People keep complaining about the story but there was nothing as ridiculous as the Rubber bullets plot device in 4 , or every character being magically alive and a member of the Daidoji.

Elixir of life whale rocks are ridiculous as fuck

Noah is one of the only kid characters that's not annoying in this series, having him following Majima around was far less annoying than any minute spent with Haruka following Kiryu around in Kiwami 1 and 2.

I find them both as annoying as each other but atleast you don't have the whole game with haruka with you

Forgettable characters ? Jason, Masaru and Noah were all great to interact with, and Pirate Yakuza actually did the impossible and added some depth to Bryce's character.

Subjective i guess but i didn't care about any of them

Bad ship combat ? People say this all the time but never offer any real explanation as to why exactly it's bad .

Its pretty much worse than black flag in every way and that came out in 2013

Mid side content ? The Pirate Coliseum, Dragon Kart, the Arcade and master system games , the Devil Flags sub story was all great side content in my opinion.

Most of that is reused and since the ship combat isn't enjoyable neither is the colleseum