Outerlude 5: 29 December 2019

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

After, I’m not kidding, six FULL months, Madison and I are finally finished playing Yakuza 5. Please forgive me for the lack of time statistics - we’ve left the PS3 running for so long it maxed out the game’s own timeclock and I don’t want to think about how long this fucking game is anymore. (The lack of achievement statistics is because I don’t want to get up and turn the PS3 on again to check and also we weren’t trying for them.)

Yakuza 5 is massive, the biggest Yakuza game by far. It’s EXHAUSTIVELY big. There are 5 protagonists, and there are, I’m not fucking kidding, five games’ worth of content in this bitch. It’s incredibly ambitious, and when it works, it works… but when it doesn’t…

Look, you can’t ever accuse of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios of not trying new shit whenever they can - they set their games in the same place, yeah, but they’re never done trying for different wacky side- or substories, incredibly in-depth minigames, and finicky little systems waiting for the right player to come along to appreciate them. But when that impulse is amplified BY FIVE… when EACH playable character has pretty much THEIR OWN CITY (okay, Akiyama and Haruka share theirs, but - ) and their OWN fighting style and their OWN incredibly in-depth sidestories and Kiryu has TWO DIFFERENT driving minigames and Haruka’s idol sidestories are SO VARIED AND EXTENSIVE and IT’S MANDATORY TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME DOING FUCKING WILD GAME HUNTING AS SAEJIMA -

It gets to be a lot, is what I’m saying. Madison and I stuck to doing substories only (none for Shinada tho lol we wanted to finish and he was last) and it STILL took us forever. This incredible behemoth of a game is magnificent, but also in ridiculous need of so much editing down. The final friggin chapter itself has four chapters in it, and the game is so big it even spills into Yakuza 6 - a friend who was watching commented that in the first little bit of Y6, we’re STILL wrapping up from the end of Y5. One of the best things about playing through this series is seeing how the studio has learned and grown from each one, and how they took the lessons from this game and turned it around to make Y0, keeping the intense emotional character work but taking a more cinematic approach and making the plot pin-sharp and airtight, cutting away all of the bloat that plagued Y5.

This has been five paragraphs of griping, mostly because I feel like someone who’s been trapped underground for months and has finally been allowed out so I gotta get it all off my chest at once. Now that that’s over, I can try to tell you why I gave this bitch a 9 and why it’s reached rank number 3 in my list of favorite Yakuza games.

It’s about yume. Or, uh, dreams.

That’s the theme of this game - a person’s dream, and how that person doesn’t carry that dream alone. How even if someone never accomplished what they wanted in life, they can still be a beacon or a support to help lift up someone else’s dreams, and how they can live on for others. The five disparate stories slowly come together and coalesce around this theme (and the inevitable convoluted yakuza bullshit, because punching and guns have to happen somehow I’m not being sarcastic I love how ridiculous these plots get) and, especially as the game goes on, it works.

Kiryu finds himself in Nagoya, away from Haruka and the Morning Glory orphanage, working as a taxi driver and keeping his identity secret. Haruka has been scouted and is on track to make her debut as an idol, with the stipulation that Kiryu disappears himself so no one knows she’s been raised as an ex-yakuza. When that path to stardom is imperiled, Akiyama helps Haruka out in the attempt to find out the truth in Sotenbori. Saejima is targeted in prison and must make a daring escape (again) across Hokkaido to come to the Tojo Clan’s rescue… and Shinada is here, too.

Okay, okay, I actually ended up really liking Shinada’s section, way more than I thought I was going to - it’s funny and heartwarming and largely self-contained and ABSOLUTELY could have just been cut with how much it has to do with the overarching plot.

But that’s not how Y5 operates - not everything is in service to the machinery of the plot moving forward, and while it ends up going overboard, it’s something I appreciate very, VERY much. You come to love these motherfuckers (or love them even more) because you have time to get to know them just EXISTING, just reacting to different circumstances and seeing their struggles even separate from The Big Plot. Shinada ended up being one of the most affecting characters, to me, anyway, and seeing his story progress from beginning to end was worth it REGARDLESS of how it served the story as a whole.

While I am VERY excited for Yakuza 6 laser-focusing back in on Kiryu as his story “”””””””””””””””””””””””"”ends””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””, I’m just as glad I got a chance to really get to know all these characters as deeply as I did, on this crazy fuckin train ride like I did. Saejima’s the fuckin best and, because I’m contractually obligated to bring them up, Majima’s scenes, as few as they are, are so fucking good so fucking good so fuckin good. (You know what else is fuckin good? What my wife got me for Christmas)

Next up: Guys I am SO excited for this!!!

See you soon!