I am making my way through Yakuza series right now and while playing 5 I realized that I am not that invested into the game’s combat, so I turned it to easy and that just streamlined the combat so much for me. I would recommend to maybe try Yakuza 0 on normal at first and then just switch it to easy if you feel like the gameplay might be dragging on.
Does the writing ever get good? I played it for probably six or eight hours, which isn’t a lot in a game like this, but it and the world building felt painfully generic and bland, to the point of being increasingly off-putting the longer I played the game.
It’s pretty generic overall, but some parts of the worldbuilding are better than others. It fits together in fun ways, and the later stuff is better, but most of the early-game stuff is bland. Just FYI - I never beat it, but I played about 40 hours in 2015 and right now I’m about 10 hours into a replay.
I don’t know if it’s just because of the time since I’ve last played, but Re-Reckoning has felt like a lot more of a chore to play than the original. I don’t remember absolutely loving the original, though; it was always pretty mid, I just thought it was charming.