u/Monessi

Insomnia strikes, so I'm doing this. Likely long and rambly.

Category 1: Story

8. Yakuza 4- Rubber Bullets, lackluster finish, weird Daigo/Majima thing that kinda never gets addressed, among other complaints.
9. Judgment- If it was just the first two-thirds of the game, it might be in first instead of seventh, but that third act is such a limp, wet fart of a finish that cashes none of the interesting checks the first 70% of the game spends writing.
10. Yakuza Kiwami 2- It's not even the secret Koreans that bother me mostly, it's all the extra characters butting into the finish who aren't Kiryu/Kaoru/Ryuji, who the rest of the game was about.
11. Yakuza 5- I don't really think the finish is necessarily super earned and a lot of the nitty-gritty plotting is kinda needlessly contrived and back-tracky, but the big emotional moments mostly hit.
    4)Yakuza Kiwami 3- The retcons are dumb, and none of the stuff around Richardson or Kazama really works for me, but the core stories about Kiryu, Mine, Okinawa, and Daigo very much work for me.
12. Yakuza Kiwami 1- Jingu shows up too late in the story and is too poorly developed for how important he is, and it detracts from all the other stuff that's mostly great, but hey, the other stuff is mostly great.
13. Like a Dragon - One dumb twist down the stretch with Mirror Face, but in general the storytelling is great.
14. Yakuza 0 - Only real knock I have on the story in this one is the hurried shuffling of deck chairs in the last ten minutes to get things in place for Y1, and maybe not making a convincing case that Y0!Nishki and Y0!Majima are gonna grow up to be Y1!Nishik/Majima.

Category 2: Non-Villain Characters

8. Yakuza 1- Unfortunately the only really important non-villain characters who aren't in the other games here are Yumi, who's never on-screen, Reina, who gets done super dirty, and Kazama, who bores me to tears, plus the most annoying iteration of Haruka.
9. Like a Dragon- Nature of being a party-based RPG means that bad characters get a lot more chance to annoy me, and I have absolutely no use for Nanba or Joon-gi. Saeko also doesn't do a ton for me. Ichiban and Zhao are great, though, and I enjoy Seong-hee and Eri in their limited screentime. Arakawa obviously excellent.
10. Kiwami 3- Orphanage kids, Baddies, and Rikiya are all solid-to-great, I just think this is a category the series generally does very well and I like the casts of the five games above this even more.
11. Yakuza 5- Shinada's good fun, Akiyama and Saejima are back, Mirei Park is pretty damned compelling narratively.... it gets a little thin further down the call-sheet, depending on who you do/don't count as villains, but Watase's pretty great, at minimum.
12. Yakuza Kiwami 2- Carried by how much I like Kaoru and her supporting characters, granted, but I like those characters a lot, so. Here we are.
13. Yakuza 0- Tanimura and Makoto are fantastic, and the deeper bench is full of some pretty fun one (or two)-offs like Miracle Johnson, Nishitani, Biliken, and Yuki.
14. Judgment- Everyone's great, to the point that one of my main complaints about it is that I wanted more for Higashi, Saori, etc. to do, and even a bunch of the tertiary Friendship characters are good fun, too.
15. Yakuza 4- Akiyama, Tanimura, and Saejima are all fantastic but even secondary and tertiary characters like Hana and Nair make a great impression, and even Hamazaki's randomly compelling after being the weak link in the previous game (or at least its remake). Best babyface cast in the series so far for me.

Category 3: Villains

8. Judgment- So lame they nearly ruin the game, particularly the generically evil payoff to who The Mole is. Hamura's fantastic but arguably doesn't belong in this category by the end of the game, and everyone else is an active drag on the product.
9. Yakuza 4- This game pretty feels like it pretty nearly forgot it was supposed to have villains in it and just kinda Madlibs'd its way to some bossfights.
10. Yakuza 5- Kurosawa's pretty great but most of the other villains feel underbaked.
11. Kiwami 1- Nishki obviously essential but none of the other villains do much for me.
12. Kiwami 3- Mine's fantastic, and Kanda's about as detestable a character as the series has, but Richardson and Hamazaki are big piles of dull nothing.
13. Kiwami 2- Goda's got maybe the best line in the franchise and is just generally a delight, but most of the other villains stink.
    2)LaD- Great villains pretty much top to bottom, give or take Mirror Face, if he counts.
14. Yakuza 0- The Dojima lieutenants alone probably secure this spot, and there's like five other great villains besides.

Category 4: Combat

8. LAD- The funny part is I normally prefer turn-based, but it's pretty basic here.
9. Kiwami 2- Good enough for government work.
10. Yakuza 5- Saejima got better, Akiyama got worse, and I just hate playing as Shinada.
11. Kiwami 3- Sue me, I like Ryuku style.
12. Kiwami 1- I like the varied styles.
    3)Yakuza 0- Two characters both with 3-4 fun styles? Yeah, I'll take it.
    2)Judgment- My only real complaint is that Tiger is so obviously better than Crane.
13. Yakuza 4- Ended up really loving the different feels of all four characters.

Category 5: Character Progression

8. Kiwami 2- The different exp types are an interesting failure, IMO.
9. Yakuza 5- Weird experience gating that varies by character turns me off, and requiring me to grind the IF8 to get enough Soul Orbs is just aggravating.
10. Kiwami 3- Basic but functional.
11. LAD- I love a good Job System, but this one feels a little grindier than I prefer.
12. Yakuza 0- I both like the money gimmick and am glad they (mostly) only used it once.
    3)) Kiwami 1- Simple but effective, and I actually quite liked the Komaki stuff here.
13. Yakuza 4- Simple system that works more-or-less perfectly.
14. Judgment- Always felt like I had the right tools for the job and usually felt like I also had something fun I was building towards.

Category 6: Macro-Games

8. Yakuza 4- Having Hostess Maker is actually worse than not having a Macro-Game. Fighter Maker is better but also bad.
   7 & 6) Kiwami 1/Judgment- Don't really have one, or if they do its so forgettable its slipped my mind.
9. LAD - Ichiban Confections overstays its welcome and the game kinda makes you play it more than I wanted to for money purposes, but it's fine.
10. Yakuza 0- I don't totally care about Real Estate Royal but if you have Cabaret Club Czar you can't finish any lower than this.
11. Yakuza 5- Liked all four of them quite a bit, though if I'm nitpicking the taxi part could have used fewer conversation missions and more of the other types.
12. Kiwami 3- Bad Boy Dragon scratches both my Dynasty Warriors itch and my Stray Cat Rock itch (and even includes a Stray Cat Rock reference), and the Orphanage stuff is a surprisingly great time as well. Dark Ties is great to the extent it fits in this category.
13. Kiwami 2- I still love Cabaret Club Czar and I also get to hire Hiroshi Tanahashi to Tower Defense my construction sites? Go Ace!

Category 7: Other Side Content

8. Judgment- I hated drone racing and the dice thing is just regular combat with extra steps. Side cases were solid, at least.
9. Yakuza 5- Pool is broken, fishing is tedious, the arena is wretched... karaoke's good at least? I also like Mahjong a lot when it's a good luck day, turns out.
10. Yakuza 4- 10 hostesses is too many hostesses.
11. Kiwami 3- There's not really a ton of it since I counted the Orphanage minigames as part of the other category, but what is there is fine.
12. Yakuza 0- I hate the telephone club but the sub-stories are great and disco is pretty damned fun except when it's mandatory. Plus Pocket Racing is back.
13. Kiwami 2- I really like the arena in this one, is mostly what this is about. I can't decide if the Bouncer Missions are a plus or a minus.
14. Kiwami 1- Pocket Racer, MesuKing, and Majima Everywhere all amuse me (though the latter overstays its welcome a bit).
15. LAD- Dragon Kart's a blast, Sujimon's good dumb fun, liked the arena ok, liked the movie theatre, good substories, and it just generally feels like there's a lot of options and you're not really forced into any/many of them.

Category 8: How Much Do I Hate The Goddamn Amons In This One?

8. Kiwami 3- Not materially difficult.
9. Yakuza 5- Jo's a real dick in this one but the other three are fine.
10. LAD- I refuse to grind to Level 99 for the True Final Amon, but the one you can get to without an extra eight hours of monotonous filler was fine. Some of the fights on the way to him might actually be more difficult.
11. Kiwami 1- My first Amon, so all his bullshit caught me a lot more off-guard. After this, I knew to expect chicanery.
12. Kiwami 2- If you ignore the Bouncer Missions, there's nothing too bad here. I did not ignore the Bouncer Missions.
13. Yakuza 4- It's really mostly about that goddamn hammer, the other three are more-or-less fine.
14. Yakuza 0- Call me crazy but I think it's rude to bring a cannon to a fistfight.
15. Judgment - Give me my phone back you sonofabitch.

Initial thoughts on the ending:

- Man, Haruka is a real jerk to T-Set and everybody at Dyna, huh?

- I can't get over how much this game feels like it's setting up Akiyama to be the new protagonist of the series only for him to never be playable again.

- Much like 4, feels like they kinda forgot to plan out who the final bosses were supposed to be until pretty late in the game. None of those confrontations particularly emotionally charged, but...

-... I actually quite like Aizawa, at least conceptually. Kinda wish they'd built more of the game around him instead of having him be essentially a pinch-hitter/surprise relative at the very end. His deal/philosophy works as the basis of a really fun villain, but he doesn't get the screentime to capitalize on it properly.

- I didn't like Shinada's combat at all but his story was fun and he's the one character I'm ok with them never bringing back, I found his (implied) ending pretty satisfying, whereas I wish Tanimura was in like every game and am still pissy about it.

- Terrible design choice to have an arena that large and that grindy not open up until chapter 21 in a 21 chapter game.

- Sango, Jiro, and Kazuya Amon are less dickish than they were a game ago. Jo makes up for it, though, and remains just the biggest bag of dicks.

- Watase is fun and I hope he gets to do stuff in 6.

- Kurosawa is actually a pretty fun/good schemer villain, but obviously he can't be the payoff physical confrontation and somebody probably should have made allowances for that and given him a proper heavy.

- Who Killed Majima? is probably a more effective plot hook if you don't know he stars in his own game later.

Not literally, I know he's won at least one off-screen fight as a teenager, but I'm seven games in now (haven't played 6 yet but skipped ahead to 7) and for a character so central to a combat-centric franchise, he sure does get his ass kicked a lot.

Whooped by Ryuji multiple times, whooped by Kiryu multiple times, whooped by a baseball player (only once narratively, but like ten times mechanically if you're doing the IF8 stuff). On top of his combat losses, he also seems to generally be the butt-monkey of the story, regularly getting kidnapped/shot/bullied by the various antagonists.

Does he have any canonical/on-screen wins I've either forgotten or not seen yet, or is he just forever the series' punching bag?