Yakuza 5 sees the series expand once more, now featuring five playable characters and five cities to visit. It's an ambitious expansion to an already ambitious concept Yakuza 4 pioneered, and that failed to live up to expectations in that game. It certainly works better in this game than it did previously, making it the highest point of the Remastered trilogy, but it still feels like more for the sake of more.
The game feels like a big brainstorm, where lots of ideas were put forward and every single one of them made into the game, regardless of whether they were good or fit together with the others, resulting in one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag I've seen. The plot is where this issue is the most evident: it features a strong cast, great direction and clear, resounding themes, but its scenes feel like they come from different versions of the script, what with their nonsensical twists that don't fit together and what's probably the clumsiest conclusion in the franchise's history.
While the western version has no subtitle, the game's full Japanese name is 龍が如く5 夢、叶えし者, which translates roughly to Like a Dragon 5: Fulfillers of Dreams. "Dreams" are in the original title because they are at the forefront of the story: how people hold them dear, how sacrifices are made for their sake, and how, in the failure to fulfull them, others around the dreamer may come to inherit those dreams. Both the main and supporting casts have a lot to do with those ideas, and there's some genuinely poignant moments springing forth from them.
You'll also notice there's a '5' in the title, which is a reference to the 5D chess the plot is constantly playing with itself.
If you thought Yakuza 4 took things to a new level with its constant backstabbery and nonsensical schemes, well, you're in for something special here. We have turncoats in every scene, we have people getting shot before revealing plot-critical information, we have uncharismatic or outright evil characters getting instantly redeemed at the whims of the writer, we have "he's my ex from decades ago", we have "we went to high school together, you just don't remember me", we even have "he's secretly my father".
It's not the worst plot in the franchise only because it never reaches the self-destructive level of its prequel, but it has to be said, unlike that game, which features a strong final chapter with thematically appropriate antagonists, the finale for Yakuza 5 struggles to tie its four acts together and falls flat on its face. As it turns out, some of the main characters are part of the story only due to sheer coincidence, to a point that they get recycled fights for final bosses. The fights that are not recycled are contrived and devoid of any tension, since the plot has already been resolved by the time they happen.
The main antagonists for the game really didn't think anything through, their schemes are incredibly flimsy and count on Tojo people being, among other things, very bad with faces. The final boss is completely random, outright admits not to even knowing why he's there, and then that fight leads into an incoherent, almost dream-like ending that almost had me booting Yakuza 6 at 11PM, wondering how in the world it would pick up after that. I'm still not sure.
Yakuza 5 also suffers from the pacing issue that comes from completely changing characters every act, so much so, that many of its fans argue it should be looked at as five different games. After all, most characters have complete archs that work as individual stories, and those stories are often better than the major plot they're in. Four of the characters even have a side story with plot and mechanics exclusive to themselves. It's one of the bits of 0 that you can see forming up here, and it helps a lot in giving more meaning to each individual character.
Kiryu's act is the opener to the game. He's living in Nagoya under an alias, driving a taxi to make money to send to the orphanage. It's perhaps the most emotionally charged it's been for him since Yakuza 3. You can see him struggling to get away from his past, and over the course of the game, the survivor's guilt eating away at him is palpable, the realization that no matter where he runs to, the people he loves will always end up in danger because of him. Some say Kiryu feels dead in this installment, but I think they're overlooking this aspect of the character.
Gameplay-wise, he gets a useless new ability in Dragon Spirit. It's a precursor to the Extreme Heat in 6 and K2, but it sucks: most goons can block it, to say nothing of bosses, so you're better off spending that gauge shoving their heads into the pavement. Otherwise, he plays like his previous iterations. He also gets an awesome taxi-driving minigame as his side story, which is split between normal fares and street races.
Saejima follows Kiryu. His kit was enhanced with abilities that reinforce his gargantuan bulk and superhuman strength. His story, however... I found his side story, which has him living in and aiding a hunting village, much more interesting. Saejima's time on the main stage is home to an incredibly long, nonsense, tutorial-like couple of chapters, that follow into a section absolutely ridden with enemy encounters and questionable writing decisions. It's definitely the game's lowest point.
He's followed by the star of the show, who is, of course, my precious daughter Haruka. Haruka leaves Morning Glory for Osaka, striving to make it big as an idol and give back to the orphanage. As such, she does not engage in combat, instead challenging people on the streets to dance battles, a rhythm game played with the d-pad and face buttons. It's fun, but really needed more songs to continue being engaging -- I really wish they'd taken this idea and put more resources into it.
The most interesting bit of Haruka's part is in her side story, which revolves around the Princess League, a huge idol contest that takes place in Osaka. This involves more rhythm gameplay as she presents on stage, but also other idol activities, such as handshake events, talk shows, quiz games and so on, each of which has its individual mechanics. One thing to note is that it surprises me when people call Haruka's part "girly", because there's a surprisingly dark undertone to it all, multiple scenes highlighting the possessiveness, voyeurism and even sexual harassment that goes on in the idol industry.
Akiyama makes a brief appearance in Haruka's part, also having received an improved kit, but it's the newcomer, Shinada, that steals much of the spotlight through his sheer charm. Shinada is a disgraced ex-baseball player that finds himself pulled into a conspiracy involving his city of Nagoya, one which ties back to the reason he fell from stardom in the first place. Shinada's characterization is incredible: he's a silly, but good-hearted, down-on-his-luck guy who turns out to be a rather layered character. Plus, he's really passionate about baseball: so much so, that if you try to pick up a baseball bat during a fight as him, he will calmly place it back on the ground, pointing out that "bats are not made for hurting people". So yeah, he's great.
His fighting style is arguably the weakest, however, combining sluggishness like Saejima's with not much power to back it up. He's supposed to be a weapon's specialist, but weapons suck in this game even more than usual, and he ends up working better as a grappler than anything else. His baseball side story is also pretty lame in comparison to everyone else, as all he gets is a more interesting version of the baseball minigame you can play in Kamurocho.
Which begs the question of why there are two baseball minigames in the game, with one being clearly superior. In fact, why so many unnecessary minigames made the cut. Some of the minigames in Y5 are my favorites in the entire franchise, like the manzai club with Haruka and the ramen-ya with Kiryu, and but several others are probably the worst. I do not understand why they even shipped the chicken races or the snowball battles. And it's not just minigames, entire gameplay systems in the game hurt the game more than if they were entirely absent.
The gourmet eating, for instance, are something I never found much meaning in, while the weapon skill levels make weapons essentially unusable even for the weapon specialist in the team -- good luck spending millions of yen in Kamiyama to get the most powerful gear, only to find out you can't equip any of it. And the level caps and breakthroughs? Why? Why is this even here? It gimps your characters, forces you to grind, then tosses you against an incredibly unfair fight to get the rest of your character's skills.
But then again, the game is in many ways a huge improvement over the previous entry, being much closer to 0 than to 3 and 4. The characters play much better, the plot is... has more to like about it, and there are several lovable side activities to choose from, even if there are many terrible ones. I might have disliked the game more if I had played it near its launch, but with the hindsight of later games and the knowledge that 5's ambition helped pave the way for the series to become better, well, it's hard not to respect that ambition.
Like I said, Y5 is one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag among the games I've played. It's an alright game, but people going into should be warned that it's far easier to enjoy it if you have fun with the individual moments instead of waiting for them to form a great whole.
The game feels like a big brainstorm, where lots of ideas were put forward and every single one of them made into the game, regardless of whether they were good or fit together with the others, resulting in one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag I've seen. The plot is where this issue is the most evident: it features a strong cast, great direction and clear, resounding themes, but its scenes feel like they come from different versions of the script, what with their nonsensical twists that don't fit together and what's probably the clumsiest conclusion in the franchise's history.
While the western version has no subtitle, the game's full Japanese name is 龍が如く5 夢、叶えし者, which translates roughly to Like a Dragon 5: Fulfillers of Dreams. "Dreams" are in the original title because they are at the forefront of the story: how people hold them dear, how sacrifices are made for their sake, and how, in the failure to fulfull them, others around the dreamer may come to inherit those dreams. Both the main and supporting casts have a lot to do with those ideas, and there's some genuinely poignant moments springing forth from them.
You'll also notice there's a '5' in the title, which is a reference to the 5D chess the plot is constantly playing with itself.
If you thought Yakuza 4 took things to a new level with its constant backstabbery and nonsensical schemes, well, you're in for something special here. We have turncoats in every scene, we have people getting shot before revealing plot-critical information, we have uncharismatic or outright evil characters getting instantly redeemed at the whims of the writer, we have "he's my ex from decades ago", we have "we went to high school together, you just don't remember me", we even have "he's secretly my father".
It's not the worst plot in the franchise only because it never reaches the self-destructive level of its prequel, but it has to be said, unlike that game, which features a strong final chapter with thematically appropriate antagonists, the finale for Yakuza 5 struggles to tie its four acts together and falls flat on its face. As it turns out, some of the main characters are part of the story only due to sheer coincidence, to a point that they get recycled fights for final bosses. The fights that are not recycled are contrived and devoid of any tension, since the plot has already been resolved by the time they happen.
The main antagonists for the game really didn't think anything through, their schemes are incredibly flimsy and count on Tojo people being, among other things, very bad with faces. The final boss is completely random, outright admits not to even knowing why he's there, and then that fight leads into an incoherent, almost dream-like ending that almost had me booting Yakuza 6 at 11PM, wondering how in the world it would pick up after that. I'm still not sure.
Yakuza 5 also suffers from the pacing issue that comes from completely changing characters every act, so much so, that many of its fans argue it should be looked at as five different games. After all, most characters have complete archs that work as individual stories, and those stories are often better than the major plot they're in. Four of the characters even have a side story with plot and mechanics exclusive to themselves. It's one of the bits of 0 that you can see forming up here, and it helps a lot in giving more meaning to each individual character.
Kiryu's act is the opener to the game. He's living in Nagoya under an alias, driving a taxi to make money to send to the orphanage. It's perhaps the most emotionally charged it's been for him since Yakuza 3. You can see him struggling to get away from his past, and over the course of the game, the survivor's guilt eating away at him is palpable, the realization that no matter where he runs to, the people he loves will always end up in danger because of him. Some say Kiryu feels dead in this installment, but I think they're overlooking this aspect of the character.
Gameplay-wise, he gets a useless new ability in Dragon Spirit. It's a precursor to the Extreme Heat in 6 and K2, but it sucks: most goons can block it, to say nothing of bosses, so you're better off spending that gauge shoving their heads into the pavement. Otherwise, he plays like his previous iterations. He also gets an awesome taxi-driving minigame as his side story, which is split between normal fares and street races.
Saejima follows Kiryu. His kit was enhanced with abilities that reinforce his gargantuan bulk and superhuman strength. His story, however... I found his side story, which has him living in and aiding a hunting village, much more interesting. Saejima's time on the main stage is home to an incredibly long, nonsense, tutorial-like couple of chapters, that follow into a section absolutely ridden with enemy encounters and questionable writing decisions. It's definitely the game's lowest point.
He's followed by the star of the show, who is, of course, my precious daughter Haruka. Haruka leaves Morning Glory for Osaka, striving to make it big as an idol and give back to the orphanage. As such, she does not engage in combat, instead challenging people on the streets to dance battles, a rhythm game played with the d-pad and face buttons. It's fun, but really needed more songs to continue being engaging -- I really wish they'd taken this idea and put more resources into it.
The most interesting bit of Haruka's part is in her side story, which revolves around the Princess League, a huge idol contest that takes place in Osaka. This involves more rhythm gameplay as she presents on stage, but also other idol activities, such as handshake events, talk shows, quiz games and so on, each of which has its individual mechanics. One thing to note is that it surprises me when people call Haruka's part "girly", because there's a surprisingly dark undertone to it all, multiple scenes highlighting the possessiveness, voyeurism and even sexual harassment that goes on in the idol industry.
Akiyama makes a brief appearance in Haruka's part, also having received an improved kit, but it's the newcomer, Shinada, that steals much of the spotlight through his sheer charm. Shinada is a disgraced ex-baseball player that finds himself pulled into a conspiracy involving his city of Nagoya, one which ties back to the reason he fell from stardom in the first place. Shinada's characterization is incredible: he's a silly, but good-hearted, down-on-his-luck guy who turns out to be a rather layered character. Plus, he's really passionate about baseball: so much so, that if you try to pick up a baseball bat during a fight as him, he will calmly place it back on the ground, pointing out that "bats are not made for hurting people". So yeah, he's great.
His fighting style is arguably the weakest, however, combining sluggishness like Saejima's with not much power to back it up. He's supposed to be a weapon's specialist, but weapons suck in this game even more than usual, and he ends up working better as a grappler than anything else. His baseball side story is also pretty lame in comparison to everyone else, as all he gets is a more interesting version of the baseball minigame you can play in Kamurocho.
Which begs the question of why there are two baseball minigames in the game, with one being clearly superior. In fact, why so many unnecessary minigames made the cut. Some of the minigames in Y5 are my favorites in the entire franchise, like the manzai club with Haruka and the ramen-ya with Kiryu, and but several others are probably the worst. I do not understand why they even shipped the chicken races or the snowball battles. And it's not just minigames, entire gameplay systems in the game hurt the game more than if they were entirely absent.
The gourmet eating, for instance, are something I never found much meaning in, while the weapon skill levels make weapons essentially unusable even for the weapon specialist in the team -- good luck spending millions of yen in Kamiyama to get the most powerful gear, only to find out you can't equip any of it. And the level caps and breakthroughs? Why? Why is this even here? It gimps your characters, forces you to grind, then tosses you against an incredibly unfair fight to get the rest of your character's skills.
But then again, the game is in many ways a huge improvement over the previous entry, being much closer to 0 than to 3 and 4. The characters play much better, the plot is... has more to like about it, and there are several lovable side activities to choose from, even if there are many terrible ones. I might have disliked the game more if I had played it near its launch, but with the hindsight of later games and the knowledge that 5's ambition helped pave the way for the series to become better, well, it's hard not to respect that ambition.
Like I said, Y5 is one of the most extreme cases of a mixed bag among the games I've played. It's an alright game, but people going into should be warned that it's far easier to enjoy it if you have fun with the individual moments instead of waiting for them to form a great whole.