4.5/5 ★ – DarkDrawer's review of Yakuza 5 Remastered.

This game has a whole lot of heart and soul, but also some troubling story decisions thats par for the course for the Yakuza series, so keeping in mind that this was a game that very well could've been the end of further story development for Kiryu. Each of the characters focused on during this game is fun and interesting. Unfortunately, the distribution of story is a little disconnected. Specifically, Saejima spends a lot of time in prison and in a snowy village. Shinada is another odd man out as his story is pretty self contained sans the ending. His story is all about tracking down what happened to his baseball scandal and with all of this, the journey ends up being more entertaining than the destination. Kiryu and Akiyama have the best stories here as Kiryu ends up being pulled back into yet another Yakuza conflict while Akiyama helps Kiryu's surrogate daughter, Haruka, achieve her idol dreams. While Kiryu's plot has a lot of loneliness attached to it as he dons the name of Joryu Jazuma, a brave Taxi Driver, Akiyama's is less personal attachment and moreso faciliating the passing of the torch of Mirai Park's dream (Haruka's mentor) to Haruka. The gameplay is pretty fun for the most part as each character has their own moveset with an upgrade system that isnt as annoying to use as say, Yakuza Kiwami 2's. Simply experience to level up to upgrade. Kiryu, Saejima, and Akiyama's styles are all fun for me, however, Shinada's was not very fun as he is especially good with weapons, but weapons overall are not good in this game. Weapons, additionally, have levels which restrict some use of weapons til a character improves enough to use it. And with Shinada being last character used, my patience for doing side content ran thin. Haruka has no combat and instead has various song battles and other minigames. While fun, I found their bearing on the plot less than satisfying, so I didn't focus on completion. With that being said, they are all fun and work well, but maybe could use some better rewards. Story wise, this game is thematically sound and inspirational as it pursues the dreams of each of the protagonists and even some antagonists. Kiryu pursues being true to himself and protecting his kids, Akiyama faciliates Haruka's dream of being a idol (and Kiryu's daughter). Saejima's dream is related to his reintroduction to Yakuza, and Shinada's is finding his place in life after being unfairly banned from baseball. I enjoyed each of these plotlines even though some of these dreams could've been fleshed out better. Where this game loses me in a couple of areas is its antagonists and how the ending shows the dreams coming true. First, the antagonists of this game are various people we've seen throughout each story. One of them is a fellow inmate "Baba" of Saejima, an underling of an idol manager/yakuza (he cool tho), the Omi Alliance leader, and his secret son. Baba has the best development here as he turns turncoat after wishing for someone like Saejima to lead him onto a more righteous life. Only eyebrow raise is the improtu fight at the end with Shinada who he has NO connection to. In this instance, Baba had already decided against doing the Omi's dirty work and yet has a random fight with Shinada? Very odd, but at least it wrapped up nicely for him. Kanai, the underling is just a thug and has no character to him. He betrays his boss for the Omi Leader and has no character traits. He's a plot device that ends up killing Mirai Park, Haruka's idol manager which also leads to 4 fights with Akiyama (1 of which could be Kiryu). Very strange. The Omi Alliance leader is just a shrewd dying old man with terminal cancer. He acts as a police chief, even referencing Sayama from an earlier game. His "betrayal" isn't very interesting though as he wasn't exactly an ally here and moreso gathered the "players" to his game. And the Omi Alliance Leader's secret son is a disjointed mess with differing things in the game making his secret final boss seem so weird that it exists. With that being said, it's a fun boss fight. Shinada's story is probably the most consistent from journey to destination (sans Akiyama as nothing changes for him at the end other than him being goated). Shinada ends up uncovering the mystery of his baseball ban and then he goes back to his life in his town. It's sweet and heartfelt. Saejima's story is related to his journey as a prisoner and reclaiming control over the tojo clan. The only real weight to his story is related to Baba and his end fight with his sworn brother, Majima (who I believe should've died in this game as he fulfils no point except for the fight). Its pretty good, but is weighed down by just how much setup and even filler it has. Finally, we get to Kiryu and Haruka's dream which sort of coincide with each other. Kiryu walks away from the Yakuza and Haruka is supposed to walk away from Kiryu to become an idol. Mirai Park, Majima's exwife and an ex-idol, sees talent in Haruka and through a series of events pushes her to be and idol that can perform at the Tokyo dome. This leads to Park's death due to the nonsensical plan of Katsuya and herself using the location of Majima as sort of blackmail. This, along with Dojima's plan to weed out the Tojo alliance only serves to fuel more conflict in this story and we never really see the need for it to happen. Park's death is also one of the only important character deaths that sticks. Kiryu's place in all this was stopping the Omi Alliance in putting Haruka in harm's way. This leads to him getting a gunshot wound and dragging himself somewhere while bleeding out. Haruka for some reason announces during her dome performance that she's Kiryu's daughter, after performing over half of her performance. This is because, being Kiryu's daughter is her dream which is consistent with how much she cares for him and how unhappy she's been all game. While this is all well and good, the game doesn't really show any payoff to this (and the games in the future also do NOTHING for this as well, but I can't hold that against this game). Additionally, this game's last scene is Kiryu dying in the snow which while raw, leaves Haruka's declaration to feel semi-meaningless. With that being said, just like with most Yakuza games, it's about the journey and not the destination. This game has some of the best moments for Yakuza that exists. It's theming works well with each character, and this is the only game to really try something new with both the introduction of a character like Shinada and utilizing Haruka. As much as I hater certain parts, I can't deny the parts that I love. This game is probably the most replayable with the amount of minigames provided as well.