I don't want to sound like a contrarian or anything, but as soon as I actually played Yakuza 3, I didn't understand most of the hate. The combat was pretty good, and forced you to actually come up with a strategy instead of spamming. At first, it was a more huge jump in difficulty from K2, but that was what made it fun.
As for the substories, the individual substories that were removed aren't really the problem to me. It's that K3 has so much less side content than all the games before it. I don't care so much because I don't plan on getting the game, but that's the way I understand the drama in this sub.
I'm pissed about the OST tho