Well, it's a game from Yakuza series, so if you liked it[series] so far, this is a must have.
It took me exactly 40 hours to beat it(at around 65% completion), but due to afking, and trying out things with loading and saving, Steam shows up 60.
The story perhaps is the darkest among the whole series, and it's really good. It might be very slow for some, but on chapter 9(out of 13) it really speeds up, and truly engages you. I always fear new main characters in Yakuza but Yagami really grew on me. I felt he was much bolder than Kiryu, especially if we think of Kiryu's Y5-6 versions. Other characters are very well made too.
The combat is awesome. We have 2 combat styles, one for larger groups, and the other rather focusing on one opponent.
I feel like thanks to this game, Dragon Engine was really polished. It's not Y6 where you had a downgrade in literally every aspect of fighting. The ragdoll still acts funny at times, but it's not as bad as in Y6 where it took ages to get up after a ridiculous ragdoll.
Side content is still top notch, even if we're missing crucial elements like karaoke and some other activities. There's still a large number of things to do. I think Friendships system really works well in encouraging you to do side missions, etc.
Graphics and audio is also great, but that's a series standard. Dragon Engine still looks pretty, cutscenes are awesome. Some of the QTEs in fights are already amongst my faves in entire series(final boss QTE is fantastic)
Soundtrack in my opinion goes back to the roots, with guitar themes, also sometimes barely audible lyrics. Took me back to the OG Y1-Y2 and Y3 music.
But, the game has it's issues like every game. The tailing missions are horrible. They are way too long, they always come down to slowly walking around your target, the music constantly changes from calm one to dramatic, because target turned and is behind a column, also they're no challenge at all.
The random encounters were also a pain in the ass, because they're only a waste of time in the endgame. I was cursing this stupid guy, who kept texting you because KEIHIN GANG WANTS YOU DEAD again and again. Thank god for the Stealth extract which disables random encounters for a short time.
The technical side of the game is good too. I didn't experience any serious bugs, crashes or infinite loadings. The game ran well on my average in today's standards PC.
Overall, I think I can safely put this game in my TOP 3 in the whole series, on the first place in podium next to Yakuza 0 and 5.
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