Fantastic setting, a great original story with incredible characters and fun gameplay. It's everything you could want in a game and that's why it's easy to recommend to other games. And remember:

"Friends are like stones, you can never have too many"

It was fantastic when I played it in 2006 as a kid, but now it's aged 18 years like a good Scotch single malt whisky and I can enjoy it again as an adult.

What I expected:
Cool characters, great story, fun combat

What I also got:
Collecting cans for money, buying weapons from a sex shop, paying a chicken to run one of my businesses.

10/10 - Would Yakuza again

I met my wife in Guild Wars 2 = 10/10

The game was fun too xD

If you can pick the game up during a sale then you've got yourself a bargain. It isn't genre changing but it has its fun moments.

But that being said, can I recommend it? NO. After getting really close to the end of the game it broke and wouldn't let me progress. Whilst the publisher did look at my save file which was cool of them, they couldn't fix it. So 25 hours of progress wasted as I was told I had to restart - something I don't plan to do as replaying 25 hours doesn't sound fun enough and I don't want to risk facing the same problem again.