I just felt the game's narrative and how they handled many of the characters was very sloppy, and in some cases - outright terrible. You have Majima, undoubtedly the most marketable and recognizable character in the entire franchise, been there since day one, and he appears in the intro, epilogue, and ... I think that's it? What's more, he's in the background and barely has a role to play. Same applies to Saejima. You have a wealth of characters to use and they do nothing with them. Instead, we (mostly) get a whole new cast of characters that, while I liked them, I wasn't as emotionally invested.
I understand this is Kiryu's final game, and not necessarily Akiyama's, Majima, Saejima, etc - but to barely feature them at all felt INCREDIBLY wasteful.
Another issue I had with the game was how the whole thing felt devoid of any real humor or playfulness that the series had a reputation for to offset the serious crime drama narrative. It had SOME, but nothing to the degree of past games. This was far more grounded and serious, and I felt that the game suffered a bit because of that. The side activities and playspots - while neat, where hard to access and, I think in some cases, only available post game. Side stories didn't have the same level of quirkiness of charm that past games did either, with the exception of a few. I dunno, it just didn't have that same balance of batshit insane and serious narrative that I've come to expect from the series.
Another thing that's not balanced is the cutscene to gameplay ratio. This is the MGS4 or MGS2 of the series for sure. I have always praised the cinematic direction of the cutscenes in the Yakuza franchise, but GODDAMN there were a lot in this one. They also weren't as engaging or exciting either for the most part. Mostly just standing around talking back and forth. Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with text or long cutscenes - I mean, shit, I love this series to death, but here I felt they went WAY overboard. The sprinkling of actual gameplay that's not involving massive brawls seemed to be spent largely running back and forth between the same handful of locations. Onomichi was a great looking location, but I felt you barely saw, or rather interacted, with much of the town. Kamurocho, while more true to scale (which was appreciated), had areas completely inaccessible, and like Onomichi, you visited far fewer areas within the town. It just felt far more limited in scope.
It's not all bad though. I did enjoy the heavier and more impactful fight engine. The ragdoll physics bring a sense of weight to the whole thing, which while massively over the top - retained the sense of arcadey fun the series is known for. Bringing a fight into a Convenience store and watching the place get absolutely trashed as you throw people around is a FANTASTIC sight to behold (even if the shop owner refuses to serve you after the fight, haha!) I particularly appreciated the bigger brawls where you have 8+ enemies to fight at a time, and seeing as you're often fighting with a companion or two, it wasn't that unusual to have over a dozen people all fighting at once. It felt pretty epic to participate in such larger scaled fights, even if the individual health bars over NPC's heads made everything look a bit messy or hard to follow at times. I'd go so far as to say the final chapter or two of the game had some of the most thrilling fight sequences the series has to offer - NOT including the final boss, which I thought was rather weak by comparison. The way heat is used added a refreshing dynamic to combat, and upgrade mechanics were pretty straightforward and easy to understand too. Heat moves themselves, however, were FAR fewer in quantity and many weapons seemed to share the same animation. I don't recall in my 25+ hours coming across any unique / oddball weapons with heat animations like the orange juice or salt shaker from Yakuza 0 for example.
I could go on and on, and maybe I will if people ask for it - but while I mostly enjoyed my time with Yakuza 6, and give praise to many of the technical improvements made to the game thanks to the Dragon engine, I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel like a slog at times, and honestly - not all that engaging. Perhaps some of my issues lie within the language barrier, but I never felt this way about Yakuza 0, Kiwami, or even Ishin, games I originally played from beginning to end in Japanese (I don't understand a word of the language, by the way).
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer. I'm still pre-ordering the moment I can, and I DO look forward to replaying it in English, though I don't think it'll be one I replay as often as other games in the franchise.