Haruka's minigames having the slightest difficulty would've been great.

Shinada is a great character. It's one of the most enjoyable baseball implementations in the series.

Finished 5. Speedran the last act because the nonstop back to back to back dramatic twists got old, especially when I forgot who X character was from 20 in game hours and 3 irl weeks ago was. I may have mentioned this in a prior review of one of these games but the fact that Yakuza characters never die lowers any and all emotional stakes. Yeah Majima dies unceremoniously offscreen, suuuuuure Rya Ga Gotoku Studios, I definitely believe you this time. It's a lot of bloated storytelling that does not respect my time. It both expects me to have an autistic savant memory as to every character's allegiance but also thinks I don't have the memory that they keep unleashing the same tired clichéd twists.

The absolute worst part of this stage in the series, starting with 4, is that switching between a handful of characters is not fun. Juggling inventories and money, upgrading the same base skills multiple times, redoing the same boring side quests with the same NPCs (the food critic in particular in 5) are all expressly not fun. In a game world where I finished the game with about a 22% "Completion Rate" and tried out almost everything while doing a fair amount of side content, it paints a bleak picture as to how much pure anti-fun filler pumps the middle aged Yakuza games up.

Shinada's chapters were the best string of chapters since Yakuza 2 and he was the best new character in forever. I quite enjoyed the relationship with his loan shark. No idea how he intertwined into the whole Kiryu plot as I probably skipped an hours worth of late game exposition, but I'm sure I didn't miss out on much.

Next single player game: Dark Souls, a mere 13 years after initial release

Thankfully they’ve figured out that having 4 playable characters is a bad idea.

Have fun with dork souls