In our ongoing quest to clear the backlog, New Game+ reviews Yakuza 5 Remastered, the refresh of the 2012 action brawler and fifth entry to the popular ‘Like A Dragon’ series.

After pledging to play through a new Yakuza game every August, beginning with Yakuza 0 back in 2018, I was initially intimidated by Yakuza 5’s sheer length and complexity. Five characters, five stories, five locations. That’s one heck of a premise, and one that’s seemingly tricky to pull off even for Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.

And rightly so – Yakuza 5 is a massive game. It’s easily at least twice as long as its predecessors, themselves already giant narrative behemoths. Video game completionist site HowLongToBeat puts the clear time for the main story alone at 37 hours. Going into this game, I feared I had met my match.

Yakuza 5 takes place in the winter of 2012 and follows yet another plot to overthrow Tokyo’s Tojo Clan, with series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu reluctantly thrown into the situation against his wishes. And for the first ten hours of the game, you’re driving angry passengers around Fukuoka in your cab when you’re not beating up intimidating thugs. It’s a gentle yet familiar reintroduction to the character we’ve spent all this time with.

And then before you know it, just as the story gets interesting and the stakes increase, we’re whisked away to follow a different character’s story happening at the same time. Yakuza 5 does this frequently; its main story is divided into five acts, with the first four following a different protagonist before coming together at the end.

As mentioned earlier, it’s an ambitious and bold direction for Ryu Ga Gotoku to take with the series. While Yakuza 4’s four protagonist story was also structured similarly, the narrative intertwined a lot more frequently due to its setting remaining in Kamurocho.

Instead, Yakuza 5’s action is far more spread out. Each act of the game takes place in different locations across Japan, and the individual stories don’t really link up until the very end. One minute a new piece of the puzzle will be falling into place, before you’re whisked away to follow a different character for another 10-15 hours. If you’re like me and have to take frequent breaks, you’ll forget what happened in the last act when it comes to these stories intertwining at the end.

Just gauging from some online discussion surrounding this game, it seems your mileage may vary depending on which characters and storylines you like the most. Some players seem to like playing as Haruka, taking away the series’ trademark street brawls and cabaret visits in favour of dance competitions and public performing. While others took a shine to Shinada, a brand new character in the Yakuza universe with a unique backstory. Ultimately, Yakuza 5’s varied narratives clearly offer something for everyone.

This extends to the hand-to-hand combat sections, which is the other reason to play these games. Each character you play as has their own fighting style; some fighting with a more traditional Yakuza style, some utilising heavy attacks, and others preferring the use of weapons.

Similar to how it feels with the narrative, there can be a whiplash going from one character to another and having to memorise a whole new set of moves. Particularly when you reach the final act of the game, and must switch between four fighting styles almost on the fly, it can be a little tricky to get used to.

While it’s a game from 2012, the version of the game I played was the remaster that launched for modern platforms in 2020 in the west. Not only does this upgrade the resolution and framerate across all systems, including even more enhancements on the PC version where I played, but it also brought a re-translated English script and some restored content from the Japanese version.

Where Yakuza 5 falls on my series ranking so far, I’m not sure. It’s certainly the longest game in the series, and there were times I was just begging for it to be over. Some chapters definitely overstay their welcome. By the end of the game, I was enjoying it far too much to want to quit. I’m looking forward to a more streamlined experience in Yakuza 6, which I’ve heard returns to the solo protagonist format and axes some of the bloat. But I’ll have to wait until next August to see how that turns out.

Tested on: PC