it's a shame things had to turn out like this. This game is so painfully average.

Main Gameplay:
Good fun. An improvement over 7.
Though, heat actions are once again ruined. When they do happen, it feels like a jumpscare, with no clear confirmation that all prerequisites are met.
In previous titles, you react to a heat action prompt letting you know you're about to initiate some QTEs for damage, with the context of where you and the opponent are. You know where you are spatially and grabs/weapons helped set them up.
Now, in Like a Dragon 8?
Uhhh hope the enemy was in a desirable spot.
Hope there was a weapon nearby that has heat compatibility.
There's no real way to tell. Total crap shoot. It makes kiryu's blue style the least fun to use. Same with ichi's freelancer job. Both classes are also empty handed, so you miss out on the elemental benefits or exploiting enemy weaknesses in this turn based battle system.
Why did they bother bringing heat back at all.

To that extent, kiryu's extreme heat mode is just mash square till they die.
Which, is just like the previous titles, yes. But I've always found extreme heat very boring.
Do you know how many legacy heat actions you guys have at your disposal, developers???
Extreme heat started getting interesting in gaiden because it amplified all of kiryu's spy gadgets in a goofy way. I went from sending 10 drones one by one, to an absolute swarm. That was cool!
It made doing what i was already doing more fun.
In 8, I'm let down. From previews and hype leading up to it I assumed id get all the old controls back, resulting in a really cool fusion of Yakuza and Like a Dragon gameplay. No.
You can't guard, enemies don't attack back, there are no combos.
Let me walk around picking up shit off the ground or carry an enemy over to another to get some free heat actions off
We don't even get that. There's no strategy. There's no depth.

Combat as a whole is a bit... Less strategic than id like. The green area markers are a SUGGESTION.
The enemy is clearly in my fanning green area, I hit accept. My character runs up, and the opponent jumps aside to make room for me. The attack misses.
Alright, dude.
Knockback skills feel heavily underutilized. The 1 shark hazard is the only instance I can even think of where it really felt rewarding for using knockback skills.
Not to mention the plethora of BAD interactions I've had with the knockback skills. Enemies will sometimes just not go where the arrow says they will!
The "infinite symbol" tag team stuff is the worst with that. A lot of them show you a big zone that will eliminate multiple enemies in a line. Okay but if there's ANY obstacle around you AT ALL, the game will teleport you to a spot where the tag team cutscene isn't obscured. Okay well now the attack is pointed towards a random direction, only hitting 1 dude.

With how "random" fights feel, I don't feel fully engaged. This is a game where enemies will fall out of combos. Found weapons and team attacks are programed so only the final hit will kill. Welp! Thanks to enemies bumping into each other or the wall is at an angle, the final attack will just miss! Sometimes, on your way to an enemy during an attack command, there will be objects on the ground in your path. The attacker will kick the object towards the opponent for a free hit! This applies to enemies and yourself. It's a shame 80% of the time the object kicked misses entirely....!!!!!

Paralysis weapons are king
Get one of them bad boys and you've upped the chances of "enemy skips a turn" tenfold.
Then it's just about dumping skills and chugging coffee for MP refills.

I wish I could just hit the "analyze" button like in the persona games to see what all the opponent is weak to at a given moment. Let me open the Sujidex mid fight.
As it stands, you have to go down your list of skills, and selecting them one at a time to see how the enemy will react
"alright lemme pick them in order. Knife attack? Nothin... Gun attack? Okay they're weak to that, lets see, what element?
Ice? Nah.. what about this lightning skill? Hrm, nothing special. Fire? ohh okay yeah fire works too." Every single. Fight.
It's tiring.
Don't bother checking the fist icon attacks, either. No enemy is weak to blunt attacks. For .... Some... Reason
Again, making classes with no weapons really underwhelming and boring.

I wish battle skill descriptions separated the flavor text and what it actually does.
I wish it gave me the actual percentages for what the crit rate will be and calculate the enemy's evasion stat for my percent chance the attack will even land.

I wish I could filter my items down to "gives MP" ASAP. I HATE scrolling through my 1000 food items to find the one I need. Wanna pop a kiwami drink for one person to get a .2x exp boost? Have fun digging around for that shit. There is no explicit category for that one, pal.
It's right above the smoke bombs though, you know, for next time.
Outside of battle, give me the lowest MP drinks, during battle, I want some big MP drinks. It's only optimal, man.
Battle items in general? Never used them.
What a wasted concept.
Make them not waste a turn, lemme imbue them with my current weapon's element. Something.
Why would I waste a turn on a 100 damage flash grenade that has a non 0 chance to just not inflict anything.

Newly added members are unfortunately level scaled to the story. This means if you did a bit of grinding beforehand, they fall behind the curve and NEVER catch up, partly because of the way bond levels work. Ouch!
You're slowly gaining bond with every little activity you do together (including battles). Welp. New members start off at 0 bond. Building bond is so slow. By the end of the game I didn't even have Kiryu, the second main protagonist, at bond level 100! The party members I had the longest were at about level 75, with newer members hovering around 50. Congrats, you now have a new member that doesn't add anything new to your current team comp with way less inherited skill slots.

Some jobs are locked behind DLC. In a Role-Playing-Game. LOL. LOL!!!

Side content:
You're getting to see familiar faces as they do the same things, again, in HAWAII!!! All your favorites are here. You have big roomba scientist guy, the circus guy, sujimon master- so glad they made it back and are up to the same goofy antics. Well, maybe not the sujimon guy.

The big minigame this time around are the sujimon battles and I'm sorry. This is abysmal.
This is your big expanded side quest beside donda island. Ichiban confessions in 7 was fun, led to a lot of money, and unlocked a party member.
But this? Your sujimon summoner class gets better...
Okay
Listen here. There is no way I'm grinding up that shit to make this unarmed job viable. (You cant even transfer sujimon summoner skills over to other jobs. This is the only job that's restricted like this.)

It's not fun.
Having to load in and out of poor man's pokemon...
Where you have 1 attack and 1 super
The supers are so annoying and risky to use.
You better nail the roulette else you completely miss the attack entirely and all of your turn meter goes to 0!!
Not that it really matters. As long as you keep your sujimon at the appropriate level, you'll never lose.
Just mash 'A' on your middle dude till they all die
Sometimes you'll want to swap who the middle dude is, which doesn't have a downside or real risk.
It's dreadful.

Sidequests are okay, I enjoyed maybe 25%? The rest are predictable lessons with characters I'll never see again.
The Aloha links system is pretty cute. I enjoyed saying Aloha to create bonds with people around town. It's a nice way to incorporate crowds into something interactive. I always made sure to wave to any buddies I see. Though, if someone was in trouble and I already had our bond maxed out, I literally had 0 reason to help them out. A bit of unfortunate cognitive dissonance there.
I enjoyed the bond level system with the party as well. It was the only system in the game that you can't hard grind out with booster items. The drink links and walk-and-talk finales were both fun to indulge and were pretty rewarding.

The paradise island tycoon side game didn't really hook me. Swinging the bat feels awful and there's no animation canceling on the dodge roll so combat is very committal and awkward. Lining up a bug net swing with yakuza controls is pretty wack, I really wish holding the square button let you creep around with more precision (you know, like how animal crossing does it.) Crafting buildings, leveling up your town and doing your dailies is a staple loop but this game is already way too long as is. It's fine. Not offensive like the sujimon battles are.
Well, after completing this side game to completion: It's bad.
Sujimon battles ARE IN THIS TOO!!!
I was finishing my daily tasks before nightfall came. You cannot sleep/end the day till sunset. WELP. Time to stand around waiting!
Pretty miserable. I never understood how additional foot paths worked, the game will tell you when a building triggers a bonus near paths but it wouldnt say anything for the paths i built? So i was limited to using the basic paths. Which is plenty doable for an S rank in both satisfaction/popularity anyway. The game is really easy/forgiving with guest happiness. It was not worth waving hello or giving gifts to boost moods daily.
The online functionality is so weird and "why did they bother."
The top islands are what im assuming to be hackers on PC, with golden ichiban statues filling every blank spot on the island. The sujimon angle is as bad as i described earlier, but this is technically a way to do "online sujimon battles."

Story:
I've been playing Yakuza games since highschool.
Ichiban was a breath of fresh air, but if you think the story in 8 was anywhere CLOSE to 7's... Idk what to tell u.
90% of the side content is stuff I've already done, with characters I've already seen.
Remember this guy from the last game?? Well yeah, he's in Hawaii now, doing the same damn thing.
It's like nostalgia baiting for last week's dinner.
Everyone's motive for being part of the story is just... Silly. Adachi and Nanba call you up like "yeah we were bored, so we're in Hawaii now."
Majima and the gang will tell you "hell no. we are NOT joining your quest" only to show up during the final chapter as part of your quest anyway. Alright. Guess they were bored too.
When you present me with uninteresting answers, I'm going to file that along with 'boring'

Kiryus whole "imma die for real this time I better catch up on old memories" doesn't really land for me when kamurocho isn't nostalgic, I was just there in gaiden or whatever.
How are you nostalgic for pocket slot car racing, you did it just last week, buddy!!!
I do think the final 2 events with Date-san were pretty good though.
And collecting screenshots of old titles and memories is a cute idea.
There's this sarcastic or developer commentary air to it that I really enjoy.
"ahh yes... the kamurocho bridge. I loved fighting dudes on the bridge. I would toss dudes off it. I wonder why I have that strong desire to do that?"
Or the one about staminan X stuff, "this stuff is so good. Shame the naming convention sucks. Why did we do that."

I just find it hard to care that kiryu's trapped in this limbo where he cant see anyone he loves, because, the daidoji wont allow it!!
His whole plan was stupid. The disguise never works. People spot his ass as kiryu frame 1. The daidoji are pretty dumb thinking this plan was a good one.
And that was a problem I had with GAIDEN (and to an extent 6, with its ending.)
"oh shit... This plot point isn't sad enough... Idk, give him cancer"

I didn't care for the villains this time around. It's supposed to be all interconnected and part of some larger plot, but I don't care... 8's story just makes Arakawa-san look worse, a disservice to 7's great tale.
Yamai was surprisingly endearing. The best villain here. He's got a deeply buried softer side and his final scene was fantastic. Everyone else just felt generic/uninteresting. 0 redeeming qualities. Even Ei-chan. That dude is complete scum. Ichiban let him off wayyyy too easy. I'm a forgiving person, but that's unhealthily forgiving.

I like tomi! chi-chan is cute and adds a lot to the story. Good female rep is kinda rare in yakuza. (I mean, honestly, why do women STILL only get like half the job options that guys do?)
I uhhhhh didn't really enjoy the vtuber angle. At the end, she foils Bryce Fairchild's big plans by broadcasting his biggest secret to the whole world, then IMMEDIATELY apologizes to her whole audience that her channel was full of lies and deceit. ???
I get that you need to redeem this horrid channel, it caused a lot of grief to Ichiban AND Kiryu but NOW?? Right now? You just exposed the big bad on that very same channel, idiot.

Saeko is so unlikable here. Ghosting Ichiban and refusing to talk to him at all is just... cringe. This gets more depth in her drink link with Kiryu, but it largely doesn't matter. She was just mad Ichiban didn't say "I love you" before proposing. Okay..... man, It's implied. You really did him dirty for a whole YEAR because of that?? Wow! Stay single you miserable hag.

This is supposed to be modern times but when you present me the same kamurocho map from 2010... It doesn't feel modern.
Yakuza games are supposed to take place around the same year they release but I really don't think they made the jump to "modern day" very gracefully. It's a tad jarring.
Hawaii feels a bit better but it kinda feels like Japan 2 at times.
Ichi and tomi have a bit of "language barrier" interactions initially and I found that really cool. Ichi is in a new city and really wants to find someone who speaks what he speaks, thus finding tomi is really lucky! After the first cutscene together they dont ever bring that angle up again. I wish Tomi asked questions about certain japanese words or could be a middle man, translating for ichi at times. It woulda sold the globe trotting just a bit more. I just see missed opportunity there.

The endings of yakuza games usually go really hard- This was one of the weakest finales I've seen in a longggggg time. I sense a lack of confidence, too. The finale chapter is full of monologuing and last minute recaps of what the bad guys' motives even ARE. Both Bryce AND Ebina will talk your ear off before their fights. Just standing around, talking, for way too long because the game doesn't set them up properly!

I'm not interested in the hypothetical 9th entry of this story. Thank you RGG studios. It's been a long journey with lots of memories.
Rest in piece, Kazama Kiryu.

Went for the New Game Plus run for the final achievement-
beating the game on "Legend" difficulty does NOT unlock the achievement for "Hard" difficulty as well. So i had to redo the final dungeon on a lower difficulty. This design for difficulty achievements just irks me. It's a waste of my time.
Not a very difficulty 100% achievement list. probably the easiest in the series?