It was quite charming and very well animated, although I think the time system adds an unnecessary pressure that discouraged me from wanting to fully explore each area. Once I discovered that attempts to fill in the family tree also took time I ignored that part of the game entirely.

I'm sure it's to encourage repeat play throughs but I'm not sure why that would be seen as a better system as simply not having the time limit and allowing me to just talk to all the characters at my own pace, or retry minigames without then being locked out from having enough time to visit other people.

I've been a long time fan of the Yakuza games since the original on the PS2 but Yakuza 5 is where the magic is starting to wear off for me. When I think properly about it, it's better than 3 and 4 but there's just so much fluff making this game run on at least 15 hours longer than it needs to.

The gimmick of having 4 (or 5, this time!) main characters just ends up leading to a convoluted story where I'll end up forgetting what yakuza conspiracy is going on now or who most of the side characters are.

In the moment the melodrama is interesting, but most of the cast don't really get a satisfying wrap-up and I ended up forgetting why I was meant to care about half of the plot threads that took a little too long to intertwine.

Plus Yakuza combat has kind of never been good, so I'm looking forward to catching up to 7 / Like A Dragon when it'll change completely!