Yakuza 5 remastered - Review

Its called Yakuza 5 because it has like FIVE layers of padding.

Genre: Brawler/adventure.

Developer/publisher: Sega.
Platform: PS4.
Official Site: N/A.

Release date: 11-2-2020.

 

After a brief rest and finishing up some substories in Y4 at premium adventure I decided

to get started on the next yakuza game! also I honestly wasn't even sure what else to play

right now but Y4 triggered some kind of itch which lighted a fire in me to get started on Y5.

Pro's

- Fun cast of characters and decent build up of the plot to go along with it.

- Great cinematography, its at its best here.

- Lots of side content if you know where to look.

- There is a pause menu.

Con's

- Length is a double edged sword, kinda overstayed its welcome for me.

- Padding, terrible pacing; especially in the finale.

- High encounter rate, there's item that reduce it but I only found them for Kiryu none with others

so it was pretty much suffering with other chara's. Why are there items to increase it? it high enough.

- Can't make clear save in premium adventure to carry over to NG+.

 

Let's get started with mostly good things.

The game left a pretty positive impression on me right from the bat

they really improved upon the previous two ps3 era games.

The cutscene direction, general gameplay it all feels real smooth now, especially

coming from Y3 and Y4, the latter already improved but this is chef's kiss.

There also appears to be significantly more voice acting so its no longer

going from no voices in a scene to a fmv with them. I will add that

you should becareful with pressing x during VN-like scenes as it does stop VA.

Another good point would be they finally allow us to pause the game during scenes

and you won't need to flip a switch in the main menu to skip them.

If only Y3 and Y4 had it but alas... those games show their age more than Y5 does.

Thank god because some scenes were quite long!

The story did seem to have a slow start but it did have some hooks

which kept me interested, this game however does start with Kiryu or rather

with him under a different name. He became a taxi driver known as Taichi Suzuki

but alas he shall never know peace because the yakuza can't behave for one minute.😩

The only downside is some pacing issues and some parts draggin on but still the presentation

was good like miles better than y3&4 so I mostly had a good time going through it.

Me neither man...

 

This game uses Y4's system of viewing the story from multiple characters

but by the time I was in Shinada's story it kinda felt like the dev's didn't even

wanted the player to finish the game, I mean what you end up playing as a guy with

a funny personality but is weak as fuck and he has no money. Everything is painful

while I am looking forward to what the game was building up to there's

shit unfolding with a brand new character that may be related?! damn.

Probably came off wrong somewhere in here but Y5 is still pretty good its just

very ambitious in what it tries to do, it either has you hooked or you slog through it.

I already started forgetting important story bits by the time I got to the finale. So maybe

it was a bad idea to waste 5+ hours on batting side stories and training Shinada.😅

That's like admiting you like older women...

The finale itself was long and I think the game was actually overstaying its welcome

which is sad since I was having such a pretty good time with it.

It took me 50 hours to complete the game with some side stuff sprinkled in here and there

yep this game is no joke, its twice as long as Yakuza 1 through 4. Even 0 feels short in comparison.

Don't forget to stock up on staminans/potions.

Gameplay wise its pretty much identical to Y4 everyone has their own style

and most characters don't feel any weaker, Kiryu was as strong as ever

however it was so obvious Shinada was the weakest out of all of them. 

Some substories were fun but most weren't very memorable except for a few.

The ones I liked would be little match girl, ending up dressed as a santa and uh the delivery guy

who forced Saejima to walk 5 meters to deliver someone his food, shit was hilarious.

 Kiryu helping some poor sob with his exams by being an emergency tutor

was pretty funny too, other substories just weren't that memorable.

There really wasn't much to share, most of Kiryu's substories felt like jokes or callbacks

to ones in earlier games like hey its that scam again. I did like the one with an

NPC who's also called Haruka who had a dog too. Unfortunatly by the end of the game

it took looking at old screens to even remember it. So most really are just nice in the moment.

For others it be like Haruka almost got scammed into buying something

or another were was picked by a crowd to do some signing on the street. Ok.jpg

I did like the one where she had to help find some random photographer taking pictures

of her and another of an interview were the interviewers were totally not people

 she knew. Dancing Akiyama was also something we needed as well...

Shinada's were either funny or wholesome, he had spunk and was surprisingly

self aware despite also being kinda shitty, i'll let others be the judge of him.

There's side stories with special missions attached to them like Kiryu has taxi missions 

for some were you had to drive and an urgent fare was by far the worst but there's also a few

were you just chat with the passenger and Kiryu just autodrives.

Saejima has some hunting side stories which I never really finished

since while you can go back to the place I honestly couldn't be arsed.

I also couldn't be bothered with Haruka's side story which relates to Akari

to do it you have to do dance battles with NPC's a whole lot. No thanks.

The only training I finished was with Yoko for Haruka and others I couldn't be arsed

like I could not believe what Igarashi tried to make me do to lvl up Shinada's batting skills

but I managed to do most of them except the last which was enough for his sidestories

to the point I never had to buy any batting equipment. Wew saved me some monies!

Yep that's right the only sidestory I finished was for the hobo ex-baseball player.

Also Tatsuya was annoying, apparently this guy is based on some IRL celebrity

but he overstayed his welcome and doing his training was too repetitive, it may be useful

on higher difficulties or for some boss fight though, sadly the buff you gain is only temporary. 

I only completed Tatsuya's training for Shinada because he was weaker than the others

but honestly I can't tell if it was worth it or if I should have just drinked more potions.

There was this Ayanokoji guy and while the scenes were fun the training part

was not and just unfun, i'm not here for a hit and run session for 20 minutes

so I never finished that either like most other trainers.

Revelations returned as well but everyone only had like one or so due to substories

and sidestories existing its only natural there's less of it so it didn't bother me.

Honestly due to the plot being full of revelations itself it makes sense there wasn't a whole lot.

Yea she had one too, don't ask.

 

The new locations/cities were nice to explore, they weren't as big

as kamurocho but Tsukimino looked really nice. 

The streets were really pretty with those lights.

Kineicho, also had some nice sights to see.

I did think the encounter rate was a bit high though like one time I got out of a fight

and went straight into another.  There's items to increase it but I don't think you

would want that, unfortunately the item that reduced it was on Kiryu so I was 

suffering as Saejima a lot cuz punks kept picking fights. When I was in premium adventure

and tried to  do some more things it really did not seem to matter if I had them on

like holy shit so many fights right after another, I started thinking maybe it is

related to the lucky system but even with good luck and the thing on it was miserable.

I miss Yakuza 4's encounter rate it, seemed reasonable compared to this game.

TL;DR

No it isn't someone died there. /s

 Overall there's a lot going on but if you're just here for Kiryu you may like the first few hours

but then its 20+ hours without Kiryu. I didn't always have the same level

of investment or ability to care as much about the stories, it got good at times

but there were times it just dragged on. So you could say it has ups and downs.

Throughout I found myself caring about characters that wasn't Kiryu...

who felt like a stranger in his own game, it was like that in 4 as well

but for some reason I didn't mind him being a side character once.

Here you start with Kiryu and then its like 4 layers of padding, some of it is interesting

but near the end I couldn't keep track of everything happening and even forgot things.

Like characters that showed up along the way so by the end I was going

yea that guy but ugh... so and so right? it was painful.

Still the story did have hold on me because I constantly looked forward to what was next.

Shinada's story was the only time I got sidetracked.  It may not have been off

to the greatest of starts but I loved his minigames!

Y5 is a pretty good follow up but may also be overstaying its welcome and there's a lot that

could seem random as you progress even though most of it ties together pretty well.

There's also so much side content its easy to get overwhelmed but I wasn't here

for most of it so I only did what I wanted to do and moved on with the story.

Completionist may suffer with Yakuza 5... because there is a lot to do

honestly due to that I can't recommend doing everything as soon as you can.

The plot is already complicated as is so you will likely lose all threads you caught thus far

so only thing I can recommend is just do some substories here or there along the way

and save the rest for a second play or premium adventure. Speaking of you can't

make a clear save in it unlike previous games, they had 1 job here but they couldn't do it.

7/10

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I'll write a little more after the jump which is mostly character related there's not many spoilers

but I had to vent a little about the finale so here's the usual spoiler warning!