Yakuza 5 times the dissapointment.
This is a weird playthrough for me, as I played this game in between a LOT of social engagements that left me introverted out coupled with a lack of sleep which resulted in me being quite tired bwhile playing a lot of Yakuza 5. I'd come home from wherever, boot it up, play for a few hours, nod off, then go to sleep. That almost never happens with me in games, when it's my time to turn off for the night, I'll do it, but I stuck with Yakuza 5 because I was hoping for that moment in the story that I'd be motivated to stay up like I had the other games. I kept playing and turning it on in the hope that I'd get to that ONE chapter that kept me going into the wee hours of the morning, but it never came. I was greatly dissapointed in everything after the initial Kiryu arc, and even that felt rough to me.
I found none of the locations outside of Kamurocho particularly inspiring, Fukuoka was pretty but I didn't really like the side content, in particular doing any of the street racing. I kind of liked Kiryu doing a whole Iriqouis Pliskin-Solid Snake kinda thing under the alias "Taichi Suzuki" but it didn't lead anywhere important enough for me. I think if this game purely followed Kiryu living in secret, or attempting to, I would have been far more entertained. Taiga's locales (gameplay I'll get to) bored me with a grave degree. You spend a lot of time in some claustrophobically small environements and zones as him with questionably boring to bad gameplay and story beats that I found it hard to imagine that this was the same franchise I'd been playing. Haruka' story largely taking place in Sotenbori was fine but man, that city has been largely unfun to run around in after Majima made it his stomping grounds in 0. Akiyama in Kamurocho was good, I love Akiyama and love Kamurocho. Shinada in Nagoya was rough, as I found the city lifeless and largely boring.
Story-wise this wasn't necessarily the weakest Yakuza I've played on paper, as Yakuza 3 exists and I'm still not really sure what I was supposed to take away from that, but man the length that draws and draws this mediocre at best story harms the overall game greatly. They attempt to tie four stories (really five but I'm compressing Akiyama and Haruka into one) in the same manner that Yakuza 4 did but it was at the expense of me caring really at all. They take a loooooooot of time setting up Shinada's tragic baseball downfall and Taiga's prison escape/road to redemption, but to me it completely fell flat. The risk taken for exposure here didn't land, it bored me quite a lot when coupled with the monotonous gameplay of three of the four scenarios. Lastly about the story, Haruka's idol segment is a complete and utter miss. I didn't find it compelling at all, as it felt honestly like a story I'd seen before plenty of times in anime/games about uninspired music, boring (and again not new) teen drama, logical holes, and unendearing characters. Nobody outside of Park in Haruka's story had me asking for more out of them. In the nature of my first paragraph, I kept playing though because I believed something was going to happen that would make me jump up and say "Wow, now I'm interested!" but it never came. The beef between Tset and Haruka was juvenile and handled very poorly from a plausible plot perspective, and the rhythm game sections were just, bad.
I've written just about Yakuza combat being poor in just about all of my reviews of the series thus far and... surprise! It's still bad, this time maybe the worst I've experienced. Boss fights are just downright brutal, with most mainstory bosses (especially in the final gauntlet,) having no hitstun, ability to break out of combos, and a stun that penalizes you for trying to string together more than two hits in a combo. Most of this game's combat from a boss-fight perspective is playing the waiting game to get your chip damage in while also item checking to make sure you've bought enough sushi sets to fully heal you through whatever garbage you're about to endure. The last fight in this game could legitimately have been condensed by about fifteen minutes. Kiryu plays like he always has (minus Yakuza Kiwami 1) which is alright, Taiga still has a one dimensional brawler style, Akiyama is the most fun (because his kicks lend themselves to a faster paced style,) Haruka's rhyhthm fights were just annoying, and lastly Shinada's baseball-style felt like a weaker and even more numbing version of Taiga's. Nobody in this game really felt fun to play, but maybe I'm still chasing the ghost of playing Majima in Yakuza 0. The bear hunting stuff in Taiga's chapter had me really confused, it felt like a side story/optional scenario that they could have made optional as the mechanics were rather grueling.
I probably could have written a better review and condensed my thoughts in a manner that were more coherent of critique than complaints, as I usually try to, but this really just felt numbing to me. It didn't feel like a game I should exhaust more effort into writing about in great detail, it just... felt like something I spent a lot of time on that was mediocre at best. I had this same feeling when playing Soul Hackers 2 but at least that had Jack Frost.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm truly hopeful that Sonic Frontiers, which I'm playing next, has more for me than Yakuza 5. I can't recommend Yakuza 5 unless you're set on completing the saga of Kiryu Kazuma.
This is a weird playthrough for me, as I played this game in between a LOT of social engagements that left me introverted out coupled with a lack of sleep which resulted in me being quite tired bwhile playing a lot of Yakuza 5. I'd come home from wherever, boot it up, play for a few hours, nod off, then go to sleep. That almost never happens with me in games, when it's my time to turn off for the night, I'll do it, but I stuck with Yakuza 5 because I was hoping for that moment in the story that I'd be motivated to stay up like I had the other games. I kept playing and turning it on in the hope that I'd get to that ONE chapter that kept me going into the wee hours of the morning, but it never came. I was greatly dissapointed in everything after the initial Kiryu arc, and even that felt rough to me.
I found none of the locations outside of Kamurocho particularly inspiring, Fukuoka was pretty but I didn't really like the side content, in particular doing any of the street racing. I kind of liked Kiryu doing a whole Iriqouis Pliskin-Solid Snake kinda thing under the alias "Taichi Suzuki" but it didn't lead anywhere important enough for me. I think if this game purely followed Kiryu living in secret, or attempting to, I would have been far more entertained. Taiga's locales (gameplay I'll get to) bored me with a grave degree. You spend a lot of time in some claustrophobically small environements and zones as him with questionably boring to bad gameplay and story beats that I found it hard to imagine that this was the same franchise I'd been playing. Haruka' story largely taking place in Sotenbori was fine but man, that city has been largely unfun to run around in after Majima made it his stomping grounds in 0. Akiyama in Kamurocho was good, I love Akiyama and love Kamurocho. Shinada in Nagoya was rough, as I found the city lifeless and largely boring.
Story-wise this wasn't necessarily the weakest Yakuza I've played on paper, as Yakuza 3 exists and I'm still not really sure what I was supposed to take away from that, but man the length that draws and draws this mediocre at best story harms the overall game greatly. They attempt to tie four stories (really five but I'm compressing Akiyama and Haruka into one) in the same manner that Yakuza 4 did but it was at the expense of me caring really at all. They take a loooooooot of time setting up Shinada's tragic baseball downfall and Taiga's prison escape/road to redemption, but to me it completely fell flat. The risk taken for exposure here didn't land, it bored me quite a lot when coupled with the monotonous gameplay of three of the four scenarios. Lastly about the story, Haruka's idol segment is a complete and utter miss. I didn't find it compelling at all, as it felt honestly like a story I'd seen before plenty of times in anime/games about uninspired music, boring (and again not new) teen drama, logical holes, and unendearing characters. Nobody outside of Park in Haruka's story had me asking for more out of them. In the nature of my first paragraph, I kept playing though because I believed something was going to happen that would make me jump up and say "Wow, now I'm interested!" but it never came. The beef between Tset and Haruka was juvenile and handled very poorly from a plausible plot perspective, and the rhythm game sections were just, bad.
I've written just about Yakuza combat being poor in just about all of my reviews of the series thus far and... surprise! It's still bad, this time maybe the worst I've experienced. Boss fights are just downright brutal, with most mainstory bosses (especially in the final gauntlet,) having no hitstun, ability to break out of combos, and a stun that penalizes you for trying to string together more than two hits in a combo. Most of this game's combat from a boss-fight perspective is playing the waiting game to get your chip damage in while also item checking to make sure you've bought enough sushi sets to fully heal you through whatever garbage you're about to endure. The last fight in this game could legitimately have been condensed by about fifteen minutes. Kiryu plays like he always has (minus Yakuza Kiwami 1) which is alright, Taiga still has a one dimensional brawler style, Akiyama is the most fun (because his kicks lend themselves to a faster paced style,) Haruka's rhyhthm fights were just annoying, and lastly Shinada's baseball-style felt like a weaker and even more numbing version of Taiga's. Nobody in this game really felt fun to play, but maybe I'm still chasing the ghost of playing Majima in Yakuza 0. The bear hunting stuff in Taiga's chapter had me really confused, it felt like a side story/optional scenario that they could have made optional as the mechanics were rather grueling.
I probably could have written a better review and condensed my thoughts in a manner that were more coherent of critique than complaints, as I usually try to, but this really just felt numbing to me. It didn't feel like a game I should exhaust more effort into writing about in great detail, it just... felt like something I spent a lot of time on that was mediocre at best. I had this same feeling when playing Soul Hackers 2 but at least that had Jack Frost.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm truly hopeful that Sonic Frontiers, which I'm playing next, has more for me than Yakuza 5. I can't recommend Yakuza 5 unless you're set on completing the saga of Kiryu Kazuma.