Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Review (Death's Malice)
To start this off, I will not call myself a huge fan of the Yakuza series. I like certain aspects of other games, but generally the series felt lacking in gameplay and story, and out of the games I've played, I would only say that Yakuza 7 and Yakuza 0 were actually enjoyable. That is, until I picked up this game. This game is the pinnacle of Yakuza; this is all that I expected from the series and more. The only lacking bits are its semi-predictable story that was boring at some moments, but it really makes up for it in the fact that it is truly the definition of open world. Almost if not all the content is available as soon as you complete the second chapter of the game; little to no barriers are in place for the player to just go out and explore (such is the way of the pirate). The minigames are revamped and made a lot better (including reasons to actually do them), while the combat was fine-tuned and made actually fun, and overall this is the best experience I've had playing a Yakuza game, let alone the beat 'em up genre as a whole. If this game's story was more fine-tuned and there were more weapon options, I feel this could have easily been a top 5 game of all time for me.