In the middle part of the game the flow started to come together for me. I still have pretty much all of the complaints I had last time I checked in, but the meandering story started to pick up and move towards... somewhere, anyway. Moving around got less painful as the party got stronger, and though I still felt like I was going through the motions, the pace was a little better.
Callbacks are good but there were way too many times where I was doing the exact same subquest from another Yakuza series game, even if that was the joke.
Anyway, just as the story gets moving and things really start to go down, the game pulls out the rug from under you by making the bizarre request that your party raise 3 million yen for a yakuza-backed politician's campaign. You have been making maybe hundreds of thousands of yen this entire game at your peak, so this is a really big ask. There are two ways to do the job, but most players, myself included, will take this opportunity to delve into the business management mini-game. It is clear that the developers really do not want you to skip it.
The meatiest of the various mini-games this time is a couple hours of a simple loop: purchase businesses, hire employees, upgrade your stuff, and watch the money roll in when you're done. There's a lot of system depth to it, including a lot that isn't adequately explained, but in practice it's a solid six hours of number-go-up that becomes completely brainless about halfway in.
It's also quite uncomfortable that the game sells you superior employees for $5.
You make the three-mil line about three hours in, but by then I wanted to finish the entire mini-game game, if only to never have to play it again. You get a busted magic spell for the hero at the end, as if to pay for your lost time.
Your secretary/love interest in this minigame is a digitized version of popular anime voice actress Saori Hayami. She joins the party if you play the game for a bit, and the character is quite broken in combat. Again, they really, really wanted you to play this mode.
After finishing management, I came out with more money than I needed and a nuclear bomb in my arsenal. I'm prepared to breeze through the rest of the game, which is good, because I just want to see the story and get out at this point, 30 hours in.
Anyway, immediately after all that the game offers a 30-floor optional battle dungeon with superior gear, in a game where it's impossible to get good gear. This chapter of the game has been stopping me for busy work every step of the way.
Like I said, everything I was worried would happen to Yakuza as an RPG... kind of did.