it was nice to see these two again, the new duo are ok too. don't like how getting a weapon to lvl5 doesn't give a pop up on what's new and exciting about it like they used to.
i have a lot of hangups with the dragon engine, tak isn't anywhere near as likable as previous rgg protagonists, and the mortal wound and gang attack systems blow it's really weird how you have two fighting stances but only one of them gets any skill tree upgrades
i wish kiryu had more taxi missions, shinada's gimmick of having bad unarmed but incredible weapon movesets was neat, also saejima's part was fun, the haruka section was a nice change of pace
tanimura and saejima were a lot of fun to play as, i'd recommend looking up what locker key goes to what before picking anything up cause your inventories aren't shared until the final chapter
i'd say play the ps2 version first or instead, this being one of the first dragon engine games really shows and they cut out like half the sotenbori map
i'm one of the weirdos that's in the "this is better than kiwami" camp, there's an undub patch if you don't like the english va and it emulates ok these days