As someone who is a fan of both JRPG games and the Yakuza series I was very excited to play this. I was not disappointed and this game turned out to be my favorite Yakuza game ever and my second favorite JRPG of all time. There are alot of things I want to go over so I'm going to break them into separate categories. For the TLDR people, I will just say if you like JRPG's and don't mind long stories then get the game.

Story: The story for Yakuza 7 isn't the best but it definitely isn't bad either. Overall it was enjoyable but not there were really no exciting moments like in previous Yakuza games. The plot was good enough to continue but nothing that made me anxiously want to see what happens in the next chapter. I'm not going to go into what happens in the story but it really comes down to a simple plot of "Power corrupts people" and that's about it. No big life lessons or anything just a simple plot, which is fine for the first installment of this time of Yakuza game. There were definitely times the exposition went on a little too long and I did get a little tired but atleast they gave you a few breaks in between to save or wander off if you couldn't take it in one sitting. I will say there were a few good plot twists though. Some were kind of predictable but there was one at the very end that caught me off guard and I laughed because it was so off the wall no one would ever see it coming. Overall, story is average, nothing crazy but it is enjoyable enough to make you sit through till the end.

Characters: This was another thing I wish was expanded upon better in my opinion. Compared to other JRPG games the relationship between the characters doesn't feel as strong as it should. One girl is added from a mini game that is completely optional and the other 2 join your party just cause why not. I found myself not using 2 of the story characters that you got towards the middle end of the game because they just weren't engaging or interesting to me. The girl you get from the minigame does not even have much of a story apart from the minigame itself and she never interacts with the characters via story chats that you get walking through the story like the others do. It felt very awkward during one part of the game where one of your party members leave and it is just you and 2 others because I had to add minigame girl to make up for the missing spot and she had literally no correlation to the plot or story and showed up in none of the cut scenes. She was just there for the battles and that's it. Aside from her, I see where they were going with the party interactions via the chat in game, however I don't think its implemented very well. Often times when you are getting a new chat with your party members you have to stand completely still because if you pick up and item or accidently get into a fight the dialogue ends completely and you'll have to find a way to trigger it again. The mini stories are interesting sometimes but nothing that adds alot of character lore. The strongest parts of character development are via the bond stories you can unlock up to level 5. These are good but are still predictable because they always end in the same way: fighting some dude. I'll talk more about that in the Sidequest section. Overall, apart from maybe 2 characters and to avoid spoilers, most of the party members you get don't feel very engaging or like they're part of an actual team. It feels like they are a random tack on that are there to battle and you really aren't friends. In the future I'd like to see better engagement with the characters outside of mini character dialogue you get walking on the street and a more in depth character stories where you aren't just at a bar but actually exploring the areas and talking to people.

Gameplay: This is the best part of the game in my opinion and I think for a first try they did a great job on this. By using the job system they give you a way to try many different types of battle types/strategies while at the same time making it to where you won't be at a huge disadvantage if you wanted to experiment. The battles are for the most part engaging and interesting along with some really unique and funny enemies. There also is a sort of Pokedex where you can keep track of the enemies you have fought and see how many more you have to find. The weakest part of the gameplay would be after a while you find the ideal combo to use on most enemies and after that there is little need to switch to anything but that. Also have no idea why they included a minigame reward that gives you a literal death laser that does 1000+ damage to all enemies at once. This trivialized the already fairly easy game and if they were going to add something like that I wish they made it much harder to get then just completing the Management minigame. Another issue I have with the gameplay is how easy it really is. I will give them credit, there are 2 bosses that are absolutely insane compared to the rest of the game where I died countless times, but other than that the game is pretty much a breeze with no way to change the difficulty until you beat the game. In the future I would like them to let us start with the choice of hard difficulty instead of making us play on normal. I like my JRPG's to have a challenge not press the laser button and wipe out the whole map in 2 seconds and move on. Finally, the last issue I noticed during battles is that often a party member will get stuck or far behind when a battle starts and you have to wait for them to run all the way to the enemy before they hit them. This is fine at first but after a while it starts to eat up a ton of time. Also there are many times during a battle when I use a move but because there is furniture in the way, the party member kicks it even though it does literally nothing. I get what they were trying to do in making the environment usable to fight enemies but alot of the time it turned out scuffed because they try using it but it does nothing. I think in the future they should first give the option if we want to use the environment in fights and also fix it to where they just don't pointlessly kick a chair, wasting more time. Overall for the first attempt the combat is really fun and fluid. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out in it like I mentioned and maybe adding more elemental attack options and/or debuffs that effect your party. They already have brainwashing, sleeping and many others but I never saw any of those actually in use during the game play, except once. The resist/weakness system was never properly explained and lead to instead of strategically thinking about what to use in battle, you just use each attack until you find one that does the most damage and rise and repeat. They should look at Persona 5's system and take notes.

Sidequests: For the most part these side quests followed the same formula and I was disappointed. It usually always starts with something random happening, you find out this person is involved in shady thing/yakuza and it always ends with you fighting them. Sentimental music plays and then the person you rescued gives a life lessons speech. This is fine for the first 10, but after a while it starts to get old and loses its charm. Of course there area few different and engaging sidequests that don't follow this exact formula, but for the most part this holds true. In the future I'd like to see more story heavy quests that don't focus on any sort of fighting at all. Something that has many different outcomes depending on the dialogue options you choose.

Overall thoughts: Overall I really enjoyed playing this game and never got tired of it. The gameplay was engaging and fun and there is a ton of content to explore through. For a first game I think they did a great job at the JRPG series and I am looking forward to hopefully seeing more of this type of Yakuza game with added improvements along the way. If you came this far thanks for reading