Good game, I'd place it at #3 (har har) of the games in the series I've played so far, after 0 and LAD.
Its fights got really tedious at points, but unlocking the parry moves helped that a fair bit. I'm not sure if it's from playing on Hard or if the game's just like that, but enemies block way too much, and don't attack enough to Tiger Drop them so most fights devolve into mashing the throw button so I'm doing some damage. I'll always miss having Beast Mode, but have never missed it more than some fights in this game. Going forward into 4 I'm just going to play on normal.
I skipped a lot of the side content. The only thing I went out of my way to do all of were the revelations because they're very funny and the moves you learn from them are pretty good. Shout out in particular to the ninja dash heat move that chains into 4 enemies. But the end-game screen gave me somewhere around 20% for completion.
Overall, really enjoyed it though! All of the orphanage stuff was really sweet and the Okinawa characters were all charming as hell. I haven't cried playing a video game as much as I did during Chapter 11 for a long while, a lotta back to back gut-punches there. The overarching conspiracy plot was uhhhh present I guess, it sure did function as something to string the story along.
Gonna move on to 4 straight away, hopefully beat it out a bit before Infinite Wealth releases so I can take a little break from the series first. Maybe this year will be the year I clear out my Yakuza backlog.
