A massive rollercoaster of a game that takes both climbs and falls in quality repeatedly. Overall though this game is too big for its own good and its best parts are found in the smaller less connected bits compared to the story at large. Since each part of this game is big enough to justify being its own smaller title I would rate each of them like so:
Part 1: 4.5/5
Part 2: 2/5
Part 3: 3/5
Part 4: 5/5
Part 5: 3/5

My review for Cane & Rinse:

My wife and I have been playing through Yakuza 5 together, and at the time of writing this we're in the second "half" of Chapter 3.

At this point it's become quite clear that the bulk of this entry is made up of these individual characters' respective minigame-oriented campaigns, for lack of a better word. I suppose one could skip these segments when given the opportunity, to advance the primary story forward. But I'm so deeply endeared to these different threads. Kiryu's taxi/street racing career, Saejima's hunting/trapping journey, Haruka's quest for idol stardom, whatever Akayama's thing ends up being, my heart is bought all the way in.

But it's not the mini games themselves that interest me. They're fine, they're functional. Taken separately, they remind me very much of SIMPLE2000 releases of yore. The most interesting thing I've noticed so far in terms of (drumroll please) ludonarrative cohesion (I'm so sorry) is the two separate rhythm mini games for Haruka's dancing events as they compare to each other, and relate to their contexts. The mini game for a street dance battle is very improvisational. The button presses come in a shuffled order, with randomized meters subdivided to the song's tempo. Having to select the appropriate track with the d-pad before hitting the corresponding face buttons is, I think, an interesting abstraction of Haruka's personal creative agency and expression in an improv street battle like this. Particularly compared to the mini game for the formalized, rehearsed sessions. Those are events, designed to be practiced to a point of comfortable familiarity, and the rhythm game reflects that. You don't need to select a track, because Haruka knows what's coming and when. This is further cemented by the significantly longer note tracks, giving you ample time to prepare, as Haruka is thinking about the next several steps. This is a practiced routine, she doesn't need to think about what she's doing, only how she's doing it. I hope that makes sense?

Kiryu's mini game is more directly tied to the main thread of the game's central plot, and (Whoops, looks like I either meant to return to this paragraph, or perhaps wrote and deleted something here, my apologies!)

Saejima's may have been an exercise in tedium at times, but it felt like I was helping this digital man do the honest hard work of helping to provide for this village that had saved the lives of himself and his friend. It made me proud to take my large adult son Taiga out to the small "Main St." pathway that serves as the village's communal gathering place of sorts, talk to everyone to learn how he can best assist them, and then load up his gear to go up on the mountain for the day, keeping an ever-vigilant eye out for opportunities to help out the locals.

This is already getting too long and if the resident Sega Arcade Racing Game Dork starts talking about Kiryu's quest we'll be here all day.

Suffice it to say that this game has been a delightfully welcome sherpa-lined throw blanket during a particularly cold and wet Seattle winter. I wouldn't want the whole series to be restructured this way, but having at least one entry that's primarily built out of a bunch of bespoke communal activities has been immensely relaxing. Regardless of anything else, this is the coziest Yakuza game yet.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Haruka's hoodie & t-shirt combo is colored like she's mimicking Uncle Kaz and that's adorable.

Dream Big

yakuza 5 is the combination of everything that made me love this franchise, both in its qualities and in its defects

it's a perfect game because it's imperfect

I want to live a happy life with the people I hold closest. Standing on this stage, I've finally realized how important that is. That's why I can't continue singing. To me, Kazuma Kiryu is... family

that moment of haruka saying this to the crowd in her first ever concert is possibly my favourite moment in the entire series, and i cried so much. seeing haruka grow through these games and seeing how important she is to kiryu and how much these games are about kiryu being a father to her and for the entire emotional climax of this game to be about them, to be about haruka being so similar to her dad and leaving behind her life for her family, made me sob.

i have so much love for this game, for the focus on dreams and the importance of having them and not giving up, how all these protangists come together and help each other, how we see characters like baba survive because of the advice saejima gave him; because of the trust. i dont have any coherent thoughts having just finished it but this game is wonderful and seeing akiyama, saejima, kiryu and haruka's stories reflect everything they've been through in the past and come out somehow stronger, somehow better at the end was so good. and shinada was such a refreshing protag to have, to see a normal person with as much bravado as everyone else, who was here solely to help a friend who helped him.

yakuza 5 good and honestly while the plot may not be as smooth or enticing overall, the arcs for these characters and the bonds between every single character makes this game as good to me as y0 was, i LOVED this game.

I feel like I'm gonna gain some enemies with what I'm about to say, but this is my least favorite Yakuza with the original. It's way too ambitious for its own good, with almost forty hours worth of story and five freaking playable characters. The story is way too complicated to follow, even for Yakuza standards, it just keeps spitting new information at you during every dialogue and cutscene, hell the whole fucking story of the final boss is told to you right before you face him. It's also kind of bland? Kiryu's and Saejima's parts are boring as hell, and even if Haruka's offers some much needed variety, I would argue it doesn't get truly good until Shinada's part, which is the most interesting one and has a lot of wonderful characters. The choices for the final bosses are also confusing, with the exception of Saejima's every single one feels either underwhelming or kind of weirdly matched (spoilers here but Baba vs Shinada is the biggest asspull of this franchise).
I may seem like a hater of this game, but I enjoyed it a lot, it's a Yakuza game for God's sake. The combat is as fun as always and revisiting these characters from time to time and discovering new ones is always a pleasure. I just don't get why Yakuza 4 is so underwhelming for so many people and this is a fan favorite.