+from front to back the best writing any rgg game has had other than yakuza 0. if that game is a gritty fxx semi-prestige with tints of bushido virtue, this one is a slimey and bawdy network crime serial that doles out gruesome reveals and hearty laughs in equal measure. it's episodic and perfectly suited for multiple play sessions while also managing to tie together a reasonably complicated conspiracy with many moving parts together without any major contrivances.
+so many great supporting cast members, whether from genda law, tokyo PD, random hoodlums in yagami's orbit, or any of the yakuza families that appear. much better than the usual yakuza formula, where a character will get like one moment for characterization and then will immediately die. and speaking of which: the deaths in this game are legitimately impactful!
+there's a lot of effort here to modernize rgg scenario design beyond being just dungeons of dudes to beat up, and when they get it I think they do a good job. infiltrating KJ art at the start of the game demonstrates this perfectly, with a wide range of tasks and hingepoints that make the mission more dynamic
+the new mortal wounds mechanic helps maintain that yagami is conceptually not the superhuman that kiryu is, and it prevents the player from just tanking damage like they might otherwise. it also makes guns more dangerous than ever before, which is probably how it should've been from the beginning.
+at first I wasn't sure what to think of dice & cube given how goofy it is and how weirdly the party game mechanics are incorporated in, but now I think it's one of my favorite ways to grind in the series. all of the combat scenarios they throw at you are wild and wonderful, and I just love getting some crazy new weapon like the railgun to try out on a pack of goons.
+ass catchem. this is probably the closest rgg has come to making a cumtown bit in-game.
+I honestly like how they balanced out yagami's personality traits to make someone more morally complex than previous rgg protagonists. before yagami, all protags were honor-bound warriors who deal in the underworld, with each game navigating this contradiction to some extent. yagami has others he's working for, but at the end of the day he's on a self-serving mission to redeem his own prior failing. justice is his guiding motive, but his methods are entirely less than legal; he'll stalk, kidnap, and torture in order to obtain evidence that he needs. he sleeps on a couch in his office at the age of 35 and spends his free time dating girls 15 years his junior. he should be utterly unlikable and yet the authenticity and straight-shooter personality takuya kimura brings to the role seals him as a genuinely interesting character that fits the game's tone perfectly. they absolutely nailed a grey morality with him that has shades of kiryu while being radically different in expression
+the drone is honestly cool as fuck and handles well too. finding QR codes around on various buildings is a fantastic twist on the old locker-key mechanic.
+the friendship system returns from y0 and is so well integrated here. there's 50 different friends around town, many of which you initially meet through the story or through shopping. returning to each friend frequently and fulfilling missions for them raises their approval and can eventually score you new items at the shops, skill books, and rare materials if you work through each friend's story. they really nailed it here by expanding it from y0 and having many random side characters appear as friends even after their plot relevance has ended. it goes a long way towards making kamurocho even more of a persistent and living locale.
+side cases replace substories perfectly. the y5 and onward model of substories that were mainly conversation-based one-shots were perfectly fun, but they lacked the experimentation that came before and that judgment returns to the formula. each case feels like a proper side quest chain with multiple activities and a solid stream of laughs, and even though there are fewer than in prior games the friend quests supplement them.
+kamuro of the dead is a neat bit of HotD worship that fulfills my rail shooter urges with a nice range of zombies and a full six levels. not as good as the scuba diving minigame from y6 imo but still up to snuff
+quickstarter makes choosing certain upgrades and perks a lot more manageable, as anything you don't buy has money contributed towards it up to the 50% point. if you're not gonna pursue stuff like shogi or D&C in the early game, you can save a lot of money buying their quickstarter upgrades later down the line
+one of the best finales in any rgg game without question. the characters feel so much richer than prior yakuza characters, especially in the villain department, where the motivations of each antagonist vary and their alliances mutate as the game continues. I even enjoyed the action stages in this section, even though neither of them were very long.
+you actually get to mow down cops in this one. fucking incredible.
+good things about drone races: the handling is interesting and versatile and the tracks are well designed
+the main plot actually incorporates side content in, with full side cases being interleaved into the main scenario. at times it's pretty obvious that they're just filler, but it's done much more tastefully than many of the prior rgg games. you also get many more breaks to go do side stuff in this one, including in the middle of long info dumps surprisingly enough. a surprising QoL change that I would not have thought of myself.
+didn't use extracts much but they're sort of neat! esp since carryable weapons are completely gone

-my one issue with the pacing: to keep the audience hooked they basically have yagami figure out the entire mystery before getting any evidence around the 2/3 mark. it's lampshaded frequently and there's still reveals afterwards to keep the drip-feed going, but their plot solution for this issue is to just torture various people until they yield the required evidence. it's grimly funny in its own way though. this is more of a positive I guess but they spend a lot of time in this game lampshading the usual ridiculous plot points of a usual yakuza game to paper over the issues with this game, and to be completely honest it worked on me.
-combat sidesteps the loose freeform brawling of y6/yk2 and instead combines various old yakuza mechanics with methodical martial arts, and it's really a mixed bag for me. early game feels slow and ineffectual, with yagami's combos all doing roughly the same thing and his kit being boring early on. once he gains more abilities its definitely better, but it's still slow and clunky.
-styles make a return in a different configuration: there's now separate styles for crowd control and for one-on-one combat. the problem is that tiger style (one-on-one) is so much better than crane style that it eclipses it completely once charge moves are in play since you'll need that high damage output + the guard-breaking abilities. tiger style yagami is sick, but they really needed to give crane more notable abilities past mid-game to help it keep pace (though the final attack upgrade made them a bit more equitable)
-running is now accomplished by tapping the cross button instead of holding it down, and this running can be used in combat to wall-jump and leapfrog opponents. this handicaps yagami's maneuverability in fights considerably however, as quicksteps now must be done when locked-on (which makes them circle around the opponent instead of allowing proper free quicksteps), and his walk speed is slow. his quickstep cancel is also not as universally applicable as kiryu's, which is a big deal when certain attacks can decrease your max health.
-the keihin gang... easily the worst combat sidestory of all time, no question. the gang appears frequently and drastically increases the encounter rate until you take out one of their leaders, of which there are only four. unless you really want to go refight the same minibosses repeatedly to keep them at bay for a bit, you're stuck slogging through random battles until they leave on their own. you're also sent a passive-aggressive text once they leave guilting you into fighting them the next time, and it's unskippable. fuck off!!
-trailing sequences are atrocious auto-scrollers. there is basically no way to lose unless you walk up to the person you're trailing, and the stealth options are limited beyond pre-set hiding points, so each of these was like 5+ minutes of staring as my phone and holding the analog stick forward occasionally.
-chase sequences return in an endless-runner form that relies heavily on QTEs. boring and trite after the first couple occurrences.
-too many parts of this game lean on kamurocho... like you spend a lot of time staring at various representations of kamurocho's streets. D&C, the drone races, kamuro of the dead, the chase and trailing segments... all of these use kamurocho streets as stages and it's the most prominent sign that this game was limited on budget.
-later in the game there's a lot more traditional rgg action stages, and they're just not up to part imo. playing these after playing the top-notch dungeons from y6 is a shocking difference.
-the arcade is packed with choices, but the new emulated games just aren't as good as prior offerings imo. fighting vipers and motor raid just don't get me as excited as vf2 and virtual-on did, for instance.
-they really needed toughness ZZs in this game at the very least. eating seven bentos in a row to restore a fully-upgraded life gauge is so fucking annoying, not to mention running to every convenience store in town to load up on bentos, sushi, and oden.
-game crash right after the finale escort section X_X
-search mode is unreasonably stiff and more often than not ends up being 3D pixel hunting. intensely claustrophobic when you can't find the solution
-rocks to have a second phase on your final boss and it's exactly the same as the first one.
-bad things about drone races: doing five 3-lap races in a row is way too much commitment. I only played the first three leagues, but they all had the same courses as well (although the second league had all of the courses reversed). also basically entirely build-dependent, which requires grinding for materials
-there are so many fucking materials in this game. I like going out of my way to pick things up in yakuza games but this is honestly over the line. there's also special materials you can get from friends... why is there no way to track who has what in the game? unless I completely missed something
-hunger gauge from y6 was so perfect and they went back to the old system.... why?? bottomless stomach isn't hard to get, but unlike y0/yk1 you aren't ever told how to get it in this game. I was literally waiting for enemies to hit me once per fight just to keep working on restaurant completion.
-"Made in Dreams"-ass pinball game

on one hand this is top-notch for rgg studio in terms of writing, pacing, structure, side stories, characterization, absolutely anything other than the gameplay itself. whenever I'm just reading the dialog I'm having the time of my life; I probably laughed more with this game than any other in the series, and for once I was really impressed with how they wove a mystery that actually suspended my disbelief. every time I pick up the controller though I'm either wading through muddy combat, snoozing through a trailing mission, or half-heartedly playing a minigame before pausing it and scrolling twitter. fixing a small thing here or there would put this as an actual all-time favorite of mine rather than something I enjoyed with reservations; hell, just lowering the encounter rate would've really brought up my minute-to-minute fun. with the cast being so fun and the foundation in place for a great game, I really can't wait to try lost judgment and see how it improves on this framework.

I am just………speechless



RGG has outdone themselves yet again, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for them

2nd best yakuza. I really enjoyed this game, I loved all the playable characters, they all had unique combat and each one had their own town to explore. Each character also had their own huge minigame side quest, like playing need for speed, hunting giant bears, being a popstar, and playing baseball. The non kamurocho/sotenbori maps were cool but were pretty small and Nagasugai was hard to traverse because of the huge building circles you had to go around. They did well to differentiate each chapter, never making you lose interest. Kiryu is still dropping tigers, Saejima finally got rid of that Snape hair, Haruka is finally playable, Akiyama has a beautiful singing voice, and Shinada is the greatest thing to happen to humanity since the birth of Shaq.

I do admit, I was confused on where the story was going for a while. The first chapter progresses normally, then in the 2nd it almost feels like a whole other self-contained game. But by the end, you see some dots connect in your head, slowly. Then you move onto the next part which appears to drop the whole "yakuza" part of yakuza and is now a teen girl popstar movie complete with the mean girl rivals. But again, it masterfully and subtley connects everything together.

and by the last part you're introduced to a whole new character and are forced to open the wikipedia on baseball terminology.. and again, like the last chapters it connects together like a cool puzzle.

The finale chapter is really sick. The final boss is so great, probably the fairest hard boss in the series. And the parts where you could choose who to play as for the next part was cool.

Overall, this may feel long at times but I felt the length really was justified in how huge the scope of this game is. Instead of feeling like you start the game and 5 sidequests later you're shirtless on the millenium tower, it takes its time and encourages you with a slower pace to enjoy your surroundings and have fun with the side quests and minigames. Let me put it into perspective: By the end of chapter 2 in yakuza 5, I had more hours than I did by the end of yakuza 3. Good game!!!