A last autumn before graduation
The friends of Ringo Ishikawa follows a highschool gang leader through his final autumn before graduation, with his best friends around him. It's an open world beat 'em up with school sim elements: a town to walk around, a day-night cycle, NPCs who keep to their own schedules, battle grinding and school grinding. The framing is yakuza-delinquent, but the point isn't rival gangs or taking over turf. You live there and feel it, and the story carries the weight. Expect strong dialogue about growing up rather than a conquest loop.
Fighting and passing the time
Combat uses a brawl mechanic built to feel distinct from standard beat 'em up button-mashing, so fights are worth seeking out and grinding. Between fights there's plenty of small stuff to occupy an evening: ping-pong, billiards, video-poker, and a video-game console with one game on it. The town is a side-scrolling 2D space in pixel graphics, so exploration is about wandering the streets, checking who's out and about at this hour, and letting the day turn over.
Playing it together
The Steam features list includes Remote Play Together, which lets friends join in over a remote session. The tags list the game as Singleplayer, so the shared experience is one person driving while others watch and chime in, or passes the controls around. That fits a game whose main draw is its story and atmosphere: someone plays through, the rest of the group reacts to the dialogue and the small moments as they happen.
Before you start
Go in expecting mood over objectives. The design is aimed at making you feel the story rather than handing you turfs to capture or a gang to build, so progress is measured in days lived and conversations had. It's atmospheric, retro, anime-adjacent, and set in the 1980s, with martial arts brawling sitting alongside school life. If your group wants something to talk about afterwards more than something to win, this is the shape of it.