ok so. i definitely hyped myself too much on this game before its release, and when i played it i was kind of blind to the huge issues it had. for a while it was my favorite, and it's still up there bc the dragon engine was SUCH a huge step up from previous entries that the charm of that still affects me. onomichi is still my favorite side city, nagumo & the gang are some of the best characters in the series, Someya is one of the best villains, i really love the levelling system and even the hunger system, but man the story in this game is fucking wild. i think the overarching plot is pretty good, but this has the most "he would not fucking say that" moments in the series by a LONG shot. the writer of this game also wrote Judgment (no surprise tbh) and the way it talks about Haruka and specifically her pregnancy is so so so weird. These men talk with such authority about her choices when she is never in the room and never has anything to say herself about it in the whole game. The first thing Kiryu does when she wakes up from her game-long coma is fucking YELL at her??? bro HE WOULD NOT DO THAT this game does not understand him as a character at all aside from just being a cool stoic guy who 'does the right thing' and it's so weird.

my hottest yakuza take but this is the worst one. at the same time it has some of my favorite moments, but it is SO fucking long and drags on way too much and creates an overarching plot that i still don't fucking understand lmao. Kiryu's intro is fantastic, probably the best chapter in the game, and then Saejima's chapter brings it waaayyyy down. the hunting village felt so out of place and tsukimino is just a bad city. haruka/akiyama's chapter is pretty great too, another moment of gamers don't like women and girls so they hate this one but i loved playing as haruka and navigating the fucked up industry she's in, and as soon as shit gets real Akiyama comes in to protect her bc my god she needed that. and then again for Shinada, first time I played i really hated him but since he's grown on me, it just seems like a huge diversion in the story for a plot point that plays so little in the final events that i felt like the game didn't want me to finish it. he's also kind of a fuckin loser compared to every other playable character, which since i have come to appreciate (hes just a lil guy) but at the time was super annoying. DISCLAIMER: especially at this point I think this game was wearing out on me because I was playing these games leading up to the release of 6, and 5 was taking a lot longer than i expected and this chapter was the reason so i may have taken out a bit too much on it. the finale is great tho no notes (except that Aizawa is kind of a missed opportunity final boss, i know that's part of his character that he's just a nepo baby and this is the plan laid out for him not what he actually wants for himself but. it takes some oomph out of the final fights idk)