Losing my mind again at this game having possibly the strongest Kiryu section and characterization in the entire series, but everything after it, respective to the parts, goes to terrible to underdeveloped to unnecessary to finally unsatisfying. The villains are just as and even worse here compared to the last entry. The overarching mystery and unraveling it is dead stopped with the start of part 2 and barely progresses until the finale. The general pacing with the game is awful with each succeeding character part. The side stories for each character are really unique and add something to each protagonists, but this game just felt so overwhelming with its content by the halfway mark that I audibly groaned at the appearance of even more content and overly long cutscenes throughout the second half of Yakuza 5.
Of the characters, Saejima and Akiyama feel like afterthoughts here or even regressions from their past selves in 4. Haruka is a cool addition but she needed another chapter or two of development with her story, and I found her actions in the finale to be very questionable given Yakuza 5's message on dreams and Park's dream specifically. Shinada was cool, but I already felt burnt out by the time I got to him and wanted the game to end so bad. Kurosawa was a boring twist villain and Aizawa needed more screen time for me to even care about his final boss fight with Kiryu. The character interactions between each of the protags were still cool for the most part, but the culmination of each of them into the main, overall plot was not executed well. The finale was just bad, too long, and boring, and hammered down even harder on the game's theme on dreams to an unsufferable degree. This made me miss Yakuza 4's antics, despite the dire writing attached to it, because the individual moving parts at least were strong and interesting on their own except Kiryu's.
Yakuza 5 is very ambitious with its offering of so much varied content and gameplay styles available. The size of this game alone is an achievement for better or worse. I know people praise this game for its expanded scope and can see why this might rank at the highest of the series because it does feel like a culmination of every game before it into the most "Yakuza" a single yakuza game could strive to be. Yet, I see Yakuza 0 and LaD accomplishing this feat better without sacrificing the pace and development of their stories and characters, and even being more deep than 5 could be. Hate to end on such a negative note with this game and the 7th gen era of Yakuza, but I was just truly disappointed with my first experience with Yakuza 5 in the end. Here's to Yakuza 6 at least being something decent after trudging through the PS3 era.
Of the characters, Saejima and Akiyama feel like afterthoughts here or even regressions from their past selves in 4. Haruka is a cool addition but she needed another chapter or two of development with her story, and I found her actions in the finale to be very questionable given Yakuza 5's message on dreams and Park's dream specifically. Shinada was cool, but I already felt burnt out by the time I got to him and wanted the game to end so bad. Kurosawa was a boring twist villain and Aizawa needed more screen time for me to even care about his final boss fight with Kiryu. The character interactions between each of the protags were still cool for the most part, but the culmination of each of them into the main, overall plot was not executed well. The finale was just bad, too long, and boring, and hammered down even harder on the game's theme on dreams to an unsufferable degree. This made me miss Yakuza 4's antics, despite the dire writing attached to it, because the individual moving parts at least were strong and interesting on their own except Kiryu's.
Yakuza 5 is very ambitious with its offering of so much varied content and gameplay styles available. The size of this game alone is an achievement for better or worse. I know people praise this game for its expanded scope and can see why this might rank at the highest of the series because it does feel like a culmination of every game before it into the most "Yakuza" a single yakuza game could strive to be. Yet, I see Yakuza 0 and LaD accomplishing this feat better without sacrificing the pace and development of their stories and characters, and even being more deep than 5 could be. Hate to end on such a negative note with this game and the 7th gen era of Yakuza, but I was just truly disappointed with my first experience with Yakuza 5 in the end. Here's to Yakuza 6 at least being something decent after trudging through the PS3 era.