Playing through the entire Yakuza franchise, and 5 is a new low. I can appreciate the ambition and scope of the game, but it very clearly collapsed under its own weight. Narrative-wise, it is easily the messiest game in the series, somehow surpassing 4's laughably awful story with its exposition, conveniences, and surprise reveals.

The Kiryu section was entertaining enough that I was hopeful that it would be a better experience overall than 4. Kiryu is still very fun to play and has by far the most options during combat. The story for his chapter was also decently intriguing and was set up pretty well.

Saejima's section is where it all goes to ♥♥♥♥. His gameplay is fun enough, when those charge attack hits land they are incredibly satisfying, but his section is an absolute snoozefest to get through, and I genuinely can't believe people thought it was a good idea to add in a hunting section in the game. Starting from the prison section which goes on far too long, to being forced to play through an imaginary Sapporo, to the mentioned hunting village, it legitimately made me drop the game for a month before I finished it again because it was so exhausting and mindnumbingly boring.

Akiyama and Haruka's section is incredibly mixed. I actually found myself enjoying Haruka's section and gameplay. The story is no Perfect Blue but it still does a pretty good job making me feel repulsed towards Japan's idol industry. I can definitely see why people would hate it though, I'm sure it's jarring to go from a beat em up game to a rhythm game for the next 5 or so hours. Akiyama's story I don't remember at all, and his gameplay is atrocious. He does pitiful damage, has almost no defensive options, and in general feels incredibly scuffed compared to 4. His final fight where Kanai gangs up on you is just miserable to play through, almost as bad as Tanimura's fight against Munakata in 4. I get that I'm playing Hard mode but I don't see how being knocked around like a pinball by Kanai and his goons are supposed to help me get better at the game.

Shinada has an interesting story but the way its connected to everyone else is nonsensical and felt like the developers pulled it out of their ass. His gameplay is also incredibly unfun, and using weapons doesn't make it any better.

The final chapter is just exposition, exposition, exposition. At that point, I genuinely couldn't care less about what was going on, because it was just convenience and contrivances one after another with exposition, exposition, and exposition. Has it sunk in yet? This game in general has the most egregious usage of unskippable cutscenes and dialogue in any of the Yakuza games to date. My E key is probably broken from skipping all the worthless padding and filler for so long. I feel like the story would've been nonsensical even if I didn't start skipping everything, the plans that the characters come up with are so incredibly dumb, like that mastermind reveal ploy where they all fight each other.

Maybe it's recency bias, but this game is easily the worst in the series, because while 4's story was awful and ruined Saejima's character as a whole with rubber bullets, at least it wasn't this long or this much of a slog (although it was because 4's continuous backstabs from characters reached comedic levels). The only new character I remember from this game is Shigeki Baba, who is admittedly handled well because I found him compelling with his split loyalty. Every other new character I've forgotten already.

As a whole, I'm just done with the multiple protagonist route with Yakuza and can't wait to just play Kiryu the entire game in 6.