This game is ridiculously big. This is great in many ways - I loved having 5 cities to explore and piecing together how each character is involved in the overarching story. Unfortunately, it's hard to achieve this scale without some slow moments throughout the game. Saejima's section was particularly rough for me, especially at the start. I was also semi-disappointed by the ending, but I don't think it was particularly bad, just a little underwhelming.

Outside of the pacing, there's so much more to love about Yakuza 5. Playable Haruka and Shinada's character top my list, but I was also a huge fan of the friendship between Akiyama and Haruka. Doing more side content will be an enormous time investment, but I'd still like to come back soon and experience more from this game.