To me it looks like the good parts of Shenmue but with a better combat system. Is that mostly accurate?
Good parts meaning story and life sim aspects
it's not much of a life sim, when you are not following the story (eg, walking toward the next flag on the radar) you are dicking around tokyo and getting into random fight with thugs which play like a 3D brawler, combat is a little stiff and at the start you don't have many option, just a grab and a 4 hit combo with different finisher depending on when you interrupt it... as you fight,you build up a finisher meter that usualy let you break stuff into people or people into stuff... then there are small rpg elements as each fight and the occasional sidequest give you XP which let you level up and learn new moves (eg, new way to break people into stuff!) which add more variety to the combat
but there is lot of random content in it, there is a full mahjong game, a full shogi (japanese chess) game, there is a casino with poker and slotmachine's, there is a dating minigame where you try to impress club hostess, and the list of random activities goes on and on and on... i think later game even added very dumb stuff like bear hunting... of course with the exception of some games (i think yakuza 2 and maybe 4?) most of this content has been cut from the us version, because sega hates you and your gaijin brain could never comprehend how to play japanese mahjong
as far as the plot goes,i only played the first 2 games, the first game has the most generic action plot i've ever seen, kiryu kazuma has been in prison for 5 years for a crime he didn't commit,now he has to protect the child of his missing fiancee by punching the shit out of everyone! it's basicaly like watching a cheesy action movie
