Yakuza 3

Pros

• It has the best final boss in the series imo (character and motivation wise)
• Even with its issues, 3 is an essential title in the series for Kiryu especially, it's worth playing for sure, otherwise you'll miss a critical part of his character and motivations for the next games.
• it was the first game in the series that I played (on PS3) and it got it's hooks into me deeply enough that I went back and played the first two on my PS2 ... I've very fond memories of it.
• I actually enjoyed Yakuza 3 more than the Kiwami 2. I sampled a lot of the extra content and completed a huge chunk of the sub stories. ... I can’t quite put my finger on why I ended up liking this entry so much as it’s known as the blac...

Cons

• It was only until Yakuza 3 that the games started having loads of substories that were light on budget.
• starting with Zero will probably afford you the goodwill that bear through some of the series' clunkier moments a la the combat in 3
• Yakuza 3 was, to me, the worst experience I have had in gaming in years. The story took forever to get me to care. The gameplay... Well I kept thinking "They forgot to make it fun". It was just a big slug to go through.
• I personally loved Yakuza 3, but ... those little "aha" moments I would sometimes have did NOT make the tedium worth it, lol I just wanna go "ONE-TWO, POW" but the excessive blocking slows everything to a crawl.
• It really doesn't have a great reputation but I think it definitely falls into the ‘sucks at first but grows on you’ category. Post game I can defeat enemies quite easily with all the skills acquired.