Recent reviews by gapzen

Only 67 mins and I doubt Ill come back. I have finished prelude and things which cause my negative feedback:
1. very clunky fighting system
2. disaster voice acting
3. characters looks like mix of very bad anime and young adult novel , missing even so popular in eastern games fit women and men (wtf is this Clay-like-Harry_potter wearing monocle ). It's like unwanted child of Final Fantasy and Guild wars with characters from Divergent
4. I wanted try the game with controller - not working, apparently the game has issues with wireless controllers
I know people need new MMORPG after Wow, FF, BDO not doing great but this is not a game to replace any of those games.

Weird and boring.

The only complex space simulator worth the time. Lots of time.

Final megastory of all fav yakuza, Kiryu. I will miss him forever. Outstanding as always.

revised after additional 777 hrs:
I have not played almost two years. I came back baited by super mokoko express which supposed to get one of characters to very end game. Well. I have played through it. I get to 1580 (around 60k gold needed for honing). Than struggle came. Reality check for gatekeeping : roaster less than 200, no full los card set, at 1600 another check- elixirs. I have tried to find groups but horrible experience so I have decided to get bus and went through all raids (apart of clown) to Akkan included. This is where the gear from event gets you. But than you get problems : hundred of thousends gold needed for upgrades, new systems : elixirs and transcendence bot heavily rmg and gold sinking (no guarantee chances or pity systems for end results). This is not even latest raid. real endgame is 1620-1640 atm. New raids coming this week and another in 2 months. Those who get to 1640 in next two weeks and get on hard mode latest raid will get extra resources from the event but if you dont than well, you get nothing and will be even further away from end game players. Funny is the top players expect these bonus as they need to catch up to korean players but they do not see is same problem for catching new/returning players to them. Apparently devs preparing solo raids but noone really knows what it will be like. If will give gold , how much etc. Another issue are bots. OMG BOTS. More bots than playerbase. I play mostly nights and I could see thosends bots every night self leveling, questing, farming. Pretty much everything. So they will be boting solo raids too. Game is in shambles and they dont know how to solve it or they dont want to. They will milk whales as much as they will be kept interested. Rest of players can approach the game casually. I would suggest to use event like the supermokoko to get through stories , play few raids and skip for another 6 months. Come back on another event to continue story. Game is not worth the time unless you are very rich and dont care about money but even than you can find better way to enjoy life than this.
(Honestly I have feelings devs are not really interested in new/returning players. New players experience is aweful. You would skip majority of the story so you will get confused and easily drop the game coz of no emotional attachment. )

Original review below
I write this review after 592 hrs of gameplay (almost nothing in queues as I have managed to login at night time and play mornings/days). I was waiting for this game for very long time. I never played Korean or Russian servers. I have main gs 1360 (t3), 3 alts on 920 (t2) and 3 alts on 500ish (t1). Today I burnt out rest of my hype and patience for this game. Positives : great story; interesting side quests and rapport quests; stable (I had only few crashes after one of the patches , controller related and devs fixed within few days); not the newest but still nice graphics cleverly used camera angles to make movie-like pictures. Massive content but nerfed so badly that you run through most of instances without issues. However this caused more problems. Streamers approach destroyed the likeness for the T1 and T2 content as everyone was rushing to t3. No suprised if content was so easy as become boring. Until you hit 1300ish gearscore and honing (upgrading gear) start becoming extremaly difficult. Unless you have deep pockets you will spend many hours doing boring grind. Most of the things you could do is time gated or gear gated but to extreme extent. Any game I played (and those who knows me will tell Im really dedicated player) after 600 hours I would be raiding endgame and this would be at least semi hardcore but most likely 4-5 days raiding minimum. Here I am not even able to do first raid. Today I have spend 5 hours grinding mats and honing percentage items to push my gearscore. I had enough to run 30 tries. All failed. So 4 hours of grind , about 2k gold for the tries only (not included gold I spend on some materials). And same time I see devs and Amazon decided to release even more high end raids. Im sorry but cant take it anymore. They seems to be totally disconnected with community or on purpose milking whales as much as is possible. BTW most of the guilds are struggling for members and very few actually playing content together as there is always so much difference in gear score of members that its easier to pug the group. So at this point absolutely no-no to play this game. I'm going to login daily to maintain guild and to see if in few months time they will implement all the missing stuff necessary to play this game with pleasure not like second job.

I wish I have more time to play Yakuza. Love the series.

I got to 78% of all achievs and stopped, one day I will be back to complete. Ok, on the game : after dissapointed of Y3 this was muuuuuch better. Fresh characters, story getting long waited completions (Majima brotherhood and how it all started). You will love it. Few things for completionists : pachinko has been removed ( dont waste time to look for it ) and golf is during daytime from any taxi. You will have to play game 3 times for 100% : normal (without switch to easy), hard and ex-hard. Baccarat bet for tie is the way for money. Enjoy . I am jumping to Y5.

First of all : I love Yakuza games. i write this down after finished Y4 because I did not want to jump to conclusions.
However playing remastered Y3 after Y0 and Kiwami's I got bored by substories and I am not fun of the old style of fighting in game. I run through story and jumped to Y4. One day I will be back to complete it but it will be after other yakuza's. In my opinion the weakest of them all.

Second in Yakuza series. Slightly different way of leveling abilities , minor changes with minigames. Shorter story but probably more emotional than first one. Highly recommended.