mae_h

Let's start with the positives of this game, because despite my low ranking, it has a lot of great things, such as probably one of if not the best story in the mainline series.

Music-wise, it has a soundtrack that while not as great as the peak of the series (Yakuza 2, 3 and 4 for example), it's an incredibly solid effort, fitting every scene rather well.

Graphics wise, the new Dragon Engine, despite it being at it's earliest with this game, is probably one of the best looking engines for modern games today, with Onomichi being genuinely beautiful to see.

The substory writing is pretty dang good for the most part, and characters that you never expected to see once again appear, making this a nice game for those who played the series all the way chronologically or in release order.

However, where the game fails, it's as what I'd argue it's the most important aspect of a Yakuza game, if not to say a brawler title in general. The combat.

The combat in Yakuza 6 is genuinely bad.

Everything feels so floaty you don't get to feel a single punch, punches bounce off blocking enemies as if they were god damn rubber, you can't store weapons, more than half of Kiryu's iconique techniques such as the Komaki Parry are gone.

The physics, while amusing at first can genuinely interrupt combos and Heat Actions ruin the flow of combat.
To not mention issues like attacks that should do damage not doing any damage because the enemies just so happened to crash with a wall.
Making not even grab throws, which would be excellent with the new physics actually satisfactory. As half the enemies won't receive a single bit of damage or the grab throw will be interrupted by the physics themselves

Nothing feels like you are actually playing a brawler game.
Literally anything goes except it doesn't because half the strategies you'd use in previous games just don't work. And it could be argued that it is genuinely the worst combat of the series, as even the PS2 games at it's worst had an actually good gamefeel.
This game on the otherhand has nothing in it's combat, making it absolutely underwhelming and unrewarding. The bosses are an absolute bore and only two fights in the game are actually good.

Nothing in the combat of this game is genuinely satisfactory for long, the leveling system is absolutely awful to go through and just makes one want to use cheat programs so you don't have to deal with it, and most of the updates are absolutely stupid and pointless, such as the friendship ones.
Heat Orbs are a bad mechanic that also interrupts the flow of combat, extreme heat is literally 5's Dragon Spirit but bad. And the combat absolutely fails at almost everything.

As to issues outside the combat, because there are some.
The Gang Sidestory is just boring, uninteresting and an excuse to add DLC to the game, which also completely break said mode.
With intermediary fights that are just tedious to go through and impossible if you don't have infinite healing items.

And while 6's story is absolutely fantastic, it has it's fair share of issues, such as the portrayal of Someya, who should not be portrayed as this innocent kid who got too much into yakuza politics, when in truth he is a horrible person
There's also the inclusion of the Jing-weon, which I feel were just shoved in to add a reference to Yakuza 2, I appreciate the attempt but they just... exist. They do nothing except set up a better inclusion of them in Like a Dragon.

Now, before anyone goes and says that this is because of a "skill issue", I'll leave for the record that I've played the whole series since Yakuza 2 on Hard Mode, with the only exception being 3, which I've played on Easy for entirely different reasons.
If you are looking for a genuinely rewarding combat, you are better off playing any other Yakuza game.

If you can look past the combat, you get probably one of the best experiences in the series.

However, because of the combat being such a big part of the series, I genuinely cannot look past it being just awful, it's a Brawler game.

I am glad to hear that from Kiwami 2 and so on the Dragon Engine would be better used, but this game singlehandedly made me lose hope in the upcoming Ishin remake or any game in the series with a new engine.