Too long for its own good. Started in May 2020 and finished 5 January 2021. I beat Yakuza 1-4 in 2/3 months so you can imagine what kind of game this is to cause me to repeatedly drop it.

Part 1
The best part. Liked the way they depicted Kiryu's new life and the taxi stuff was legit fun. Good set up for the rest of the story

Part 2
Zzzz. The character with the worst part of Yakuza 4 comes back to claim his title of the worst part of Yakuza 5. I like saejima and his combat but my god his part was unbearably boring. I actually dropped the game for a while when the hunting part started.

Part 3
Haruka is cool. I liked Park to some degree but she's not a very nice person. Dance battles and the other idol stuff was fun if a bit repetitive at times. Akiyama is swag as always. His interactions with Haruka were cool.

Part 4
Shinada is great but by this point of the game I was really tired of the story restarting 3 times and the lack of an overarching narrative so I rushed this part to get it over with. Shinada and his loan shark are a great duo. I don't like his combat but I got an unbreakable pipe from some side thing which helped a lot.

Finale
Mid. The finale of Yakuza 4 was super badass and had a bunch of great moments between our protagonists. Here it's just not the same. Shinada's motives and presence in the finale are weak. I liked the idea of his final boss but it's hampered by the schizofax Shinada throws at him before the fight. Even the boss keeps going "huh?". Just like me fr.

Saejima's final boss should feel cool but I felt nothing. Easily the weakest version of the character Saejima fought.

Akiyama's final boss was okay. By the time I reached the finale I forgot the relation between the 2 characters but that's fine cause the scene after the boss was super cool.

Kiryu's final boss is a travesty lmao. Some 2 bit player out of nowhere is revealed to be the real reason the plot happened. The motherfucker even says "I don't really get what's happening let's just fight bro lol". Gameplay wise he is actually pretty fun, I heard people online had issues with it but idk that sounds like an issue with the player. If you have tiger drop and komaki knockback then the fight isn't any harder than a regular boss fight. I landed a bunch of tiger drops in this fight for some reason which was cool.

I liked what the game said and discussed about dreams, the way they inspire people and the way dreams can be passed onto others. You can imagine my surprise when all that is thrown away after the final boss where Haruka throws away Park's dream and wastes the efforts of basically everyone on her side by cutting her concert in half so she can tell the audience that her dad is ex Yakuza before bailing. What narrative purpose did this serve? Who fucking wrote this?? Beats me

Part 1> Part 3> Part 4> Finale> Part 2

I actually think part 2 is better than the finale story wise but it's still boring as fuck. I had my fun with it but all in all would never recommend this game to anyone