Your point about not wanting to blaze through Yakuza is very on point, as Yakuza 1-5 punish players who just power and rush through the games. It's best to let each digest for at least 2 weeks after you finish them. And for Yakuza 1 (if you are playing the PS2 version, I assume) I highly recommend you play the "Yakuza restored mod". It undubs the voices back to Japanese and fixes the script.

@ToasterNinja yeah I’m def gonna try to at least put a game or two inbetween. I plan on playing both ps2 and remakes since I heard the remakes are a somewhat different experience but I’ll do that after I catch up on the ps2 releases. Thanks for the rec tho toaster I’ll def do the undub, feel like yakuza is def the type of game that needs the Japanese VA’s

You're welcome. One other heads up I'll provide is that 1 and 2 were written by Hase Seishu who is a renowned crime author in Japan, so they are tonally much different compared to the rest of the series. 3 onwards the plots become more regular seinen fare which isn't a bad thing either.