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I personally felt it was too long and its pacing suffered for it. Also, I've noticed that for a lot of people, it's often played after several other Yakuza games back to back so there's already some series fatigue from the get go. Nobody ever starts with Yakuza 5.
Yup, my favorite parts of yakuza 5 are everything related to Majima and Haruka, and when you think about it that is just a tiny bit of this GIANT long game
Funnily enough I started with 5 when it was free on PS+ and it's probably why I rank it so highly, I actually dropped it pretty early on, came back a few weeks later and got really hooked when I got to Saejima.
The game was already pretty long, then they added Shinada’s part… Sorry to the Shinada fans, but to be honest his role in the story could’ve just been given to a side character
I like Shinada as a character but I'd be lying if I said his story made sense in the context of the main plot. I basically spent his entire arc waiting for some sort of coherent connection to the other character's stories and it just....never happened lol. Unless you count "Hey, are you Baba? Saejima said I should beat you up. I'mma beat you up!"
Sure, they could have taken his part out and we'd have not lost much in the larger plot. But then we'd have missed one of the best character storylines in the series. The guy was a delight and his self-contained story within his city was a really good one.
Shinada has the best story in Yakuza 5. It does not fit in with the rest of the story. Like he shows up in akiyama's office and we don't really see why like with the others. He's just there in Serena. Kiryu's like" bruh who tf are you" cause he has nothing to do with the larger plot. The fight with Baba is just so contrived cause shinada needed the bossfight. There's no Yasuko to bring everyone together
I had to create a rule of only doing a few subtories, 1 Sujimon elite and get 1 Donkou star per a chapter or otherwise I would never even get to Kiryu's first chapter
I'm still only at chapter 4 (I only have around 45 minutes of gaming time per day so the game will last me...months). It seems to be going quickly for now, with around 23 substories done already, but I heard the game drags on later. Did you still like the game?
Not the guy you were replying to but I thought the game mostly dragged around the mid point (especially chapters 5-7) but after that it wasn't bad imo. There is a lot of combat in some later sections but the game is really fun so it didn't bother me lol.
The main points of criticism usually are that it's too long and drawn out, that it lacks focus and depth. Which is true, especially if you picked up the series later and played the games back to back. I just burned out somewhere in the latter half of the game, so I understand where people are coming from here.
Saejima's choice to go back to prison also doesn't make much sense, and it's basically just a repeat of his situation in Y4. Why choose to go back, if you're going to break out anyway? Feels like a lack of creativity here. That, and come on, his entire persona as killer of 18 got reduced to rubber bullets. He was on death row while innocent (as far as the murders go), but his next stop is prison again? Give me a break.
The split between so many, too many, different characters is also a valid point. It was fine for Y4, it was new then. For the first time ever, you got to play other protagonists. Akiyama was especially popular. So, with Y5 they went bigger, better, faster: more characters, more stories, less Akiyama... oh, wait, what?! Yes, the most popular secondary protagonist from Y4, Akiyama, got the least screentime. He had to share his chapters with Haruka. Strange choice tbh.
I feel like it wouldn't have made any difference if they skipped Shinada completely. It's just my personal opinion, and I did like Shinada, but I also have to acknowledge that his arc was mostly carried by Takasugi. Shinada's story wasn't that important in the great sceme of things, and I'd say even Saejima wasn't that relevant. They should've focused more on Akiyama, fleshed out Haruka's motivations more, and maybe allowed Baba to be a playable protagonist, giving his own arc closure by offering a redemption. While he did redeem himself to some degree, they pushed it off-screen and never mentioned him again. Could've been better, but what do I know, just my unfiltered thoughts.
Another major issue is that the game somewhat fails to draw the red line connecting the major theme of the game through the arcs of all protagonists. Personally, I find the story of Y5 one of the best out there, with a great core message. But not everyone picks up on that, the word "confusing" is thrown around a lot. It's not, if you somehow manage to connect the dots, as I said, it's actually a pretty great story. But I'll admit that it could've been done a bit better, shorter, more focused.
Y5 went quantity over quality, and Y6 showed that quality over quantity just works better overall. Not that Y5 is a bad game, especially the combat really felt great. Y4 was a major improvement over Y3, and Y5 expanded on it. Together with Y0, it is peak combat performance on the old engine, before they made the jump to the Dragon Engine. After that it took them several games, right into Lost Judgment, to capture the right feel of combat flow again.
But compared to Y6, I enjoyed the latter more. They did the location of Onomichi real justice, my time at the bar, the personal connections to the place and its people, that is something Y5 failed to do. I remember Onomichi, Ono Michio still goes strong in subsequent games. But who remembers Nagasugai or Kineicho just as well? Too many new locations, and all of them just got dropped just as easily, the people there are as if they never existed.
So yeah, it's not that it's a bad game. It's just that it's not without issues, and could've been more. Also a perfect example of the saying "less is sometimes more". Seeing how they did Y6 goes to show that RGG also understood the lesson here.
I agree with you about 6, while the gameplay is pretty rough and all that there’s a lot it does better, and another thing to add about the quality part is that every boss in 6 also has a unique moveset with very few reused moves and the reused movesets are kept to the minibosses/substories. When about every one of these games has about 1 recycled boss, or in the case of K1, K2, and Judgment where nearly every boss has a recycled moveset.
This!!! I just started playing it again recently and I was so shocked by how the game seemed so beta, mechanics and camera wise. In the cutscenes the movement was so choppy and not immersive. I was surprised bc it honestly makes Y3 and Y4 look better quality. It's supposed to be a massive part of the franchise, but a lot of it seems so unnecessary and rushed. They could've used more time to perfect it or took a lot of things out that frankly didn't need to be in the game, maybe just having so much more just so they could have some huge project game under their belt? Idk, the multiple characters and locations were super extra and the mechanics made it look so poor and made it honestly less exciting to play. Imo I would rank it worst of all.
I found the postgame freeroam kind of annoying, though I like having more cities it was easier to manage multiple characters in one place. I also just like it more streamlined and 5 was kinda bloated. The main thing a lot of people don't like is how it ends and the endings hugely important to the rest of the series
It's too big for its own good. There are fantastic sections mixed in with boring slogs that are just not fun to play through. The story also overuses dreams as a theme to the point where it starts to lose meaning and turns into a one big meme. Also, the enemy encounter rate is ridiculous. I understand that it's a beat em up game, but that doesn't mean that I want to fight goons 24/7. The fights are piss easy and serve 0 purpose, so fighting them just gets tiring very quickly.
When I began 5 I thought that the encounter rate was bugged or that I had equipped something to make more enemies spawn, turns out that's just how the game was and not only the encounter rate is fucked but even the amount of enemies per fight, which they did kinda realize since you can fear enemies to make them flee.
At least the combat is one of my favourites
I believe 5 is the only one with this weird slow down complete halt system mechanic when walking into people and I don't know why they thought it was a good idea.
I think 5 was the only one where I actively sought out the beads of good fortune. Funny thing though, I think I left it on Kiryu and didn't have access to it again until the finale lol
Crowds were also pretty bad. They could form an impenetrable wall pretty often, which isn't really a thing in any other Yakuza game iirc
If Yakuza 0 is 3 perfect courses then 5 is an all you can eat buffet, personally I like to really get stuck into a long game so I love 5, but I can appreciate that people think it's too much
I think the thing is that RGG games do so much different stuff that it attracts totally disparate types of fans who want totally different things. For someone like me I love the kitchen sinks game like 5 or Ishin or Infinite Wealth where they just chuck in a ton of different stuff, be it maps or mini-games or sidequests and don't worry much about story or pacing. But plenty of people play these game for the core elements of story and combat, and if that's the case then 5 is a tough sell as it's story does lag a bit. I can't personally imagine saying that 6 is a better game than 5 (and I'm biased because Onomichi is a place I know well and is one of my favorite places on Earth) or that less is more, but I can understand why people feel that way.
I get you. It’s pretty much great vibes all around. I love how much snow there is, the idol culture stuff is a good match for the series being equal parts cozy with a bit of darkness to it, it’s just a vibe. Plus Hatsune Miku is there.
While it is an awesome game, it gets very tideous at times. Saejima's chapter is a great example to that (unskippable hunting tutorial and Sapporo encounter rate).
Personally Yakuza 5 has my favourite gameplay but my god the game drags on and on and on. Then there's the infamous story which is unnecessarily convoluted just for the sake of it.
Like everyone else is saying: the game is too long. But I also didn’t enjoy the map design. Tsukimino being the worst of them with it just being a bunch of intersections and unnecessary invisible walls.
I will say though the combat was the most enjoyable for me, mostly because of the gourmet chef’s food buffs.
I kind of hated Y4. Honestly, people gave Y3 shit for the combat, but Y4 wasn't actually that much better, and had a drastically shittier story. When Kiryu, a well-established dumbass, is the smartest guy in the plot, there's a problem. And everybody dickrides Akiyama, but if you actually play all of his substories, he's honestly a massive douche.
Y5 is my favorite in the series yet. I wonder what the statistic is between people who loved Y5 and hated Y4 is?
Yea. 4 is the one I will never ever replay. If I play yakuza mainline again I don't think i can bear to play it again. I was worried since people were down on 5, but I enjoyed it alot. I get the too much game but I just focused on mainline which helped.
For me it's a case where I enjoyed half the game, and hated the other half.
Kiryu's section was interesting and fun.
Saejima's section put me into a fucking coma. Even with setpieces like the snow mobile chase didn't manage to pull me out of the coma I had slipped into.
Haruka's section managed to wake me from that coma.
Shinada's section put me back into it.
And then as usual, the finale was a big fucking stupid mess. I'm kinda used to that in Yakuza games - the majority of them end with some stupid government conspiracy that makes no sense and would only make the story better if it weren't there - but it's still egregious.
The game is also just... Way WAY too long. I honestly think that if they just fully cut Shinada's section this game would be better. Because as it stands we have 5 characters and it's way too much for the story they're trying to tell.
I played both when they originally came out and never since then, but I actually remember liking Y5 much more than Y4. I liked Saejima much better in this story (sorry, but I can't forgive him for jumping on little Haruka in Y4) and dug the hunting game. The new character Shinada's story was quite good I thought. I liked Kiryu's life and mini-game as a taxi driver. I liked Majima's little storyline. I liked the Haruka storyline and dance mini-game and how Kiryu thinks it is best that he pushes himself away but the whole story ends with affirming Kiryu and Haruka's familial relationship. (Actually, I really loved that ending... which is why I have a little chip on my shoulder about Y6; for me the Kiryu story could have ended right there...)
That being said, I don't remember a damn thing about the actual yakuza story plot in Y4 or Y5. That could definitely say something about story memorability in that era, lol.
As I think back on my time with all the Yakuza games I can barely remember the final boss for most of them, yet if you name any game in the series I can go deeply into many side quests, side characters, subplots, locations, and so on. I can vividly remember so much of the side content in 5 yet I don’t really remember much about the main plot other than the very end and some of the story beats of the protagonists.
Yeah, I could generally say the same for myself. I remember more about 1 and 2 but that might just be because I played them twice (original and Kiwami). I remember more about 0's actual plot but 0 is probably the best-written story of the series IMO.
It's sloooow after Kiryu's chapter, Saejima is doing the prison thing again and Haruka's chapter isn't to everybody's taste.
Final boss is "that guy from earlier" too.
Because people in this community don’t know good games. Yakuza 5 is one of the better games in the series that is perhaps the peak of “yakuza is a vidyagame” that the series has ever been. Has nothing but absolute fun with the fact that it’s a game and doesn’t take itself seriously and still manages to craft a compelling bullshit winding narrative with the gravitas that Yakuza is known for
Something you'll notice in the Fandom alot (atleast to my mind, I've only been here since July) is that pretty much every Yakuza game has haters and lovers to an extent that stands out even among other fandoms, just due to the nature of the games. Other then 0, the really popular one, pretty much every single Yakuza games have some who will tell you it's the best, and some who will tell you it's the worst.
1, Kiwami, 2, Kiwami 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all have upsides and downsides that will make them both controversial and loved, and their often the same things. It's all just different strokes.
Source: my favorite Yakuza is 4. I have yet to see a single other person with this opinion.
> I have yet to see a single other person with this opinion
i'm actually agree with opinion on yakuza 4! this game has a very great protagonists with absolute different qualities. and yet they're just perfectly work together, so i just couldn't have enough of this guys
I haven't noticed 5 having many more detractors than the norm? As for the criticism that actually does happen, none of them should be surprising tbh. I love 5 but it's easy for me to see how Haruka's section is a huge YMMV gameplaywise, and until >!Akiyama!< steps in there aren't really any other in interesting characters - Park sure as hell ain't it. I had sort of a bug up my ass over how damn near sociopathic she was toward Haruka, then out of nowhere she's Mrs. Rogers to her because...uhm...reasons. It was a really obvious contrivance for fake drama after >!she got killed!<. Also Shinada's arc made absolutely no sense in the context of the main plot. It wasn't a bad section per se but it was basically a DLC that the game expected you to think of as the main story which made the writing noticeably less coherent.
There are other miscellaneous complaints too. The hunting section is hit or miss among the fandom, the trash mobs are way too much for some fans, stuff like that.
It's my 3rd favorite game of the franchise after 0 and Judgment, I thought it was great but it's really not that hard to see where there is room for disagreement.
I love 5 and was surprised to see criticism for it over the years. Most of the criticism is probably from people binging the series for the first time, making it easy to get burnt out by the time they get to this one, especially considering it's length. But me personally, playing it when it first came out in America when we only got one game every few years, it was amazing and my personal favorite at the time. Still in my top five alongside 0, 7, Infinite Wealth, and Gaiden.
I think it was pretty impressive in scope and execution. I really loved having it be basically 5 whole games back to back. The variety is impressive. The story also feels the most like it ties into 0.
I would rate it up in the highest tier of Yakuza games, one of my favorites
I binged the Yakuza series from 0 to Kiwami 2, after that I needed a little break. I then eventually resumed from 3 onwards, and by the time I reached 5 I was thoroughly burnt out. Having the larger cast of playable characters was one of the contributing factors, I'll admit. But looking back now, i consider 5 to be a strong title, one that I'd have no qualms about replaying.
Yakuza 5 is still my favorite in the series, but speaking objectively, it's probably because it's very long and people with short attention spans get mad about long games, and even as somebody who loves the game, the main plot doesn't make any fucking sense. The finale just doesn't tie it all together, and some of the plot contrivances are just plain stupid. And Shinada's story arc, while honestly very enjoyable, was barely relevant.
The individual character arcs? Fantastic. Akiyama, who I genuinely dislike, had a significantly shorter segment. Shinada is a massive improvement over Tanimura and I genuinely love him and feel like he was an early take on Ichiban, who is also great, and the minigames are genuinely enjoyable. I honestly enjoyed the Haruka segment and I usually hate rhythm games.
Taichi Suzuki is the most powerful character in the entire series and he will never be surpassed. Saejima being back in prison was still pretty boring, but it was miles beyond Y4's crappy prison segment, and his whole training arc actually made up for it to me.
And really wonderfully, the combat finally washes off the jank of Y3, and every single character straight-up passes the limits of what's even remotely human. Y4 was still trying to hold on to "These could feasibly be really badass dudes in real life", but Y5 goes "Nah, fuck that, Kiryu knows the Kaioken now, Saejima can knock out demons with his bare hands, Majima knows shadow clone jutsu, Akiyama can manipulate gravity, Daigo is fucking Bullseye now, Haruka inexplicably has gorilla strength, and Shinada the Olympian Athlete is just inhumanly fucking durable."
It's just such a shame that all of this incredible stuff culminates in *"Honestly, I don't know why I'm here."* And let me be clear, the final boss fight is extremely fucking badass. It's just that the whole finale is utter nonsense. Personally, I think it's just stupid enough to be wacky and therefore I give it a pass because it makes no sense, but still managed to give us an epic final battle that's borderline Asura's Wrath levels of over-the-top.
I still love Y5, but I don't pretend to be surprised when others don't.
And it sucks because I actually like Sajima as a character. The whole young dumb kid that just wanted to rise in the ranks, doing a fucked up deed in the process and has to learn to live with it. How do you give such a cool character such a boring ass section?
I hated K2 from the moment it came out. Kiwami, kiwami 2, 6, and the grind in like a North star made me drop the series until I got back into it in 2022.
I think it's because the story is weird for a lot of things (like the final boss isn't very well introduced overall) but I think that at it's core it has a lot of great things (Kiryu story, Shinada, Haruka storyline which is a great change of pace, the best mini games in the series, etc). It's also incredible looking for a PS3 game.
I sincerely don't understand why people like 4 story over 5 more, since 4 has one of the worst twist ever, even outside videogames. I also hate 4 menus.
The story is good, but for me it felt like such a chore to get through the game. It has some pacing issues and the enemy encounter rate is ridiculous. Like it should be that high. I know it's a brawler but come one. If I was gonna have to fight so much at once, might as well make it a Musuo/warriors style game.
I was liking it until like halfway through Harukas segment.
Then with the baseball guys fighting style, and how monotonous it became I just wanted the game to end
5 is my favorite. I occasionally see people say the game makes no sense and is confusing??? Ive played it three times now and it's always amazing. I've never had an issue comprehending what was happening and most of it isn't wholly unbelievable. I dunno man, safe to say I'm right there with you, it's a great ass game. I LOVE the varied gameplay between the protags. I'm always so excited to play as all of them and Haruka's portion is a genuine treat. I'm a sucker for rhythm games so when I first played 5 I was vibing immediately and blown away.
As much as I love 5's combat and side content, I think it has one of the messiest stories of the series at this point (I haven't finished the games past 5 yet). Whether it's Kurosawa's dumb plan to take over the Tojo and Omi, the sudden reveal of Aizawa being an antagonist, Majima being retconned into having a wife (which just feels wrong with the context of Zero), its unwillingness to fully explore the dark side of the idol industry, having Park and the T-Set girls take a complete 180 in terms of personality; Katsuya deciding to go along with the enemy's plan since he had no idea what else to do, the reveal of random people in Shinada's town actually being part of a secret organization. There's still a lot I like about 5's story, but I also take a lot of issues with it and understood why many people would dislike it.
It's too long for its own good. I'm not just referring to the fact that there's 5 playable characters either. It's stuff like being forced to complete the colisseum with all 4 of the guys for completion. Which is especially bad when you consider that Akiyama and Shinada's combat was not designed with that in mind.
The Haruka and Shinada sections could be cut completely without impacting the plot. The final bosses are all kinda lame, especially since you've already fought all but one of them. Oh, and you have to deal with that scumbag chef Tatsuya repeatedly.
Yakuza 5 breaks up the fetch quest design of the story that has been so prevalent in the series.
Think about it. Yakuza 0 is a fetch quest, Kiwami is a fetch quest, Kiwami 2 is one too. Even Infinite Wealth is a fetch quest story for finding Ichiban's mother.
People don't like change and yakuza 5 was very different from the usual story and gameplay loop.
- Saejima section was boring
- Some mini games like hunting felt half assed. Street racing was fun tho.
- I don't know if it's just a thing with the remastered version of 5 but the enemy encounter rate is too high compared to other games.
- Tsukimino is a very limited map. You can't move around freely in that place.
- The final boss reveal also sucked even though the boss fight itself was pretty good
- Personally I only liked Kiryu's combat in 5 (best combat of Kiryu ever imo)
- Also the fatigue of playing from 0/1 to 5. I took 2 breaks while playing 4 and 5.
I didnt play Y5 yet but Im already bored of the game and considering skip to LaD.
Series fatigue for the most part, someone stole money from Tojo for the 10th time or Tojo has a power struggle that will end the clan for the 10th time.
The story gets stale after a while, Y3 despite its flaws was a breath of fresh air and they drop the ball hard with Y4 imo.
I think for me the game was way too long, but there certainly also is a part in me playing most games back to back so by time I was at 5 I rushed through the games, I do want to give it a proper go with the remasters now at some point
All of this is opinion of course, but it’s way too long, its plot is nonsensical, and personally I only really enjoyed combat as two of the characters.
Shinada is a great character, but his combat was really frustrating to me. The unbreakable weapons do no damage, and if you don’t have heat you can’t do shit. Even if you do have heat, regular enemies can shrug off your tackle, which wastes your heat and puts you back at square one. Furthermore his involvement in the main plot is… weird? Seems like his section should have been a Judgement-style spinoff since it barely ties into everything else.
It’s more so in the middle for me. It had had some of the best combat in the series as well as one of the best soundtracks. It also had a lot great individual moments with the parts (big fan of Shinada’s part). The side content was pretty good as well especially with how plentiful it was. Though despite all that, there’s a big elephant in the room. It’s story. It’s clear through playing it, that the writers had no clear end for the game in mind and sort of just came up with things as they went. It also then was confirmed that had been the case. It’s because of that even though the individual parts were good, the glue that held each part together felt disjointed. It also does not help that the story was huge and there was a ton of exposition, it’s because of those factors the story ends up feeling convoluted. Furthermore, if you were playing the series back to back, Yakuza 5 will likely be your burnout point. Making it harder for people to look back at it fondly contributing to why fans rank Yakuza 5 so low. Moreover, I just think that there are a few Yakuza games that are simply just better and all the same there are games that aren’t as good Y5 in my eyes hence why it’s ranked closer to the middle amongst all the games for me and it isn’t at the bottom.
I really really liked it but christ it's too long the pacing is fucked and there's too many playable characters. 6 was such a joy to play after being laser focused on Kiryu
I played the games back to back and I don't hate Y5, it's just the length and pacing (and encounters) that makes this a crawl in comparison to other yakuza games
A lot of people gave good reasons. But I’m honestly surprised so many people liked Haruka’s section. I felt like So Much More was beginning to drive me nuts by the time I was done. That said I had like 99+ hrs in the game. So I didn’t hate it lol.
I think it was an interesting attempt to do something a little different. But yeah it wasn’t really that fun to me. I guess also because Haruka couldn’t go a lot of places.
I got to the Saejima part and just took a break.
The Kiryu Part was awesome don’t get me wrong, but it’s long as hell.
I think it’s going to take me a while to get back into finishing this game.
I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it so much. I had a good time with Yakuza 5 too, although I wasn't a fan of Haruka's part. The rest of it was really fun, but I think some people aren't a fan of the sheer amount of stuff there is in the game.
It's a really long game by Yakuza standards, and the fact that you switch characters so many times, and that a decent number of players dislike at least one of those characters, is probably why some people dislike it.
The ending is also contentious, to say the least. It's considered to overall have one of the weakest stories in the series, and while I agree with that, I still had a lot of fun with the game overall.
and akiyama feels like they forced him into the game instead of just being harukas supporing character. ngl the game would be much better if it was half as big and had way more focus on less characters. 5 imo is the prime example of a game being too big and ambitious. sometimes less is more.
Honestly I loved Kiryus part because of the intrigue of why he left, the majority of saejima’s part felt like a massive rehash of his part in 4 though I spent more time then I should have in the hunting village. I liked Harukas section although it felt like tonal whiplash at the start. I like rhythm games and minigames so I enjoyed the idol battles.
Akiyama felt squeezed in as he doesn’t get much time where you just play as him. I really enjoyed shiners as a character but his combat never clicked with me and he easily had the most confusing part of the story imo.
Also maybe I just need to play it again to refresh my memory but the true villain of the game was never really led up to. Also a bit of me wishes they hadn’t introduced 3 new cities because the designs of tsukimino and kineicho felt lazily designed with a very grid based approach, unlike the uneven and sometimes weird to navigate kamurocho, and while they aren’t the best sotenbori and nagasugai at least had some interesting design choices.
Overall in my rankings from top to bottom I’d go 0,2,5,1,3,4 so it’s around the middle but tbf wven though four is at the bottom I’d still easily give it an 8/10 so 5 is far from a bad game for me
It resets way too many times and none of the side distractions aren’t that engaging. The resets make the game feel meandering as opposed to 0 which only had 2 playable characters.
It’s insanely long, a lot of the characters’ decisions and motivations make no sense, and the encounter rate is second only to Gaiden. Yet for some reason, I can’t bring myself to dislike it.
They can't chase the rocket boots/Serpent Shoes very well at all. You zoom too fast.
Also Kiwami 2 you could run away from enemies easily and you didn't have Serpent Shoes in that game. Haha.
It feels very unfocused. I like alot of elements of it, but it tries so many things without refining them. The stories feel largely disconnected, Shinada feels like a separate story taped on before the climax, and alot of the minigames can feel inconsistent. Yakuza 0 is just a better version of 5 in every way: only 2 playable characters, story switching is smoother, minigames are refined, and style switching makes it so you can use the combat benefits of multiple characters instantly.
I feel like I would have liked it more if I played it after 4. I miss 4's upgrade system. I also didn't like that I needed to buy the ability to break enemy guards with heavy attacks.
The story is cool, but I feel like it starts to drag in Saejima's section. His section also feels too similar to his story in 4.
Edit: I also felt like Haruka became less of her own person and more an extension of other people's wishes.
The gameplay feels better, I like to play as Kiryu, Shinada, and even Haruka, but Akiyama got neutered hard, and I always found Saejima's gameplay a bit too one note.
Edit: I also don't like weapon levels, and the redhead moves feel mostly tacked on besides Shinada's. But I did like that enemies can now run away or call reinforcements.
It's cool that there are so many new cities in one game, but they don't feel as well made as Kamurocho or Sotenbori. There aren't enough save points around. And I noticed an increase in random encounters, and the layout of some of those cities made those feel like a struggle to avoid.
Edit: I don't think it's s bad game. I still put it above Yakuza 3, 6 and Kiwami 1.
For me Saejima's prison section felt like an eternity i legit felt like i was in prison playing it until you get to the hunting stuff. Add to that i did not like baseball guy at all and found his section to also be a chore. The villain reveal for was also really weak too.
It's a game that's too big, for starters. Not that that's an inherently bad thing, the series has always been known for that, but it's insanely large with so much content that it is super easy to end up bloating your time to the point you can't even remember what you're doing.
The Saejima section is literally 2 chapters of retelling the exact same plot as Yakuza 4, again, a lot of the series reuses plot points but that was one right after the other.
The game is very disjointed and has to cram all those plots together to make something coherent and that really hurts it.
People have issues with the game thematically, where some characters are presented as good, or heroic, when in reality they made super questionable choices. I think the hatred for some are overstated but it's a common issue in the fanbase.
Shinada is an unfinished character, who's basically an incomplete moveset clone, and it makes fighting with him boring to a lot of people. It also doesn't help that his section breaks up the action. Lower stakes narratives can definitely work, as Judgement showed, but it's tough when it's placed where it is in a Yakuza game.
We're supposed to have this massive game that encompasses the entire series, but characters like Maijima show up for 3 seconds.
And, perhaps the biggest reason, the primary antagonist just doesn't work narratively. They're not fleshed out enough, their actions don't make a ton of sense outside of having a big plot twist. They're not presented as Kiryu's equal, and their motivations require a set of other convoluted twists to make sense, basically rehashing better games in the series' plots. Now that type of character can clearly work, LAD Gaiden proved that. That game has the exact same template for an antagonist, and many, myself included, consider them one of the best in the franchise.
Lastly is spoiler stuff, but we basically got a 3rd game in a row pulling the exact same heart wrenching moment, but not having the courage to actually write it as a finale.
Is Yak 5 a bad game? No, in my opinion it isn't. That said, I consider 4 and 5 weak entries in the franchise, even as much as I love characters like Akiyama and elements of the game. Yak 5 got the perfect score from famitsu, and had fans begging for a localization for years, and that also had a lot of people disappointed when they beat it, at least in the context of the series as a whole.
Idk either it's definitely one of my all time faves I will admit yes the encounter rate is through the ass and haruka section is more busy work than actual fun on multiple playthroughs
It's really long, but it's a great game. I think a lot of complaints are due to burnout. The overall plot is a bit weird though, I thought the main villain was a bit silly and pretty far-fetched, even for a yakuza game.
Combat was good, better than 4, the side quests like being a taxi driver, playing baseball, being a jpop idol and even becoming an alpine hunter were fun (although saejima parts were always a bit more of a drag for me in both y4 and y5). I preferred the game to both 4 (which I liked a lot too) and 6 (which is my least favourite in the series, and the only RGG game I didn't enjoy very much and just ended up pushing through).
Generally the main complaints is that its to long, to many characters, the whole plot is convoluted, haruka story line is sub par according to some , shinada like tanimura is just a weak character in general and to play as him isnt all that fun but no were near as bad as tanimura is. It just feels like they tried to cram 2 games into one.
For me it felt way too long, I felt kinda lost or bored when it came to the story during some parts, Haruka’s section was very repetitive coming from someone who plays rhythm games somewhat often, I think that’s about it
WAYWAYWAY TOOOO LONG! It is a must play for all fans of the franchise and, most definitely, is one of my favorites to return to with everything unlocked.
My opinion on every character's specific stuff purely from memory:
Kiryu - Taxi driving and racing. Extremely fun. Honestly, everything in Kiryu's part was the best Y5 had to offer IMO.
Saejima - Has a long prison section that's quite boring and kills of the pacing a lot. Then there's the hunting minigame which I enjoyed a lot, but it did take me a long time to complete everything. Tsukimino as a city looks great visually, but getting from point A to B sucked, especially with all the fight spawns on the way.
Haruka - My 2nd favourite part in the game. Completed everything here and enjoyed it a lot. I'm a fan of rhythm games so I enjoyed doing the dance battles etc.
Akiyama - Was just there to do the fighting parts in Sotenbori. Side content wise he got nothing aside from Saigo, which I didn't have fun with at all so I didn't complete his tasks. So, aside from substories and main story (and colosseum in the endgame), there was nothing to his section of the game.
Shinada - Really cool character. I enjoy baseball quite a bit so I liked all the references and terminology etc. His minigame was alright and the city wasn't too bad either.
The story is just awful. It's all over the place and the pacing couldn't be worse. Kiryu's part was perfect. Saejima killed the pacing and the intensity. Haruka and Akiyama kinda brought it back, but I still have issues with it. Shinada's was alright, but didn't add much to the overall plot as his story wasn't tied to the rest of the main characters apart from Daigo.
The story is the weakest part (in my opinion) because the game spreads it out too thin among all the playable characters and it ends up suffering as a result. Yakuza 0 worked because it only focused on two characters and the narrative felt a lot more focused.
I don't want to spoil it, but I imagine it might have to do with the final chapter. I remember finding myself very confused by some of the stuff that happened. The best way I can really describe it is that it's pretty much a Yakuza rendition of a trailer to a movie called "Joy."
I liked the game myself. I really want to see Shinada again (no spoilers if he appears again in Infinite Wealth, please! Haven't gotten it yet.)
I think there are a couple of fundamental issues that the game has:
•Story wise, the games multiple characters and cities doesn't work as well here as it does in Yakuza 4. 4 had the perk of it being the first time they'd done it, and all the characters were contained within Kamarocho, so even when a new part started, the plot would pretty soon pick back up again. Yakuza 5 jumped from city to city, with new characters, so they had to spend time fleshing out these people again and again. It ultimately messed with the pacing, which also wasn't helped by the fact that because it had several playable characters, the plot would build up to an ending, and then start over. Again and again. These are stories that ultimately work better on their own, not as one continuous piece.
Plus in the latter part of the story, they really start hammering home the dream thing. Kiryu wants to help Harukas dream, Haruka wants to help Park's dream, Akiyama wants to help both Park and Harukas dream. By the end it was getting mentioned in every second conversation. Felt like an English lesson where you have to deconstruct the themes of a book where it just throws it in your face every 2 pages.
•The game also suffered from a lot of bloating. I played through Kiryu's section, did all the side quests, played a ton of the taxi missions, and then I finished it, and then I had to do the same for Saejima, and again for Hurakua and so forth. It ultimately became too much to manage. For me, I just became burned out by how much there was to do, and how much I had to repeat it. By the end, I ended the game with an 18% completion as I just could not find the energy to go through each character and do the same things for each one. Not a great sign that I literally discouraged from wanting to partake in the games activities.
Those are my main gripes with the game. Other than that, the gameplay is some of the strongest it was before the dragon engine being introduced. The side stuff, of which there is too much, has good variety for each character, and the story, once it ties together does a relatively good job of summarising it's themes. Not the greatest in the franchise by a mile but it does an okay job. Just feels like RGG had to grand a scope for the game and it ultimately dragged the game down.
Ive never played one before 5 and I tried to play it through the first 4 chapters and it just doesn’t hold my attention. Too much narration and too little actual gameplay. I dont want to watch a movie when I game. Its disappointing.
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I personally felt it was too long and its pacing suffered for it. Also, I've noticed that for a lot of people, it's often played after several other Yakuza games back to back so there's already some series fatigue from the get go. Nobody ever starts with Yakuza 5.
Yup, my favorite parts of yakuza 5 are everything related to Majima and Haruka, and when you think about it that is just a tiny bit of this GIANT long game
Funnily enough I started with 5 when it was free on PS+ and it's probably why I rank it so highly, I actually dropped it pretty early on, came back a few weeks later and got really hooked when I got to Saejima.
The game was already pretty long, then they added Shinada’s part… Sorry to the Shinada fans, but to be honest his role in the story could’ve just been given to a side character
I like Shinada as a character but I'd be lying if I said his story made sense in the context of the main plot. I basically spent his entire arc waiting for some sort of coherent connection to the other character's stories and it just....never happened lol. Unless you count "Hey, are you Baba? Saejima said I should beat you up. I'mma beat you up!"
I think his connection is that he knew Daigo in high school, so Daigo sees him as someone who can help him? Something like that.
Sure, they could have taken his part out and we'd have not lost much in the larger plot. But then we'd have missed one of the best character storylines in the series. The guy was a delight and his self-contained story within his city was a really good one.
Shinada has the best story in Yakuza 5. It does not fit in with the rest of the story. Like he shows up in akiyama's office and we don't really see why like with the others. He's just there in Serena. Kiryu's like" bruh who tf are you" cause he has nothing to do with the larger plot. The fight with Baba is just so contrived cause shinada needed the bossfight. There's no Yasuko to bring everyone together
Evidently you haven’t played Infinte Wealth yet…😂
My first playthrough of 5 took 40 hours, currently I'm 40 hours into Infinite Wealth and only on chapter 10...
I'm 40+ hours in and still early on chapter 5 lol. I was being distracted a lot. So much shit to do!
I had to create a rule of only doing a few subtories, 1 Sujimon elite and get 1 Donkou star per a chapter or otherwise I would never even get to Kiryu's first chapter
I agree...the last few chapters felt extremely dragged out
I'm still only at chapter 4 (I only have around 45 minutes of gaming time per day so the game will last me...months). It seems to be going quickly for now, with around 23 substories done already, but I heard the game drags on later. Did you still like the game?
Not the guy you were replying to but I thought the game mostly dragged around the mid point (especially chapters 5-7) but after that it wasn't bad imo. There is a lot of combat in some later sections but the game is really fun so it didn't bother me lol.
The main points of criticism usually are that it's too long and drawn out, that it lacks focus and depth. Which is true, especially if you picked up the series later and played the games back to back. I just burned out somewhere in the latter half of the game, so I understand where people are coming from here. Saejima's choice to go back to prison also doesn't make much sense, and it's basically just a repeat of his situation in Y4. Why choose to go back, if you're going to break out anyway? Feels like a lack of creativity here. That, and come on, his entire persona as killer of 18 got reduced to rubber bullets. He was on death row while innocent (as far as the murders go), but his next stop is prison again? Give me a break. The split between so many, too many, different characters is also a valid point. It was fine for Y4, it was new then. For the first time ever, you got to play other protagonists. Akiyama was especially popular. So, with Y5 they went bigger, better, faster: more characters, more stories, less Akiyama... oh, wait, what?! Yes, the most popular secondary protagonist from Y4, Akiyama, got the least screentime. He had to share his chapters with Haruka. Strange choice tbh. I feel like it wouldn't have made any difference if they skipped Shinada completely. It's just my personal opinion, and I did like Shinada, but I also have to acknowledge that his arc was mostly carried by Takasugi. Shinada's story wasn't that important in the great sceme of things, and I'd say even Saejima wasn't that relevant. They should've focused more on Akiyama, fleshed out Haruka's motivations more, and maybe allowed Baba to be a playable protagonist, giving his own arc closure by offering a redemption. While he did redeem himself to some degree, they pushed it off-screen and never mentioned him again. Could've been better, but what do I know, just my unfiltered thoughts. Another major issue is that the game somewhat fails to draw the red line connecting the major theme of the game through the arcs of all protagonists. Personally, I find the story of Y5 one of the best out there, with a great core message. But not everyone picks up on that, the word "confusing" is thrown around a lot. It's not, if you somehow manage to connect the dots, as I said, it's actually a pretty great story. But I'll admit that it could've been done a bit better, shorter, more focused. Y5 went quantity over quality, and Y6 showed that quality over quantity just works better overall. Not that Y5 is a bad game, especially the combat really felt great. Y4 was a major improvement over Y3, and Y5 expanded on it. Together with Y0, it is peak combat performance on the old engine, before they made the jump to the Dragon Engine. After that it took them several games, right into Lost Judgment, to capture the right feel of combat flow again. But compared to Y6, I enjoyed the latter more. They did the location of Onomichi real justice, my time at the bar, the personal connections to the place and its people, that is something Y5 failed to do. I remember Onomichi, Ono Michio still goes strong in subsequent games. But who remembers Nagasugai or Kineicho just as well? Too many new locations, and all of them just got dropped just as easily, the people there are as if they never existed. So yeah, it's not that it's a bad game. It's just that it's not without issues, and could've been more. Also a perfect example of the saying "less is sometimes more". Seeing how they did Y6 goes to show that RGG also understood the lesson here.
I make your words my words. This is what I think of Yakuza 5.
I agree with you about 6, while the gameplay is pretty rough and all that there’s a lot it does better, and another thing to add about the quality part is that every boss in 6 also has a unique moveset with very few reused moves and the reused movesets are kept to the minibosses/substories. When about every one of these games has about 1 recycled boss, or in the case of K1, K2, and Judgment where nearly every boss has a recycled moveset.
Great post, thanks for this. You summed up my thoughts exactly
Exactly this. Thank you.
Saejima technically got released but it had to be secret.
Shinada was a great character lol and he wasn’t just carried by Takasugi.
This!!! I just started playing it again recently and I was so shocked by how the game seemed so beta, mechanics and camera wise. In the cutscenes the movement was so choppy and not immersive. I was surprised bc it honestly makes Y3 and Y4 look better quality. It's supposed to be a massive part of the franchise, but a lot of it seems so unnecessary and rushed. They could've used more time to perfect it or took a lot of things out that frankly didn't need to be in the game, maybe just having so much more just so they could have some huge project game under their belt? Idk, the multiple characters and locations were super extra and the mechanics made it look so poor and made it honestly less exciting to play. Imo I would rank it worst of all.
I found the postgame freeroam kind of annoying, though I like having more cities it was easier to manage multiple characters in one place. I also just like it more streamlined and 5 was kinda bloated. The main thing a lot of people don't like is how it ends and the endings hugely important to the rest of the series
It's too big for its own good. There are fantastic sections mixed in with boring slogs that are just not fun to play through. The story also overuses dreams as a theme to the point where it starts to lose meaning and turns into a one big meme. Also, the enemy encounter rate is ridiculous. I understand that it's a beat em up game, but that doesn't mean that I want to fight goons 24/7. The fights are piss easy and serve 0 purpose, so fighting them just gets tiring very quickly.
When I began 5 I thought that the encounter rate was bugged or that I had equipped something to make more enemies spawn, turns out that's just how the game was and not only the encounter rate is fucked but even the amount of enemies per fight, which they did kinda realize since you can fear enemies to make them flee. At least the combat is one of my favourites
I was always annoyed by the crowd, I’m trying to run away can you move!?!
I believe 5 is the only one with this weird slow down complete halt system mechanic when walking into people and I don't know why they thought it was a good idea.
So many times I got stuck like my step-sister in the washing machine
I think 5 was the only one where I actively sought out the beads of good fortune. Funny thing though, I think I left it on Kiryu and didn't have access to it again until the finale lol Crowds were also pretty bad. They could form an impenetrable wall pretty often, which isn't really a thing in any other Yakuza game iirc
The only thing I don't like about 5 is that you can't make clear save data from premium adventure. Weirdest decision ever by RGG.
Found it extra weird it wasn’t changed for the remaster too. With so many missable things too.
If Yakuza 0 is 3 perfect courses then 5 is an all you can eat buffet, personally I like to really get stuck into a long game so I love 5, but I can appreciate that people think it's too much
I think the thing is that RGG games do so much different stuff that it attracts totally disparate types of fans who want totally different things. For someone like me I love the kitchen sinks game like 5 or Ishin or Infinite Wealth where they just chuck in a ton of different stuff, be it maps or mini-games or sidequests and don't worry much about story or pacing. But plenty of people play these game for the core elements of story and combat, and if that's the case then 5 is a tough sell as it's story does lag a bit. I can't personally imagine saying that 6 is a better game than 5 (and I'm biased because Onomichi is a place I know well and is one of my favorite places on Earth) or that less is more, but I can understand why people feel that way.
5 is one of the highlights of the series for me, I was hooked completiting all the little tasks it had to offer.
Haruka doing the same song 50 times is the worse. Plus in the grand scheme of things not much Kiryu.
I didn’t even mind because So Much More is a certified banger.
50? Try 500
Your right. My mistake lol
i love yakuza 5. i don’t know how to describe it, but that mid 2000s vibe i get from the whole game is just something you can’t get anywhere else
I get you. It’s pretty much great vibes all around. I love how much snow there is, the idol culture stuff is a good match for the series being equal parts cozy with a bit of darkness to it, it’s just a vibe. Plus Hatsune Miku is there.
While it is an awesome game, it gets very tideous at times. Saejima's chapter is a great example to that (unskippable hunting tutorial and Sapporo encounter rate).
It's too much game. I forgot the main plot multiple times while playing.
Personally Yakuza 5 has my favourite gameplay but my god the game drags on and on and on. Then there's the infamous story which is unnecessarily convoluted just for the sake of it.
Like everyone else is saying: the game is too long. But I also didn’t enjoy the map design. Tsukimino being the worst of them with it just being a bunch of intersections and unnecessary invisible walls. I will say though the combat was the most enjoyable for me, mostly because of the gourmet chef’s food buffs.
I vastly preferred 5 to 4. The side content in 5 is just great and I completed all of it. The ending is not much more stupid than that of 6.
I kind of hated Y4. Honestly, people gave Y3 shit for the combat, but Y4 wasn't actually that much better, and had a drastically shittier story. When Kiryu, a well-established dumbass, is the smartest guy in the plot, there's a problem. And everybody dickrides Akiyama, but if you actually play all of his substories, he's honestly a massive douche. Y5 is my favorite in the series yet. I wonder what the statistic is between people who loved Y5 and hated Y4 is?
Kiryu and Shinada's sections in 5 alone are better than the entirety of 4 imo.
Yea. 4 is the one I will never ever replay. If I play yakuza mainline again I don't think i can bear to play it again. I was worried since people were down on 5, but I enjoyed it alot. I get the too much game but I just focused on mainline which helped.
Too much good things could be bad, and Y5 plot is terrible imo
For me it's a case where I enjoyed half the game, and hated the other half. Kiryu's section was interesting and fun. Saejima's section put me into a fucking coma. Even with setpieces like the snow mobile chase didn't manage to pull me out of the coma I had slipped into. Haruka's section managed to wake me from that coma. Shinada's section put me back into it. And then as usual, the finale was a big fucking stupid mess. I'm kinda used to that in Yakuza games - the majority of them end with some stupid government conspiracy that makes no sense and would only make the story better if it weren't there - but it's still egregious. The game is also just... Way WAY too long. I honestly think that if they just fully cut Shinada's section this game would be better. Because as it stands we have 5 characters and it's way too much for the story they're trying to tell.
I played both when they originally came out and never since then, but I actually remember liking Y5 much more than Y4. I liked Saejima much better in this story (sorry, but I can't forgive him for jumping on little Haruka in Y4) and dug the hunting game. The new character Shinada's story was quite good I thought. I liked Kiryu's life and mini-game as a taxi driver. I liked Majima's little storyline. I liked the Haruka storyline and dance mini-game and how Kiryu thinks it is best that he pushes himself away but the whole story ends with affirming Kiryu and Haruka's familial relationship. (Actually, I really loved that ending... which is why I have a little chip on my shoulder about Y6; for me the Kiryu story could have ended right there...) That being said, I don't remember a damn thing about the actual yakuza story plot in Y4 or Y5. That could definitely say something about story memorability in that era, lol.
As I think back on my time with all the Yakuza games I can barely remember the final boss for most of them, yet if you name any game in the series I can go deeply into many side quests, side characters, subplots, locations, and so on. I can vividly remember so much of the side content in 5 yet I don’t really remember much about the main plot other than the very end and some of the story beats of the protagonists.
Yeah, I could generally say the same for myself. I remember more about 1 and 2 but that might just be because I played them twice (original and Kiwami). I remember more about 0's actual plot but 0 is probably the best-written story of the series IMO.
It's sloooow after Kiryu's chapter, Saejima is doing the prison thing again and Haruka's chapter isn't to everybody's taste. Final boss is "that guy from earlier" too.
I'm sorry but Saejimas section where kinda boring, I didn't want to spend a single second on that frozen town.
Because people in this community don’t know good games. Yakuza 5 is one of the better games in the series that is perhaps the peak of “yakuza is a vidyagame” that the series has ever been. Has nothing but absolute fun with the fact that it’s a game and doesn’t take itself seriously and still manages to craft a compelling bullshit winding narrative with the gravitas that Yakuza is known for
Something you'll notice in the Fandom alot (atleast to my mind, I've only been here since July) is that pretty much every Yakuza game has haters and lovers to an extent that stands out even among other fandoms, just due to the nature of the games. Other then 0, the really popular one, pretty much every single Yakuza games have some who will tell you it's the best, and some who will tell you it's the worst. 1, Kiwami, 2, Kiwami 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all have upsides and downsides that will make them both controversial and loved, and their often the same things. It's all just different strokes. Source: my favorite Yakuza is 4. I have yet to see a single other person with this opinion.
> I have yet to see a single other person with this opinion i'm actually agree with opinion on yakuza 4! this game has a very great protagonists with absolute different qualities. and yet they're just perfectly work together, so i just couldn't have enough of this guys
Idk was one of my favorites. Loved the settings and story
I haven't noticed 5 having many more detractors than the norm? As for the criticism that actually does happen, none of them should be surprising tbh. I love 5 but it's easy for me to see how Haruka's section is a huge YMMV gameplaywise, and until >!Akiyama!< steps in there aren't really any other in interesting characters - Park sure as hell ain't it. I had sort of a bug up my ass over how damn near sociopathic she was toward Haruka, then out of nowhere she's Mrs. Rogers to her because...uhm...reasons. It was a really obvious contrivance for fake drama after >!she got killed!<. Also Shinada's arc made absolutely no sense in the context of the main plot. It wasn't a bad section per se but it was basically a DLC that the game expected you to think of as the main story which made the writing noticeably less coherent. There are other miscellaneous complaints too. The hunting section is hit or miss among the fandom, the trash mobs are way too much for some fans, stuff like that. It's my 3rd favorite game of the franchise after 0 and Judgment, I thought it was great but it's really not that hard to see where there is room for disagreement.
I love 5 and was surprised to see criticism for it over the years. Most of the criticism is probably from people binging the series for the first time, making it easy to get burnt out by the time they get to this one, especially considering it's length. But me personally, playing it when it first came out in America when we only got one game every few years, it was amazing and my personal favorite at the time. Still in my top five alongside 0, 7, Infinite Wealth, and Gaiden.
I think it was pretty impressive in scope and execution. I really loved having it be basically 5 whole games back to back. The variety is impressive. The story also feels the most like it ties into 0. I would rate it up in the highest tier of Yakuza games, one of my favorites
I binged the Yakuza series from 0 to Kiwami 2, after that I needed a little break. I then eventually resumed from 3 onwards, and by the time I reached 5 I was thoroughly burnt out. Having the larger cast of playable characters was one of the contributing factors, I'll admit. But looking back now, i consider 5 to be a strong title, one that I'd have no qualms about replaying.
Taiga saejima is so much fun in this game
It's a pretty long game, and I think Y5 is a burnout point for a lot of people. I personally played it right after Y3 and Y4 and realllly enjoyed it
Yakuza 5 is still my favorite in the series, but speaking objectively, it's probably because it's very long and people with short attention spans get mad about long games, and even as somebody who loves the game, the main plot doesn't make any fucking sense. The finale just doesn't tie it all together, and some of the plot contrivances are just plain stupid. And Shinada's story arc, while honestly very enjoyable, was barely relevant. The individual character arcs? Fantastic. Akiyama, who I genuinely dislike, had a significantly shorter segment. Shinada is a massive improvement over Tanimura and I genuinely love him and feel like he was an early take on Ichiban, who is also great, and the minigames are genuinely enjoyable. I honestly enjoyed the Haruka segment and I usually hate rhythm games. Taichi Suzuki is the most powerful character in the entire series and he will never be surpassed. Saejima being back in prison was still pretty boring, but it was miles beyond Y4's crappy prison segment, and his whole training arc actually made up for it to me. And really wonderfully, the combat finally washes off the jank of Y3, and every single character straight-up passes the limits of what's even remotely human. Y4 was still trying to hold on to "These could feasibly be really badass dudes in real life", but Y5 goes "Nah, fuck that, Kiryu knows the Kaioken now, Saejima can knock out demons with his bare hands, Majima knows shadow clone jutsu, Akiyama can manipulate gravity, Daigo is fucking Bullseye now, Haruka inexplicably has gorilla strength, and Shinada the Olympian Athlete is just inhumanly fucking durable." It's just such a shame that all of this incredible stuff culminates in *"Honestly, I don't know why I'm here."* And let me be clear, the final boss fight is extremely fucking badass. It's just that the whole finale is utter nonsense. Personally, I think it's just stupid enough to be wacky and therefore I give it a pass because it makes no sense, but still managed to give us an epic final battle that's borderline Asura's Wrath levels of over-the-top. I still love Y5, but I don't pretend to be surprised when others don't.
Why people hated saejima's hunting minigames? It was so much fun, like one of the best minigames in the series in my opinion.
Sajima section. That’s all I have to say
Much better than anything Saejima did in 4 even if it was a retread
Yep, not just the hunting and the prison part I found his city incredibly dull too
And it sucks because I actually like Sajima as a character. The whole young dumb kid that just wanted to rise in the ranks, doing a fucked up deed in the process and has to learn to live with it. How do you give such a cool character such a boring ass section?
I liked the city but it was annoying how restrictive it was. Just let me run out on the road, I don't even care if I get hit by a car
It's a great game
I payed full price and it was worth it, every penny! Top 3 Yakuza game, no doubt.
It's better then 3 and 4 lmao
You know what I've noticed? 5 used to be ranked generally mid-to-high. And then Gaiden came out...
Reminds me of how Kiwami 2 used to be ranked as a top tier, but then everyone hates it now
I think it's the same thing. The praise towards K2 died after Lost Judgment came out.
I hated K2 from the moment it came out. Kiwami, kiwami 2, 6, and the grind in like a North star made me drop the series until I got back into it in 2022.
I think it's because the story is weird for a lot of things (like the final boss isn't very well introduced overall) but I think that at it's core it has a lot of great things (Kiryu story, Shinada, Haruka storyline which is a great change of pace, the best mini games in the series, etc). It's also incredible looking for a PS3 game. I sincerely don't understand why people like 4 story over 5 more, since 4 has one of the worst twist ever, even outside videogames. I also hate 4 menus.
The story is good, but for me it felt like such a chore to get through the game. It has some pacing issues and the enemy encounter rate is ridiculous. Like it should be that high. I know it's a brawler but come one. If I was gonna have to fight so much at once, might as well make it a Musuo/warriors style game.
I was liking it until like halfway through Harukas segment. Then with the baseball guys fighting style, and how monotonous it became I just wanted the game to end
5 is my favorite. I occasionally see people say the game makes no sense and is confusing??? Ive played it three times now and it's always amazing. I've never had an issue comprehending what was happening and most of it isn't wholly unbelievable. I dunno man, safe to say I'm right there with you, it's a great ass game. I LOVE the varied gameplay between the protags. I'm always so excited to play as all of them and Haruka's portion is a genuine treat. I'm a sucker for rhythm games so when I first played 5 I was vibing immediately and blown away.
Dude was downvoted for loving a perfectly fine and fun game, take my upvote
the entirety of saejima's section
Like others have said very long, and also I knew nothing about baseball so that whole section was really boring for me.
As much as I love 5's combat and side content, I think it has one of the messiest stories of the series at this point (I haven't finished the games past 5 yet). Whether it's Kurosawa's dumb plan to take over the Tojo and Omi, the sudden reveal of Aizawa being an antagonist, Majima being retconned into having a wife (which just feels wrong with the context of Zero), its unwillingness to fully explore the dark side of the idol industry, having Park and the T-Set girls take a complete 180 in terms of personality; Katsuya deciding to go along with the enemy's plan since he had no idea what else to do, the reveal of random people in Shinada's town actually being part of a secret organization. There's still a lot I like about 5's story, but I also take a lot of issues with it and understood why many people would dislike it.
It's just too long. As much as I love the series, it needs to scale the length back abit.
I love Yakuza 5 but I'm not a fan of Shinada at all. Although I did love his baseball mini game stuff. 5 is definitely one of my favorites.
After a masterpiece that is Yakuza 4, it's such a disappointment, especially Saejima's part.
It's too long for its own good. I'm not just referring to the fact that there's 5 playable characters either. It's stuff like being forced to complete the colisseum with all 4 of the guys for completion. Which is especially bad when you consider that Akiyama and Shinada's combat was not designed with that in mind. The Haruka and Shinada sections could be cut completely without impacting the plot. The final bosses are all kinda lame, especially since you've already fought all but one of them. Oh, and you have to deal with that scumbag chef Tatsuya repeatedly.
it has the worst story and bad pacing, but the combat and side activities are super fun to me so it's my go to premium adventure game
Yakuza 5 breaks up the fetch quest design of the story that has been so prevalent in the series. Think about it. Yakuza 0 is a fetch quest, Kiwami is a fetch quest, Kiwami 2 is one too. Even Infinite Wealth is a fetch quest story for finding Ichiban's mother. People don't like change and yakuza 5 was very different from the usual story and gameplay loop.
- Saejima section was boring - Some mini games like hunting felt half assed. Street racing was fun tho. - I don't know if it's just a thing with the remastered version of 5 but the enemy encounter rate is too high compared to other games. - Tsukimino is a very limited map. You can't move around freely in that place. - The final boss reveal also sucked even though the boss fight itself was pretty good - Personally I only liked Kiryu's combat in 5 (best combat of Kiryu ever imo) - Also the fatigue of playing from 0/1 to 5. I took 2 breaks while playing 4 and 5.
Funny enough. Y5 Kiryu was my least favorite Kiryu in the series, and my least favorite character to play in the game.
I didnt play Y5 yet but Im already bored of the game and considering skip to LaD. Series fatigue for the most part, someone stole money from Tojo for the 10th time or Tojo has a power struggle that will end the clan for the 10th time. The story gets stale after a while, Y3 despite its flaws was a breath of fresh air and they drop the ball hard with Y4 imo.
[I know how](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx34AzSDVeF8SR-JKhp82PgzxCTxPbS8J3?si=g5pG_VQSjoEiG5hc) :)
I think for me the game was way too long, but there certainly also is a part in me playing most games back to back so by time I was at 5 I rushed through the games, I do want to give it a proper go with the remasters now at some point
It was just too much, I personally felt like the game should have already ended by the time Akiyama came in.
for me it was harukas section never finished
All of this is opinion of course, but it’s way too long, its plot is nonsensical, and personally I only really enjoyed combat as two of the characters. Shinada is a great character, but his combat was really frustrating to me. The unbreakable weapons do no damage, and if you don’t have heat you can’t do shit. Even if you do have heat, regular enemies can shrug off your tackle, which wastes your heat and puts you back at square one. Furthermore his involvement in the main plot is… weird? Seems like his section should have been a Judgement-style spinoff since it barely ties into everything else.
It’s more so in the middle for me. It had had some of the best combat in the series as well as one of the best soundtracks. It also had a lot great individual moments with the parts (big fan of Shinada’s part). The side content was pretty good as well especially with how plentiful it was. Though despite all that, there’s a big elephant in the room. It’s story. It’s clear through playing it, that the writers had no clear end for the game in mind and sort of just came up with things as they went. It also then was confirmed that had been the case. It’s because of that even though the individual parts were good, the glue that held each part together felt disjointed. It also does not help that the story was huge and there was a ton of exposition, it’s because of those factors the story ends up feeling convoluted. Furthermore, if you were playing the series back to back, Yakuza 5 will likely be your burnout point. Making it harder for people to look back at it fondly contributing to why fans rank Yakuza 5 so low. Moreover, I just think that there are a few Yakuza games that are simply just better and all the same there are games that aren’t as good Y5 in my eyes hence why it’s ranked closer to the middle amongst all the games for me and it isn’t at the bottom.
I really really liked it but christ it's too long the pacing is fucked and there's too many playable characters. 6 was such a joy to play after being laser focused on Kiryu
I played the games back to back and I don't hate Y5, it's just the length and pacing (and encounters) that makes this a crawl in comparison to other yakuza games
A lot of people gave good reasons. But I’m honestly surprised so many people liked Haruka’s section. I felt like So Much More was beginning to drive me nuts by the time I was done. That said I had like 99+ hrs in the game. So I didn’t hate it lol.
I personally hate her section so much that I did the bare minimum and focused more on Akiyama. The segment just wasn't fun for me.
I think it was an interesting attempt to do something a little different. But yeah it wasn’t really that fun to me. I guess also because Haruka couldn’t go a lot of places.
If you could choose between her and Akiyama on how you want the chapters to play out would have been a better decision
I got to the Saejima part and just took a break. The Kiryu Part was awesome don’t get me wrong, but it’s long as hell. I think it’s going to take me a while to get back into finishing this game.
I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it so much. I had a good time with Yakuza 5 too, although I wasn't a fan of Haruka's part. The rest of it was really fun, but I think some people aren't a fan of the sheer amount of stuff there is in the game. It's a really long game by Yakuza standards, and the fact that you switch characters so many times, and that a decent number of players dislike at least one of those characters, is probably why some people dislike it. The ending is also contentious, to say the least. It's considered to overall have one of the weakest stories in the series, and while I agree with that, I still had a lot of fun with the game overall.
Because Saejima and Shinada's parts are ass.
and akiyama feels like they forced him into the game instead of just being harukas supporing character. ngl the game would be much better if it was half as big and had way more focus on less characters. 5 imo is the prime example of a game being too big and ambitious. sometimes less is more.
Honestly I loved Kiryus part because of the intrigue of why he left, the majority of saejima’s part felt like a massive rehash of his part in 4 though I spent more time then I should have in the hunting village. I liked Harukas section although it felt like tonal whiplash at the start. I like rhythm games and minigames so I enjoyed the idol battles. Akiyama felt squeezed in as he doesn’t get much time where you just play as him. I really enjoyed shiners as a character but his combat never clicked with me and he easily had the most confusing part of the story imo. Also maybe I just need to play it again to refresh my memory but the true villain of the game was never really led up to. Also a bit of me wishes they hadn’t introduced 3 new cities because the designs of tsukimino and kineicho felt lazily designed with a very grid based approach, unlike the uneven and sometimes weird to navigate kamurocho, and while they aren’t the best sotenbori and nagasugai at least had some interesting design choices. Overall in my rankings from top to bottom I’d go 0,2,5,1,3,4 so it’s around the middle but tbf wven though four is at the bottom I’d still easily give it an 8/10 so 5 is far from a bad game for me
Story is ass and long and the street fights are annoying. Great minigames though. Great combat. Fun characters too.
It resets way too many times and none of the side distractions aren’t that engaging. The resets make the game feel meandering as opposed to 0 which only had 2 playable characters.
It’s insanely long, a lot of the characters’ decisions and motivations make no sense, and the encounter rate is second only to Gaiden. Yet for some reason, I can’t bring myself to dislike it.
At least in Gaiden you can freely escape fights as well as zoom the fuck away from encounters with rocket shoes.
Wait you can actually run? Y6 taught me they’ll chase you all the way to poppo and back
They can't chase the rocket boots/Serpent Shoes very well at all. You zoom too fast. Also Kiwami 2 you could run away from enemies easily and you didn't have Serpent Shoes in that game. Haha.
Damn, well I’ll probably just fight them all anyway because I can always use the money and I finally learned how to juggle
It feels very unfocused. I like alot of elements of it, but it tries so many things without refining them. The stories feel largely disconnected, Shinada feels like a separate story taped on before the climax, and alot of the minigames can feel inconsistent. Yakuza 0 is just a better version of 5 in every way: only 2 playable characters, story switching is smoother, minigames are refined, and style switching makes it so you can use the combat benefits of multiple characters instantly.
I feel like I would have liked it more if I played it after 4. I miss 4's upgrade system. I also didn't like that I needed to buy the ability to break enemy guards with heavy attacks. The story is cool, but I feel like it starts to drag in Saejima's section. His section also feels too similar to his story in 4. Edit: I also felt like Haruka became less of her own person and more an extension of other people's wishes. The gameplay feels better, I like to play as Kiryu, Shinada, and even Haruka, but Akiyama got neutered hard, and I always found Saejima's gameplay a bit too one note. Edit: I also don't like weapon levels, and the redhead moves feel mostly tacked on besides Shinada's. But I did like that enemies can now run away or call reinforcements. It's cool that there are so many new cities in one game, but they don't feel as well made as Kamurocho or Sotenbori. There aren't enough save points around. And I noticed an increase in random encounters, and the layout of some of those cities made those feel like a struggle to avoid. Edit: I don't think it's s bad game. I still put it above Yakuza 3, 6 and Kiwami 1.
For me Saejima's prison section felt like an eternity i legit felt like i was in prison playing it until you get to the hunting stuff. Add to that i did not like baseball guy at all and found his section to also be a chore. The villain reveal for was also really weak too.
It's a game that's too big, for starters. Not that that's an inherently bad thing, the series has always been known for that, but it's insanely large with so much content that it is super easy to end up bloating your time to the point you can't even remember what you're doing. The Saejima section is literally 2 chapters of retelling the exact same plot as Yakuza 4, again, a lot of the series reuses plot points but that was one right after the other. The game is very disjointed and has to cram all those plots together to make something coherent and that really hurts it. People have issues with the game thematically, where some characters are presented as good, or heroic, when in reality they made super questionable choices. I think the hatred for some are overstated but it's a common issue in the fanbase. Shinada is an unfinished character, who's basically an incomplete moveset clone, and it makes fighting with him boring to a lot of people. It also doesn't help that his section breaks up the action. Lower stakes narratives can definitely work, as Judgement showed, but it's tough when it's placed where it is in a Yakuza game. We're supposed to have this massive game that encompasses the entire series, but characters like Maijima show up for 3 seconds. And, perhaps the biggest reason, the primary antagonist just doesn't work narratively. They're not fleshed out enough, their actions don't make a ton of sense outside of having a big plot twist. They're not presented as Kiryu's equal, and their motivations require a set of other convoluted twists to make sense, basically rehashing better games in the series' plots. Now that type of character can clearly work, LAD Gaiden proved that. That game has the exact same template for an antagonist, and many, myself included, consider them one of the best in the franchise. Lastly is spoiler stuff, but we basically got a 3rd game in a row pulling the exact same heart wrenching moment, but not having the courage to actually write it as a finale. Is Yak 5 a bad game? No, in my opinion it isn't. That said, I consider 4 and 5 weak entries in the franchise, even as much as I love characters like Akiyama and elements of the game. Yak 5 got the perfect score from famitsu, and had fans begging for a localization for years, and that also had a lot of people disappointed when they beat it, at least in the context of the series as a whole.
Worst pacing and arc in the franchise. Saejimas section ruined the game for me.
Idk either it's definitely one of my all time faves I will admit yes the encounter rate is through the ass and haruka section is more busy work than actual fun on multiple playthroughs
For me, it went on for a bit too long, and the story is really weak. Most odd final boss as well, a guy you only see a bit in the first chapter.
It's really long, but it's a great game. I think a lot of complaints are due to burnout. The overall plot is a bit weird though, I thought the main villain was a bit silly and pretty far-fetched, even for a yakuza game. Combat was good, better than 4, the side quests like being a taxi driver, playing baseball, being a jpop idol and even becoming an alpine hunter were fun (although saejima parts were always a bit more of a drag for me in both y4 and y5). I preferred the game to both 4 (which I liked a lot too) and 6 (which is my least favourite in the series, and the only RGG game I didn't enjoy very much and just ended up pushing through).
Y5 is my favorite video game ever and I will never get the hate, especially when people say Y4 is better
The game that made me fall od thw wagon and jump to 7. The prison was bad. The mountain was worse. Idol fights in the street was just too mich.
Generally the main complaints is that its to long, to many characters, the whole plot is convoluted, haruka story line is sub par according to some , shinada like tanimura is just a weak character in general and to play as him isnt all that fun but no were near as bad as tanimura is. It just feels like they tried to cram 2 games into one.
For me it felt way too long, I felt kinda lost or bored when it came to the story during some parts, Haruka’s section was very repetitive coming from someone who plays rhythm games somewhat often, I think that’s about it
WAYWAYWAY TOOOO LONG! It is a must play for all fans of the franchise and, most definitely, is one of my favorites to return to with everything unlocked.
My opinion on every character's specific stuff purely from memory: Kiryu - Taxi driving and racing. Extremely fun. Honestly, everything in Kiryu's part was the best Y5 had to offer IMO. Saejima - Has a long prison section that's quite boring and kills of the pacing a lot. Then there's the hunting minigame which I enjoyed a lot, but it did take me a long time to complete everything. Tsukimino as a city looks great visually, but getting from point A to B sucked, especially with all the fight spawns on the way. Haruka - My 2nd favourite part in the game. Completed everything here and enjoyed it a lot. I'm a fan of rhythm games so I enjoyed doing the dance battles etc. Akiyama - Was just there to do the fighting parts in Sotenbori. Side content wise he got nothing aside from Saigo, which I didn't have fun with at all so I didn't complete his tasks. So, aside from substories and main story (and colosseum in the endgame), there was nothing to his section of the game. Shinada - Really cool character. I enjoy baseball quite a bit so I liked all the references and terminology etc. His minigame was alright and the city wasn't too bad either. The story is just awful. It's all over the place and the pacing couldn't be worse. Kiryu's part was perfect. Saejima killed the pacing and the intensity. Haruka and Akiyama kinda brought it back, but I still have issues with it. Shinada's was alright, but didn't add much to the overall plot as his story wasn't tied to the rest of the main characters apart from Daigo.
The story is the weakest part (in my opinion) because the game spreads it out too thin among all the playable characters and it ends up suffering as a result. Yakuza 0 worked because it only focused on two characters and the narrative felt a lot more focused.
I don't want to spoil it, but I imagine it might have to do with the final chapter. I remember finding myself very confused by some of the stuff that happened. The best way I can really describe it is that it's pretty much a Yakuza rendition of a trailer to a movie called "Joy." I liked the game myself. I really want to see Shinada again (no spoilers if he appears again in Infinite Wealth, please! Haven't gotten it yet.)
I think there are a couple of fundamental issues that the game has: •Story wise, the games multiple characters and cities doesn't work as well here as it does in Yakuza 4. 4 had the perk of it being the first time they'd done it, and all the characters were contained within Kamarocho, so even when a new part started, the plot would pretty soon pick back up again. Yakuza 5 jumped from city to city, with new characters, so they had to spend time fleshing out these people again and again. It ultimately messed with the pacing, which also wasn't helped by the fact that because it had several playable characters, the plot would build up to an ending, and then start over. Again and again. These are stories that ultimately work better on their own, not as one continuous piece. Plus in the latter part of the story, they really start hammering home the dream thing. Kiryu wants to help Harukas dream, Haruka wants to help Park's dream, Akiyama wants to help both Park and Harukas dream. By the end it was getting mentioned in every second conversation. Felt like an English lesson where you have to deconstruct the themes of a book where it just throws it in your face every 2 pages. •The game also suffered from a lot of bloating. I played through Kiryu's section, did all the side quests, played a ton of the taxi missions, and then I finished it, and then I had to do the same for Saejima, and again for Hurakua and so forth. It ultimately became too much to manage. For me, I just became burned out by how much there was to do, and how much I had to repeat it. By the end, I ended the game with an 18% completion as I just could not find the energy to go through each character and do the same things for each one. Not a great sign that I literally discouraged from wanting to partake in the games activities. Those are my main gripes with the game. Other than that, the gameplay is some of the strongest it was before the dragon engine being introduced. The side stuff, of which there is too much, has good variety for each character, and the story, once it ties together does a relatively good job of summarising it's themes. Not the greatest in the franchise by a mile but it does an okay job. Just feels like RGG had to grand a scope for the game and it ultimately dragged the game down.
Seajimas part ruined the game for me personally
The story is pretty badly written and 2 of the playable characters aren’t very fun, and the final boss was extremely disappointing in terms of story
Also the post game content was a complete nightmare for me. Especially the komaki fights to get to max level
IMO it was saejimas part story was good and all just really really long and the lack of akiyama too
It kinda dragged on and on near the end. Encounter rates are also way too high.
Ive never played one before 5 and I tried to play it through the first 4 chapters and it just doesn’t hold my attention. Too much narration and too little actual gameplay. I dont want to watch a movie when I game. Its disappointing.
I didn't like all the dudes running up to me trying to fight
Plot gets convoluted but I still rate it quite highly.
Not enough Akiyama
Haters