Oh man, that new Yakuza game………. it's so good.
It's a great example of a game that has questionable aspects to it but it simply has too much charm in other ways for it to remotely matter.
My complaints could be summed up thusly: for a game that canonically justifies itself as a blatant Dragon Quest ripoff, I sure wish it had ripped off Dragon Quest a little **more** than it did, in some places! There are some real weird and not all that fun design choices in the combat and character progression systems. Way too much skill redundancy, the job system is a bit clunky, weird difficulty curve overall with that one inexplicably huge spike near the middle, and lategame becomes mostly about chewing through enormous boss' health bars without much threat to you.
Also, if it really is true that they switched it from a brawler to a JRPG after that 2019 April Fool's video, it definitely shows. I'm no game developer here but wow, they really had to shove that brawler engine square peg into a round hole in a few places. A turn based RPG with rudimentary hit detection and no way to control positioning directly?? There's a first for everything I guess! It mostly works but when it doesn't, it's more than a little silly.
BUT as much as I gripe it's because I loved the game a lot. It has that dependable Yakuza charm and and humour and melodrama in spades. It feels like RGG Studio had a ton of fun injecting the game with what they feel was possible to execute in an RPG and not a brawler, and again, if this was the product of a shockingly last minute design shift, kudos to them. I love all of the characters, it could have been and I hope will be emphasized more in subsequent games but turning it into a JRPG means having more Hang Out With Buddies time and means more involvement from secondary characters in the story and that was refreshing. This fell by the wayside a bit too but where it worked it really worked. I don't speak or even remotely understand Japanese but I feel the voice acting is Good, as usual, if not often great. Otsuka Akio is great as always as the audio manifestation of masculine over-the-hill-edness, and Nakaya Kazuhiro beyond being a big part of why Ichiban is such a lovable guy, really got me during emotional climaxes.
Going to add to what I feel is almost a unanimous opinion but Ichiban is absolutely a worthy successor to Kiryu. He's lovable in a lot of the same ways but is more animated and fun in a lot of ways as well. I trust him with my life.
All-in-all, while it was a bit clunky in some aspects of the execution, I think JRPG was an interesting and refreshing move for the series. I'm a newer fan of the series and came on board like many with Yakuza 0, and I've played Kiwami and a little tiny bit of 6. If Yakuza is the best game, and it's certainly my favourite of the 3 I've played, Yakuza 0's throne, resting on the solid foundation of overall more consistent execution and being an absolute treatise on the effective use of cliffhangers and changing of POV characters, is safe... for now. What's old in Yakuza: Like A Dragon is as good as always and what's new _mostly_ works great, and so tightening up the RPG mechanics and hopefully leaning more into Buddy Time in the narrative bodes extremely well for Yakuza: Like A Dragon 2.
