Man is this a tough one for me! I have L O V E D every Like a Dragon game so far, and have played them all barring the ones not released in the west.

I f***ing hated this game.

The story is so bad it's like Z-tier fanfic, and the story is what I come to Like a Dragon games for. Yes, they're often goofy and your suspension of disbelief is often tested to its limit, but this one is just a step too far imo. Thanks to the amnesiac trope (which is extremely overdone and poorly implemented here) Majima just feels off. He's also not a good main character: see Yakuza Zero for the only way to do Majima right.

The gameplay is also off. The classic Yakuza beat em up style gameplay is here, which I have always liked, but here they've added a jump button, which is bound to the dash button, which means you'll be constantly jumping instead of dodging which ruins the flow of combat. Sure, you'll probably get used to it, but as a 10+ year Yakuza fan, it's a hard switch to make and doesn't really add anything meaningful. As for the ship combat, it's ok I guess, but worse than I remembered AC Black Flag being (and probably more so than the upcoming remake).

I dunno. I know this isn't a mainline Like a Dragon game, but after this and their idiotic casting choices in Kiwami 3, I'm kind of concerned about the future of one of my favourite franchises? A feeling I've become sadly all too familiar with lately.

Really frustrated with this one. I don't like giving negative reviews but I think this one is justified. I do think this is the worst Yakuza game by a good margin and borderline a bad game. I don't really have any complements other than it felt polished and didn't run into any bugs / glitches? The combat did not feel all that great (whoever in the press said this was like Devil May Cry need to play Devil May Cry again) or interesting to me and the pirate related stuff was genuinely boring.

Even the weaker Yakuza games had a good to great story to fall back on but it was not present here. It felt padded out for no reason but also at the same time very rushed. Really hard to explain but that's how I felt. There were a few good moments that made me think "oh yeah this is a Yakuza game" and not "why does this feel like a really bad filler arc of an anime".

I am quite concerned with the direction and management of this franchise, its almost like RGG doesn't know what they are doing anymore. Infinite Wealth's story was also really bad and I have heard really bad things about Yakuza 3 Kiwami (I have not played it myself).

This game is the dumbest thing I have ever played and I love it.