is, this time there is two worlds in this game and repeating same things to get a flying animal for the second world kind of felt repetitive to me, It felt a bit like padding to me.

Other than that, I found dungeons pretty fun. Every one of them had a gimmick like locked doors that opens with corresponding buttons, river that lets you down from floors, sand places that moves you away and many many more. There wasn't an aggravating one like ff4's stupid magnetic cave I think.
So ff5 still good as ever when it comes to world so nothing to worry about that

Conclusion
This game is good. So if you enjoy light hearted cartoon like stories like me and also like freedom in combat, you probably gonna like this game. I recommend it.

The best witcher story, the worst witcher gameplay

This game did the unthinkable for me, when I was reading books, I was thinking about how mr. Saphowski sucks at naturally connecting multiple people and plot points to each other, he shows multiple kingdoms, their conflicts, their ideals and the war that goes around them, but what it amounts to the Geralt(main character), just a couple of pages of slicing army guys... That's it. Books(especially novel ones) just really loves to throw unnecessary plot points and characters that breaks the pace, goes nowhere, have nothing to do with Geralt's main objective. So I thought what if they really connected to Geralt in more ways than one? And this game... Man this game gave me that.

A witcher that blamed for killing a king, now needs to prove his innocence to the world while magicians and kings try to take advantage from his unfortunate situation. Not just that, game have 2 big sides this time, kings side and elves side. Depending on your desicion about helping the which side in the first half changes the last half ENTIRELY and that is simply amazing.

Unfortunately all big ambitions have it's setback tho...

World

For some reason this game ditched to travelling between maps option from witcher 1, what it means is once you do enough main story, you need to say bye bye to old map and say hello to new map, so this means this game is lineer right?

Yes and no, it's more of a sandbox type. What I mean is, every map still have it's own side content, it's own characters and it's own atmosphere, unfortunately it sometimes results with tiny frustrating moments because if you leave a sidecontent in the old map, it instantly marked with fail sign, but at the same time I am happy because this move makes sure the player never breaks the pace with going between maps and waste time until they get bored to never return to the game again.

Also this time maps feels smaller yet dense with content, what I mean is, fortunately you don't need to walk the amount you do like in the witcher 1 or 3 but still get the same or even more amount of side content in less time. I found it awesome and in my opinion that's why world wise it's my favourite in the trilogy(also sidecontent is awesome just like the witcher 1, only thing I dislike is how they butchered the fist fighting minigame)

Also damnn... The world really feels handcrafted. Even though like I said it's small, it really doesn't feel like that with how it's full of with details in Every. Step. Of. The. Way....

Also I have to say this game have one of my favourite cities and that's a really unique dwarf mountain city. Unique word is an understatement so see for yourself I would say. It's one of my favourite fantasy maps in the ENTIRE rpg genre. It's that amazing.

Also do you want to know what is even more awesome? Remember that I said depending on who you side, second half of the game changes, yeah maps are also different too! You go to an entirely different map depending on your choice and how awesome is that???

Even though I kind of like the depressing atmosphere of the first game(this game chooses to be really colorful), I can still say this game's world is a hard slamdunk for it's favor

Gameplay

Unfortunately when I was talking about setbacks I was thinking this when writing that line because this is the place I have to get immensely negative

This game have the worst action rpg combat I had played in my entire life. It's really that really glitchy and broken:

Lock on that breaks constantly???

Attacks that doesn't damage the enemies randomly???

Enemies that have some of the worst hitboxes known to man or in gaming EVER(fighting with giant enemies is a chore with how they can damage you without even touching you???)

Potion system sucks hard with super short timed use???

Really stingy skill system???(even with doing every side content you can only fill %65 of it)

Attack animations that randomly decides to f##k you over(because game randomly decides to do a long sword animation and gets you killed, funnily enough same problem exists on witcher 3 on lesser amount)

Also quick time events that comes from nowhere without any warning????

And last thing is, I don't think even the developers themselves tested the Letho fight, it combines every bad thing in the game into one giant shitty fight with bad hitboxes, randomly missing attacks, lock on that does not work etc. It's one of the worst boss fights I had pleasure to experience in my life...

Do I need to continue? I think I really give what a clusterfuck of a game that is. If I didn't enjoyed the story I would give this game 1/5 like I am not joking it's that BAD. I never thought I would but this game made me miss the first game's gameplay, because at least it worked...

So an awesome World and Story and Shit broken gameplay...

If this game had the good gameplay I would say this game is 5/5, not just that, I would say this is the greatest Witcher game everrr(In my opinion witcher 3's story isn't good and filled with empty npc quests, compared to it's nice characters), but unfortunately with every big ambition, there is shortcomings as well...

It's sad to say this but for this reason it's impossible for me to go higher than 4/5 with all of the frustrations it caused. But still wants to recommend people that likes choices and uncovering political mysteries, seeing incredible fantasy worlds, but I don't want to recommend this to people that expects a good action... no a functional game. Because it's not.

So cd project said, witcher already uses fairy tale elements in it's story, then why don't we go full on fairy style with embracing it's wackiness?

This is a wacky world where wine is everywhere, everybody acts highly and arrogant, but gets crazy as more and more wine used. I have to say variety is off the charts with this one.
Returning enemies from witcher 1 ✅
Grandmaster armors that change the gameplay with special features ✅
New boss fights ✅
Even more wackier side missions that some of them will guarantee to get a chuckle from you ✅
Fairy tale looking atmosphere with an awesome colorful towns as well✅
Another overbloated map with stupid question marks that feels copy pasted ❌
Probably the worst main story cast in the witcher franchise ❌

When I started the dlc I was hopeful, but unfortunately as I get near to the end, I felt less and less connected to the characters and in the end only thing I felt was anger.

This is a story about no one says what they truly meant to the other one, because of that they continue to be hurtful each other. So what this results with? Unnecessary conflicts.

Ending felt like a soap opera for me, it was like, "oh you did that because you thought I hated you?" or "I didn't thought not saying the truth would result like this" or "I never talked because I thought I didn't need to correct things" etc. I hate this kind of "misunderstanding" conflict, so millions of people died because of some sort of a "misunderstanding". So funny, ha ha ha
So main story and how the main cast built is a hard pass for me. I can even say it was worse than the base game's main story, at least emotional moments still felt even with the bad pacing.

edit: I was at chapter 5 of the og version of the game. I shelved because of grind, then decided to return and finish it

The biggest reason for me to shelve this at the time is the GRIND. So I wanted to unlock skills to make the combat more bearable, how do I do that? Playing 100 man battle 50 times. This is not an exaggeration. This is the fastest way without including a rng way.

Then I wanted to upgrade my weapon, how do I do that? Materials that drop from mini dungeons that returns from dead souls of course!... Of course rng included! %1 chance to drop this item that item... So you need to play mini dungeons 50 times at least to get materials you wanted as well too! How nice of that??

Second reason is I found the combat not engaging. I thought it will become better and it did but focusing on unlocking skills with the slow as heck progression system made the progression flow unbearable for me. After Getting to 60 level, unlocking a new level takes at least half hour. Then it goes up to 1 hour just to unlock a new level.... frustration... (Yakuza 0 have a similar problem but At least you can punch big money enemies to get instant upgrade money in yakuza 0 at least. But not here.)

After putting myself to endless grind torture, at least I can talk about the combat more in depth now

Combat

Lock on: it feels really loose for some reason, or Ryoma/Kiryu turning speed is so low. If you use any style that have longer animations, you will realize that if enemy moves right or left just a couple of centimeters, you will miss and you will miss again. The amounts of charged or heavy attacks I miss just because enemy decided to walk a bit to the left is too high to count this fact diminished my enjoyment.

Sword style: instant guard ability makes this a good style for the one on one combat. But it's shit at group combat. Charging attacks protects you from stun but at the same time you get continous damage from other enemies and if I don't carry multiple health items, it just becomes a chore to use against at groups. But at least there is more than one combo it does have, compared to the other styles. But there is no reason to use it if it's not against a boss fight because of a shitty lock on and slow combos.

Wild Dance style: this style have good range also you have instant dodge so it's good to use it for the group combat. But there is things that ruins this style for me. One is this dodge have almost nonexistent invisibility. So there is always a one ranged or fast enemy that ruins your damn combo. Other one is, it feels really limited what it could do. You spin for attacking... And shoot at the end. There is nothing else to do other than that. Feels like a demo compared to the yakuza 0 majima's breaker style.

Gun style: feels like designed for the people that really want to skip combat. Just go to a corner and press shoot button. If you are so much badly bored, just equip a high damage gun. Also have only one combo. maybe rather than creating entire style for it, just include into the wild dance as a heavy combo? it would be a better choice I think.

Hand to hand: this is the weakest style against anything. To compensate for that, it does have a tanimura guard that makes you invisible against any attack, but unfortunately it's short, you can unlock a longer version that makes pretty essential but until that point, it feels worthless like the kenzan one. Because damage is low and combo speed is low as well... So there is no reason to use it until filling with lots of skill points. When you "unlock" that skill points in the first place of course. Have fun with that.

Main story
Kind of a drag at times, kind of a blood pumping fun at times. Pacing is similar to yakuza 5 unfortunately. But one thing that saves it compared to the yakuza 5 is there is only one character's story so you don't start, stop, start and stop that halts pacing to a crawl. I had fun with the story, especially beginning and the end(to be exact, starting from ch11 and to end gets super crazy and saves the entire game for me). But the middle part sucked. All of it was talk to that, talk to this kinda missions.

Also finale part does not make a lick of sense too. But if you enjoy with the fanservice you will enjoy the finale even if it does not make sense. One thing I really enjoyed a lot is, unfinished yakuza 5 characters used differently to show their other sides. They were entertaining to say the least. So main story is more on the plus side for me.

Side content
Substories are meh on this game, they are pretty short as well. There is one that I really liked that is about a family tries to find a place to bury their poor dog's corpse. That one tingled the feels, I wish there is more like that. Other than that, classic money scumming substories and I will beat you old man type of substories. Nothing too suprising.

Friendship returns with vengeance. Chop 500 wood, eat 30 times, give item 15 times etc. They are not fun and once I realized that, I left them to rot. Because they are repetitive. Also for some reason almsot all interactable npc have a friendship meter. No thanks.

Another life. This is similar to y0 Kiryu's business minigame. In this minigame, someone called "Haruka" wants your help to pay her debt. Yes that haruka is in this minigame for some reason. Then you travel to the house, select vegetables to plant, when they become big, collect them. Then sell them. I did it until completing the Haruka's trust meter. Probably this is the only game that I completed Haruka's trust because of a minigame tied to it. Also it gives you special small cutscenes so I had more of an incentive to go through with it.

Mini dungeons. They are labyrinths that have lots of enemies and also a mini boss at the end. Gets ridiculous as the floors go up and in the end every basic enemy one shots you for some reason. It would be an interesting challenge like dead souls, if you didn't need to return again for materials. That garbage requirement sucked the all enjoyment for this side activity for me.

Crafting. You give the materials, then create the weapon. Unlike kenzan, every weapon have it's own special seal. So new thing is, you can mix and match the seals to create your own overpowered build. Like ability to not get stunned or breaking guards faster etc. It can look unimportant at first, but if you want to go minidungeons and amon, you have to look up what seal does what. Because they are that brutal.

There is also courtesan minigame that you can play rock paper scissors and chicken race. I only did chicken race because to get money faster near the end of the game. But at least there is no romance hostess's this time I am glad.

Amon. For some reason this time amon isn't a pure challenge boss, he is also a level grind boss too. You do so little damage to him that it's almost comical. But he kills you in 2 hits, if it's special attack then it one shots you. I went insane trying to complete this amon, because I didn't "grind enough". Then grinded more and beat him. I got the full invinsibility with limit break on brawler. Then got the sword's parrying disarm ability with limit break. Yet his second phase was so brutal that he keeps one shotting me even with that. Then I found a cheese way, try to get a invincibility parry to yourself when the second phase starts, then try to do sword's light+light+charged heavy combo. If you manage it amon will be down. Then do it again and again, if he manages to hit you while getting up, just use heal and continue your combo immediately. Eventually he will down and get destroyed hopefully. But I have to say, I hated this incarnation of amon. It feels cheap with forcing you to grind.

So I would say, sidecontent is a mixed bag.

Conclusion
Meh combat
Meh sidecontent
Enjoyable story that isn't paced very well.

I enjoyed more than yakuza 5 but probably matches with yakuza 4

This is the best game Rgg/Yakuza team did. I am not joking.

Why do I think that way even though this game is a gears of war clone you ask?

Simple. I am a main story first, side content second kind of person, also I don't like pacebreaking moments in a game. Yakuza games loves to interrupt your main story progress unfortunately and I really dislike that. Don't get me wrong, I like side content but I like to do them when I want to do, not when they are forced upon my throat. This game doesn't do that. But it wouldn't be enough to get a 5/5 right? What also captivated me is it's engaging characters, optional conversations that explores character's life views, fun gameplay that is about breaking enemy limbs part by part(almost like a resident evil zombie system), collosal chaotic boss fights and it's light squad mechanics.

Squad mechanics works fine with commands and all (don't use voice commands tho, turn that thing off and use button commands). Except one thing and there is not retreat command. You shouldn't shoot your allies for the trust system (I am gonna get to that) and when they are in front of you, it's hard to do that because they don't retreat. Other than that it works most of the time with advance! Attack! Cover me! Etc.

So when it comes to only big negative I can give to this game is, to get the best ending, you need to almost complete the squad trust system I think?(yeah there is a trust system). It's actually a fun mechanic that demands you to engage with more of the characters, but unfortunately, depending on the story chapter you can't choose some of the characters to your team.

That results with frustrating moments that makes you want to open a guide and just read it to learn at what points you should select what character, if you want the best ending.

I fortunately get the happy ending in my first playthrough with killing as much as enemy I can at the infinitely spawning enemy missions. But I wish this mechanic was better implemented with being more forgiving.

Some people wouldn't even think this point as a negative anyway and just rush through the game, but still I wanted to bring it up, because I really liked the characters That Much! and wanted to get a good ending. But requirements of the trust system bothered me a bit.

So yeah solid game. If you are like me and love main content focused games you will have fun with this one(hopefully)

Also like I said turn off the voice commands. Button commands do fine.

This is a really hard game to talk about for myself. Because there is things that really good and there is things that really really pushes me to say "why...?". I still liked a lot but I don't think it was a full slamdunk for it's favor.

Gameplay
With this game, styles finally back! There is now 2 styles our character Yagami uses: crane and tiger. Crane is a wide group control kick based style, Tiger is a more narrow but better suited for one on one action judo? Style. When I first played judgment, I found it pretty boring. Why? Because both Crane and Tiger felt pretty slow, at least crane had some fasty moves that hiding behind some combos. But enemies that interrupt your attacks really killed my enjoyment for it too. It was like yakuza 6 and kiwami 2 unfortunately (maybe if no hit bounce mod existed for it, it would made my experience even better). The problem with judgment is slow combat felt even more slower because of the yagami's anger inducing repositioning himself after rebounding kicks animation. I said okay whatever let's push through and I am glad I did. Because after getting the wall jump then grap upgrade(that one really helps for crowd control), couple of speed upgrades and tiger fissure for tiger style, game really started to feel fun. But unfortunately another problem came through and that is balance. I don't know why but they didn't put any hard hitting upgrade for crane style and because of that, it became more and more obsolete for me. I found this a bit upsetting because with only thing crane have exclusive at that point is a juggle move that you can do on the end of the combo. But it's pretty hard to do when rebound thingy exists so, because of that I feel like a upgrade like easier juggle or no interrupt upgrade like the one tiger has would pretty much solve this issue but that's the end product unfortunately. Another unfortunate thing is reused moves and heat actions for Yagami. I don't know how many people realised but Yagami uses akiyama's kicks, tanimura's turning slap and kiryu's all of the back attacks. Not just that, there is a lot of kiryu's copy pasted heat actions in there as well. Rather than copy pasting it, at least modify a bit to make it more true for the character? Other unfortunate thing is burst/spirit/devil trigger thingy is back and it works like 5. What I mean is you can't get damaged in it, I think they added this for the casual players if they struggle with the mortal system(big boss attacks can damage your max health and only expensive items can cure it), but it throws already unbalanced game straight to the garbage bin. I know that yakuza games designed for casual players but even in hard mod it does make the game too easy. What the hell? I mean yakuza 6 have it too but this is a bigger step back like the yakuza 5(I don't like this press to win system).

So I don't know what you think with combat but it felt to me one step forward, one step back unfortunately. I like the new moves don't get me wrong but things so unbalanced that half of it goes straight to the garbage bin for me unfortunately.

Side Content
"Catching minigame back with a vengeance"
I think this one sentence enough to convey to you how I feel about substories. why? Because I found them pretty pacebreaking when you can combo an enemy multiple different ways, but game thinks holding the control stick up is more interesting. This is not the only problem, there is now variation of it and it's following a person stealthily and it's sucks even more. Because only thing you do is hold the button up, then when the person you are following starts turning you press the hide button and that's it. Unfortunate thing is it takes A LOT OF TIME, even more time than a catching minigame...
There is also new side activites too, one is zombie railshooting minigame that comes from dead souls's assets and I found it pretty fun even though it's pretty short and drone minigame. I haven't completed the drone minigame because there is no story..? It felt pretty weird to me since there is an npc connected to it for the friendship system that goes nowhere.
Friendship system comes back from yakuza kiwami 2 I think? I haven't played yk2 but it was also in the og one and y0 so I know what it is, but in this one there is one annoying thing and that is, it's required to get to amon... I found this pretty stupid because friendship system is a huge chore to get through. You have to do one thing like eating, buying, baseball etc. Multiple multiple multiple times... For what reason? There is a fun substories connected to it yes but only small number of them have it. There is one substory that unlocks after you finished the friendship and it's pretty cool. But the amount of grind you have to put yourself is unreal! At this point I started to wonder are they padding time just to show full completion takes considerable amount time?
After I played substories I became sure of it. Why? Because at least half of the substories requires you to do same thing thrice! I am not kidding. They made it this way because there is only 20 or so "real" substories but with repeats, it becomes 50... I would even replay yakuza 1 substories because compared to judgment, at least they don't take your damn time. Only thing I can say good is amon fight was creative at least. Unfortunately you can cheese it with spamming burst, devil trigger/spirit thingy but at least it was something different.

Story
I look pretty negative ain't I? But now it's time to get positive because since yakuza 1 and 4. This game really tries hard to inject new life to kamurocho and I really felt the danger every point of the story like the yakuza 1 did! I couldn't believe it because it's sooo nicely done! There is a lot factions like new yakuzas, killings, strange ocurrings all over the town that you start to feel kind of unedge and that's super awesome. Not just that, slowly unrevealing the mystery keeps you intrigued in every moment. Unfortunately not every part of the mystery used to it's potential in my opinion(especially things happening after the second half of the game regarding to the serial killer). But rest of it was fantastic. You learn Yagami's past and his motivations to solve this case, you learn his partners that how connects to both past, present and the future, you see how things chaoticly go out of hand! Because of this reason alone just go and play this game, I am not kidding it. If you like detective work and slowly revealing the mystery you are gonna like the main story with couple of exceptions.

World
Normally I would pass this part, but this time I wanted to talk about it. I already talked about uneasy feeling the main story does but there is more. The music tone they use on the overworld is more mysterious and dark this time. Also I wasn't a big fan of friendship thingy yes but seeing some of your friends in random places of the Kamurocho makes it feel alive. Combine this with the mysterious song list and bum. Vibes are flowing into me! Also I forgot to talk about how they added small shorcuts to Kamurocho too! They really tried their best to make Kamurocho feel fresh with this small changes. Because of that like I said I had emotions similar to Yakuza 1(ps2)'s Kamurocho. I mean Yakuza 1 still have the crown for atmosphere but this game is just behind it with yakuza 2.

So... Good game. Fun but badly balanced combat. Masterpiece level of atmosphere. Monotonous side quests. Really good story with an unfortunate weak villain. They balance itself together with positives and negatives so unfortunately it doesn't go as far as to masterpiece level. But still recommended.

Hearing the witcher franchise happened with the witcher 3 like everybody else, but after trying out couple of hours I realized this game builds what came from before, there is a lot of people that said witcher 3 is a good beginner point and I certainly don't agree with them. Because when Geralt says that character is important to him you don't understand what he meant, because all you can go for is a 3 minute flashback. But after reading the books, I really really get it Geralt and I am glad I did because if I didn't, I would leave this game and not finish it at all.
(Also my thoughts about books are conflicted with how it goes off the rails especially after the 4th book with introducing trillions of characters and can't connect them together naturally and brokes the pacing badly, but at least I can recommend first and second books to everyone because they are not novels, they are short stories that is quick and have excellent pacing also it's slowly develops Geralt to the man we know it today)

Why? Because majority of the main story kinda sucks. You will ask "what the hell do you mean??? Everybody says it's excellent??" Actually yeah it's excellent but only some parts. What I mean is, there is a two story that is going on. One is hunting down a magician that stole the witcher secrets and other is, bonding with your loved ones and teaching a powerful kid to how to live a life. Problem is, magician part of the story is really cliche cartoon like events, what I mean is, you follow the clues to find where the villain is, you run to his door, he escapes and then you repeat this multiple times to comical level, also he is a really boring cliche power loving villain. Just for this reason alone, I thought leaving the game several times.

So as a book reader you can assume that I liked the second part of the story and yes I liked it, especially seeing the previous folk after events of the books and seeing their struggle really touched my heart, also teaching the kid part was really touching as well with how it references ciri without naming it. But one thing really let it down for me is... Really disappointing final act of this game... Kid plot gets rushed, stories of your loved ones doesn't have a proper conclusion, game throws plot back to back with no time to breath and then it ends. Ending really confused me and I had to watch a video to learn really what the heck just happen and I really didn't liked that.

So what I mean is, main story have a potential, but it's all wasted with badly paced events, boring villains, and rushed final act.

World
Maybe people gonna disagree with me, but when it comes to atmosphere witcher 1 is the best, with it's haunting sound effects, people that crying everywhere, constant garbage everywhere etc. You really feel how disgusting this world is. Unfortunately I feel like they don't do that as well in the sequels to make the graphics better and more colorful.
There is one thing bad about the world is... There is so many copy paste npc models that it gets confusing who is who after a while. I am not a fond of that.
There is a slight problem with the world unfortunately and that is walking. There is multiple maps in this game and for some reason only way to go between them is walking to the end of the map. Buy a boat ticket, watch a cutscene and then you can continue and it gets monotonous to walk all the way to the end in every map is an UNDERSTATEMENT. It's pissed me so much that I had to download a faster movement mod, it breaks some of the enemy movement but it's worth it for me.
So I like world but game's systems didn't aged good for it I think.

Side content
This is where the game truly shine in my opinion, I wasn't expecting but side stories is that awesome is that game, why? Because they tie to the main story seamlessly. You solve a person's problem and bum he is there to help in the main story or you want to get more information about the people you met in the main story and bum here is his/her entire life story, not just that there is so many references and connections to the book characters that It resulted with me getting immense pleasure from it. Only side content isn't important I could say is, the hunting missions. Unfortunately they are basic go kill 10 of this 5 of that kind of missions, but other than that I found the side content excellent

Combat
This is the part that many people divided upon, but for me, this is the best game that "gets" the books. People really dislike the combat because it uses hotbar skill system rather than action system like the sequels does. But I think hotbar system helps in it favor in this case, why do you ask?
Because in books, witchers are always "gets prepared" for their next mission and what is hotbar combat is about? Having larger damage numbers and larger defense numbers than the enemy. How do you get that? Finding information about the enemy you will hunt and preparing the correct potions/equipment/magic buffs/oils/stances/swords for the enemy and it really puts you to the mind of the witcher for me and I really liked it.
But there is one vital problem to the combat and that is... You can only do buffs and potions on a campfire and that is bullsh*t right there. Why? Because main story missions loves to suprise you with new enemy variations, so only way to know to prepare is, go into a mission, see the enemy, then load previous save... Or if you are like me, downloading the "mediate anywhere" mod solves everything actually. But in the vanilla it sucks there is no going around it.
Also people really hate, you have to click your attacks like a rythym game but for me it's not such a bad thing, i wasn't that hard to get used to

Lastly inventory. This isn't that much of a loot heavy game, but unfortunately you can't store more than 2 swords to your inventory and only way to store them is go into a bar and store into a chest. I find this really frustrating because sometimes I am not sure if I should get that sword or not and I don't want to return to the bar everytime. You can solve this with storing mod but it's a pain in the vanilla game unfortunately.

Bugs
For me it wasn't that much of a clear experience, t-pose problems, crashes, wrong enemy spawns etc. but one bug really made me nervous... Why? Early in the game, you have a ring to give to a someone so he will let you in. The problem is, next day I open the game it wasn't there. Did I sell it I thought and looked every merchant and it wasn't there, I looked every...where... My previous save was too old so I didn't want to return it either, I almost left the game but I found out that there was an alternate way to get the ring from someone and finally finished the quest. Unfortunately this quest really sticked to my head with the trouble it gave so unfortunately this game isn't bugless even with the enhanced edition somehow.

So if there is a lot of jank in it, then why 4/5? Believe it or not, but for me, world was that much of immersive and side content was that much of impressive to me that it overcomes the jank part for me. If I look at it objectively it's 3/5 but as a personal review, I give this 4/5 with it's world, interesting characters, fun references to the books and enjoyable side content

After playing bloodborne and dark souls 3, playing the oldest soul game sounded meh to me. But I was determined enough to see every souls game so I played. And I am glad to say I am really happy for giving this decision.

Why? Because this game still have exclusive things that no souls game ever did it, so it's still feels fresh somehow. But of course with their first time, there is unfortunate shortcomings as well.

I will only talk about differences compared to the souls games because of that you will not understand some of the things that I will say if you haven't played the game.

World

First I thought world is kind of disappointing, because it was too straight, yeah you can select which world to start but every world looked like straight ways to me unfortunately, but then I realized oh shit. This game's world is actually massive but condensed.

What I mean by saying this is, there is a surprise in every corner of this game. Not just that, game does every step so naturally that you don't even realize.

First you see the which kind of world you are in, then you see which kind of enemies in it then you see how the game combines the both beautifully. What I mean is for example you are in cave, what do you expect? Some miners and usual grotesque monsters right? But as you go more deeper and more deeper, game evolves and changes the cave area to be an volcanic area, then the enemies become more volcanic and rock like, then you go even deeper in and you find an ancient area that holds scary boss like ancient monsters.

Now did you get what I mean? Game evolves and shows a different part of the world in every. Step. Of. The. Way. and you really feel the world building and immersion with this one, once you feel that, you realize actually how massive the game is. Because it keeps changing with every progress.

I can confidently say this game have god level world building in it. It's feel so natural that even tho I haven't played every souls game, this game feels more superb then the ones that I have played in this area. Because it "evolves"

Also tower of latria could be the best area I had ever experienced in a souls game. I am not kidding about it.

Gameplay and Challenge

After playing older games, when you come back to this you kind of feel dumbfounded. Because it's slow and really heavy. You can make this more bearable with equipping less heavy equipment and using a ring that gives you an ability to carry more weight but you still feel the heavy weight of it. I felt kind of not sure about this situation but then I realized it is not that important anyway in the end. Why?

Because this game acts a bit more puzzle like. Rather than making your character more reactive for action, you should consider how to act in that area, and not forget PATIENT IS THE KEY maybe even more with this title, because of it's puzzle nature.

For example there is an area with poisonous water that slows your movement also it does have enemies that can move fast in it so then you should use ranged equipment to kill them before they get to you, or there is a area that have enemies that have unkillable spirits in it, so you have to find the necromancer to kill them, not just that bosses are the same way. Every bosses require a different puzzle strategy to solve.

Of course every souls game does this to an extent but demon's souls is the one that tries the most with giving every bosses and areas some uniqueness and never repeats that one thing again. I really find this awesome. Because the ones that I played mostly changed their boss attack patterns and timings, but didn't felt entirely different.

I still can't forget about the maiden astrea obliteration fight or mantra ray super sword moment, or managing to force tower knight fall to his knees, or punching finale boss to death or playing hide and seek from a blind boss. No souls game ever manage to replicate these moments for me.

Also if you are crying about there is too much puzzle bosses rather than spam dodge bosses like every other damn souls game, demon's souls is not for you. Like I said it's focus is not about being full reactive it's about cautious counter acting.

Unfortunately it's not a complete win, because I felt like they couldn't balance some things right in this game.

What I mean is, when it comes to some bosses, some of them stays too passive and you can slash them to the death and some bosses are too much aggressive so it forces you to stay a bit too much defensive. There could be a better midpoint I think.

Also not just that there is one unfortunate thing you can carry near infinite of healing items. So, near the endgame no amount of challenge can stop you at that point and I found this a damn shame in this beautiful game... (At least dark souls fixes that, but bloodborne have the same problem for some reason...)

Unfinishness

Now everybody knows that snow area cut at this point right? But I feel like it's not that big of a problem. The bigger problem is, in every world's archdemon area doesn't have it's own fleshed out finale level and I find this kinda disappointing. Most of the time final boss area is so desolate that you can practically run to it's archdemon boss without any challenge. I don't know if this comes from the unfinishness of this game but this kinda bothered me, so this reason and balancing reason I can't give 5/5 even tho part of my heart cries to give it...

What the hell? That was really fun heartfelt adventure. I immensely enjoyed it

Story
Our lovable dork Kaito learns his ex returned even though she is supposed to be dead and somehow there is a kid of hers?? Of course you slowly uncover what really happened and it's a fun adventure with Kaito learning to be with a kid.
There is stupid and really long tailing mission and middle part of the story is a tad bit slow but other than that I really enjoyed it with the story

Combat
Kaito uses brawler and beast from yakuza 0 with small differences that comes from lost judgment mechanics like get a big speed/defense buff depending on the style or slide attacking while running, also yakuza 5 grapple is back for some reason? It was enjoyable even if it felt lesser than og judgment. My only major gripe with it is comes from lost judgment itself. Stun times is still too long. It was annoying in lost judgment but with Kaito it's more annoying because Kaito don't have a stand up fast from ground move. So when you fall to the ground, you need to spam the buttons as fast as possible every time, only way to get less stun is taunting for some reason? As long as you don't get hit there is no problem also equipment help as well, but beginning part kind of not nice
Also it's looks like they added new way to unlock skills in this game, in the base game you need skill books right? But now in Kaito files some of the skills also wants you to execute a certain move couple of times with the required skill book. I actually liked this change because you actually start experimenting for how you can do the required moves, it's a nice change.

So it's a nice dlc, but just a dlc so if you can wait for a discount I would say. But know that if you are like me and play rgg games for the main content, you will enjoy this dlc.

Oh shit this game is good!

After learning that yakuza kiwami 2 cut couple of content from the original, I choosed to play og one and glad I am glad I did it.

Superb atmosphere!
There is really something in this fixed camera points of kamurocho. They show the npcs in unique ways and also show details of the city and blur and bloom effects really gives the illusion of city that lives at night!

Superb Gameplay!
I was thinking how much I am gonna get bored playing this game because it doesn't have styles and I didn't get bored one bit. Because it's too arcady and fast to keep you engaged! You kick an enemy than turn back and punch an another enemy than turn to the left of him to grap and throw him to an another enemy with a super speedly. Kiryu feels like he is in a turbo mod constantly! And that's prevents gameplay to get boring even without different styles to choose with!

Superb Story!
Even after Kiryu choose to be away from the tojo, things he did comes back to haunt him in this game, after he punched everyone in the tojo, of course there is no one left except him to protect the city from the Omi Clan! And damn what a struggle it is! You keep thinking what the hell is gonna happen every point! And that's super good!

But there is a small problem, game's story is too big for it's own good to miss couple of potentials. There is a new romance for Kiryu that can't bloom fully because of the constant fights, there is an old mafia group that comes back from kiryu's past that kind of limits omi's story because story needs them mafias to shine for some reason. But I still damn liked the story! Why? Because Ryuji Goda too damn good to take any problem as negatives. He really pushes Kiryu to the absolute limit and it makes me super excited! Because of that, I forget any miss potentials and keep focused on Ryuji to kick back him to his place! And damn what a fight that is!

Meh side content
It's still the times when side activites feels side thing rather than the focus of the game. But still there is pretty fun stories to go through and activites to take part in. For example friendship introduced in this game and if you help somebody, they give you a unique heat action if you are near them, or there is a mini game where you become a host and manipulate people to spend money(it plays the same way hostess mini game does but it felt more entertaining to me with how insane it gets as it goes through), there is a cabaret minigame that you need to train hostess for a big income. But unfortunaly it's fun as watching a person sleeping. Because someone thought, you need to wait for hostess to do their job for 5 minutes after every session is fun?

There is also some side missions tied to minigames that exists and they are downright evil. Because they require you to finish the hardest version of minigames and hard is an understatement! Beating them wastes so much time that if you are not going for amon don't do it

There is also the usual small stories at every corner of the city. They are pretty short compared to the later titles but still they are fun to do, even if they don't explore things that much. But at least you can finish them in seconds, so they don't tire you like the later titles does

But amon is damn fun in this game! You really need to bring your "A+" game for beating him! So at least it felth worth it after the tiresome minigames.

I thought long that should I give 5 or 4 but I damn like this game so 5 starts worth it in my opinion. Of course maybe you won't like it or will I won't know that, but I say this is a game that is worth experiencing(after you play the first one of course, because there is some story moments tied to it)

Going from first game to this game was a bit of a disappointment. Even from the first case I felt something was not right, every case feels seperate from each other and nothing connects to nothing, feels like bunch of filler dlc cases than a sequel with no focus or reason for it's existence, I struggled to continue multiple times, I even forced myself to continue with convincing myself it's gonna eventually be good and it didn't... until the grand and the best and the most awesome case in the entire goddamn franchise that is.

THE FINALE CASE
(and the sole reason I am not giving this game a 2/5)