Yakuza 5

Yakuza 5 (known in Japan as Ryū ga Gotoku 5: Yume, Kanaeshi Mono, and roughly translated in English as Like a Dragon 5: Fulfiller of Dreams) is a 2012 open world action-adventure video game developed by Ryu ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega for the PlayStation 3, with a Remastered version being released in 2020 for the PS4 (2021 for PC and Xbox One), as part of The Yakuza Remastered Collection.

Plot
The game picks up the story, following the end of Yakuza 4. Since then, Kazuma Kiryu, who has changed his name to Suzuki Taichi, has become a taxi driver in Fukuoka. Taiga Saejima is serving a 2-year jail sentence in Hokkaido following the events of the previous game, while Shun Akiyama is in Osaka on a business trip. Haruka Sawamura has also left the orphanage in Okinawa and is currently in Osaka pursuing a career of becoming an Idol. She currently lives independently in Osaka and practices singing and dancing, though her talent agency is not all that it seems. The new character in the series, Tatsuo Shinada, is a former Baseball player who was given a life ban for gambling, but may have been framed.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) With the different engine instead of reusing the previous PS3 installments engine (Kenzan to Dead Souls), the shading/graphic and gameplay systems are revamped to make the game look even better, brighter and plays better.
 * 2) Not only one, nor two, but five playable characters, (Kiryu, Shinada, Akiyama, Saejima and Haruka), that could even be compared to Grand Theft Auto V (which released next year after Yakuza 5), with each character having their own fighting styles and abilities, except for Haruka, where she does Dance Battles on the streets (if the player finds an NPC who can be challenged to a Battle) and at the Princess League.
 * 3) Some Heat Actions from previous games make a return.
 * 4) 33 playable Mini-Games.
 * 5) Four cities to explore (Three new cities for each character. Kiryu in Nagasugai, Saejima in Tsukimino and Shinada in Kin'eicho, with Sotenbori returning for Akiyama and Haruka).
 * 6) Enemy Encounters no longer have textboxes and time to load. Instead, a proper cutscene before the fight occurs.
 * 7) Awesome soundtrack.
 * 8) Climax Heat Actions, a new addition to this game. They are more powerful than normal Heat Actions and can be enabled when locking on an enemy, allowing the player to be able to control which type of Heat Actions they want to do.
 * 9) New exclusive and unique Mini-Games added only available for each character. Kiryu has Taxi Driving, Shinada has Baseball, Haruka and Akiyama have Dancing, and Saejima has Hunter.
 * 10) A lot of Heat Actions to perform for all of the four characters.
 * 11) Nearly 61 substories available for each character.
 * 12) As mentioned before, when you play as Haruka, you will do Dance Battles instead of street fights, which is quite of a nice fresh breath of air in terms of gameplay.
 * 13) Characters will now react if you push/bump into people.
 * 14) Heat Actions have improved in terms of animation. The character will perform an animation showing how they start the attack, before going to the main part of it.
 * 15) The Battle HUD has been completely redesigned and is different from its previous counterparts. (Yakuza 4, Yakuza 3 and Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! remained the same heads-up display, only with some minor changes).
 * 16) Some of the Heat Actions were completely re-done from scratch.
 * 17) Saejima finally has a flip-phone.
 * 18) All of the animations were remade to make it look like a sequel.
 * 19) There is a big selection of weapons, and even a modified version of the Legendary Kinryu Bat, which is completely new to the series!
 * 20) The Upgrade System has been highly revamped, as it's the first time that it uses Skill Trees, something that Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, Yakuza 0, and the Kiwami remakes of the original two games would follow up using.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) It only has a digital release for the West market, meaning that you have to buy it digitally on the PlayStation Store, unless you imported a physical copy of it from Japan. Thankfully, the physical edition of The Yakuza Remastered Collection has the game on disc, and even includes a box for Yakuza 5 on the Day 1 Edition!
 * 2) There are some unskippable dialogues, meaning that you have to listen to each dialogue before skipping to the next one.
 * 3) Only one Revelation for each character.
 * 4) Super Finishers still didn't make a comeback.
 * 5) Some of the content in the original-Japanese version of Yakuza 5 didn't make it into the localized version of Yakuza 5 (slurping sound has been removed while eating noodles, some cutscenes have their music changed, etc).
 * 6) Some of the Ultimate Battle challenges are either ridiculously easy, or frustratingly hard (Melee Round 6 and Proving Grounds Round 10 being notable examples of hard challenges).
 * 7) The story is not the best.
 * 8) Masayoshi Tanimura also didn't make a comeback.
 * 9) The sequel, Yakuza 6 didn't come over so well, though.
 * 10) Shinada (due to his former profession as a Baseball player) refuses to use a Baseball bat as a weapon if the player tries to make him do so.
 * 11) You cannot create any clear data while playing in Premium Adventure. (later used in Ishin (2014)) If you want to do them all and inherit in your regular playthrough before starting EX-Hard/Legend difficulty, you are forced to do them all.

Reception
Yakuza 5 has received a perfect 40/40 score from Famitsu. It was considered the one of the "Best Games" on the PlayStation 3.

Hobby Consolas called it "one of the best games in the history of PS3" and "an incomparable piece of art that has everything: five main characters, five cities, an attractive script, lots of missions, a great combat system.

IGN said it is "steeped in Japanese culture to the core and exciting in its multiple storylines."

It holds a score of 83 out of 100 on review aggregator website Metacritic.

Trivia

 * As mentioned in the Trivia section for Yakuza 0, the Karaoke song known as "Bakamitai" (accurately translated to "I've Been A Fool" in English) has recently became a meme after Youtuber Dobbsyrules' video of him lip-syncing Bakamitai exploded into population, and resulted in countless memes consisting of a fictional or real life person being deepfaked in order to look like they are singing the song.

Videos
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