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Yakuza 5 Remastered Finished it two weeks ago but I immediately jumped into Rebirth and that first week I couldn't be bothered writing my thoughts because that was time I could spend playing Rebirth instead. Then I kinda forgot about it. I'm not joking, either. I literally finished Yakuza 5 like 15mins before Rebirth finished downloading. Anyway, it was pretty good. It was also very long but it never overstayed its welcome. Mostly because every time you switched protagonist it was like playing a completely different game. You start out with Kiryu and he's a taxi driver now, so naturally you end up getting sucked into the street racing world with drifting and eurobeat music. Then the next character fights like 78 dudes at once while breaking out of prison only to immediately get into a high-speed snowmobile chase followed by a fist fight with a giant bear. Then you spend the next 5 hours in a little mountain village playing a survival/hunting roguelike minigame. Then it's time to play as Haruka, Kiryu's adopted daughter, and she's training to be a pop idol so now the combat has been replaced by a rhythm game. Did I mention that this game is fucking bonkers? I can easily see how someone might just bail when they get to the Haruka chapters but it just made me love the game even more. This is the most unapologetically schizophrenic game I've ever played and I loved it for it. Overall, it did the multiple protagonist thing much better than Yakuza 4 but the story ended up feeling a lot less cohesive as a whole. Yakuza 4 kept me on the edge of my seat for the most part and it was only the finale that was a bit underwhelming (I still can't get over how our heroes' big plan was "We don't understand what's going on or know what to do, so let's just put that big pile of money on top of Millenium Tower and beat up whoever comes to get it"). Yakuza 5 was kind of the opposite. The story was so meandering and full of distractions that by the time I was on the last protagonist I had basically forgotten how things had started out with Kiryu at the beginning. The finale itself was much more exciting, although it did end rather abruptly. Anyway, that's now all the PS3 games done. That took me way longer than I expected but I can finally play Yakuza 6 and then move on to the Ichiban games. I'm almost caught up!