The amount of enjoyment I got from this game seems to belie the fact that it has 93% positive reviews on Steam. Speaking frankly, most of the "most helpful" reviews on Steam are the most useless reviews. Except for the tedious combat system and the extremely mediocre story, it's essentially the same game as Yakuza 0.
Strengths:
[+] Graphics looks great and it performs amazingly even on iGPUs
[+] Can save anywhere now. Also, autosave works flawlessly.
[+] The first half of the story is interesting
Weaknesses:
[-] "You can upgrade abilities" - FFS you don't need to remind me every time I go to the menu.
[-] Every positive review of this game is about Majima. But after 3 fights Majima disappeared from my game (I have found some reviews who also faced the same bug). So, I couldn't level up my "Majima Everywhere" and my Dragon style remained useless throughout the game. Also, the concept of dragon style is horrendous.
[-] The storyline is poor even when I'm not comparing it to Yakuza 0. Goro Majima is capricious and a lame comedian in the story who acts like a demented gay.
[-] Combat is far more difficult than Yakuza 0. However, difficulty is not the issue here. Fighting now is like button-mashing and drinking Toughness ZZ every minute. Bosses take ages to beat.
[-] Speaking of bosses, every boss units can regenerate very quickly which makes the fighting more tiring. Also some boss attacks are almost unblockable. So, it takes a lot of time to beat them which is not fun.
[-] Equipping weapons from inventory is very confusing. After equipping a weapon in one fight I get to see my weapon in the next fight
[-] The progression system of this game feels amorphous.
[-] There are only a few mini-games compared to the huge library of mini-games in Yakuza 0.
The gameplay and the story were so boring that I had to quit and I could not bring myself to finish the game. I ended up watching the rest of the story on YouTube even though it was lame drama as I intend to play Yakuza Kiwami 2.
Overall, it was a bad game.
Strengths:
[+] Graphics looks great and it performs amazingly even on iGPUs
[+] Can save anywhere now. Also, autosave works flawlessly.
[+] The first half of the story is interesting
Weaknesses:
[-] "You can upgrade abilities" - FFS you don't need to remind me every time I go to the menu.
[-] Every positive review of this game is about Majima. But after 3 fights Majima disappeared from my game (I have found some reviews who also faced the same bug). So, I couldn't level up my "Majima Everywhere" and my Dragon style remained useless throughout the game. Also, the concept of dragon style is horrendous.
[-] The storyline is poor even when I'm not comparing it to Yakuza 0. Goro Majima is capricious and a lame comedian in the story who acts like a demented gay.
[-] Combat is far more difficult than Yakuza 0. However, difficulty is not the issue here. Fighting now is like button-mashing and drinking Toughness ZZ every minute. Bosses take ages to beat.
[-] Speaking of bosses, every boss units can regenerate very quickly which makes the fighting more tiring. Also some boss attacks are almost unblockable. So, it takes a lot of time to beat them which is not fun.
[-] Equipping weapons from inventory is very confusing. After equipping a weapon in one fight I get to see my weapon in the next fight
[-] The progression system of this game feels amorphous.
[-] There are only a few mini-games compared to the huge library of mini-games in Yakuza 0.
The gameplay and the story were so boring that I had to quit and I could not bring myself to finish the game. I ended up watching the rest of the story on YouTube even though it was lame drama as I intend to play Yakuza Kiwami 2.
Overall, it was a bad game.