The way I got into the Yakuza series is probably the same reason many others have gotten into it.
I saw the trailer to Yakuza: Like A Dragon and I didn't even know what Yakuza was but I thought "damn this game looks good, can't wait to try it out, might be amazing" Simple as that, right? Hahahaha, yeah, no. Queue hundreds of people telling me to "START WITH YAKUZA 0 FIRST AND PLAY THEM IN ORDER, YOU WON'T REGRET IT" Like... really? does it really look like I have the time to go through 7 MAINLINE YAKUZA GAMES to play Like A Dragon? I won't listen to them, that's stupid, I said, I'll just play Like A Dragon... but the wait for the game got longer and I decided to try at least 0 first.
Damn... 0 was a really good game, better try Kiwami and Kiwami 2... (after I finished those, I decided that I'll finish Yakuza 0 to 6 before I played Like A Dragon)
Was the grind and the wait worth it? Yes. Do I regret not starting Like A Dragon first? Not at all, Like A Dragon is literally made ten times better if you have all the knowledge of prior games.
How does Like A Dragon fare as a Yakuza game? it's probably one of my favorite of the mainline games.
Yakuza is a really weird series... but I'll be damned if it isn't worth spending every single minute in it.
The music and the combat go so well together, the story is so good you'll most likely cry, at least when the plot isn't doing something stupid, then you'll just be laughing your ass off, while crying.
Yakuza Like A Dragon is also the first Yakuza game I have 100%'d, well... idk... I was just so hyped for it and I had to get to it, but I was in no rush to get to it, but the hype I had when I finally started it, was still there. And it delivered, hard.
If you want to try out Yakuza Like A Dragon as your entry into the series, I won't judge you, but if you have the time, try and go through 0 and 6 first, it will make this game that much better, you don't even wanna hear the sounds I was making when a character you know just appears in the scene, with a cool new variation of his theme, and then you get the dynamic intro to a boss fight, I was in a constant state of "YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
and then I just had to listen to that song on repeat for the next few hours, and following days...