Story wise, this game is better than Yakuza 0, the high points this reaches in its story are fantastic. But the gameplay drags this game down quite a bit.

It has the same styles as Yakuza 0, but they are overall weaker and less enjoyable to use. Enemies guarding used to just be a bit of annoying whilst using Rush style. Now, if an enemy is guarding, their isn't much you can do to break it. You either need to use a move to break it. (Most of them don't combo into anything so it becomes a hassle to use them) Get behind them, which isn't easy when their always facing you or just waiting for them to not guard, which isn't a great way to handle your combat.

But the main thing that holds this games combat down is the bosses. 2 things that I don't like about them. One is the Kiwami Moves, which are finishers you need to do on the bosses based of their specific style. On paper their fine, but the idea that you need to either smack them a bunch to gain heat to use a finsher on them or use a item which generates heat is kind of dumb. The game also doesn't tell you how to deal with these sequences in the bosses. It's a upgrade in the skill tree that you have to find. Meaning that someone could go the whole game without knowing the solution to these parts of the bosses.

The other thing I hate about the bosses is the fact that it's almost impossible to get a hit in sometimes, some fights will have the bosses dodging nonstop and guarding almost immediately after they dodge, making it incredibly annoying to deal with them. You either have to use rush and do the same shit their pulling and start dodging everywhere, or you need to unlock tiger drop and cheese legitmately every fight in the game.

Overall good game, story is imo better than yakuza 0 but the boss fights are what really drag this game down.