My personal GOTY for 2023. Takes the best of the best from every Dragon Engine game thus far to create, while on the shorter side, an extremely fulfilling experience for any Yakuza/LAD fan. Kiryu's combat is at its best here by far, giving the Yakuza style the charge attacks from Tiger in Lost Judgment was an incredibly smart decision, allowing for incredibly strong and quick boss kills, while the Agent style is a fun gimmick style that has you laughing every time you do something ridiculous with it (this is the entire style). Unfortunately, I find the story hits far harder if you've played 3 and 6 (6 being my personal fav in the series), and given part of this game existing is to ease newer players from LAD7 into Kiryu for his upcoming dual protag role in LAD8, this move is very ??????. Thankfully as someone who HAS played those games, I can confidently say the story was at its best, and the way it bridges between what happened to Kiryu after 6 to his appearances in 7 are excellently executed. Most of this game is dedicated to the side content, which was fine for me, allowing me to fully indulge myself in the side content of an RGG game for the first time, as previously I had only done the sidequests in LAD7 for the summons and the karaoke in every game. My only real criticism is the file size. 24 gigs of this game is dedicated to the LAD8 demo, which is literally not even this game, and another 24 is dedicated to incredibly high quality footage of women for the cabaret club minigame, leaving almost half of the game dedicated to just those, which is frankly ridiculous.