New Review: Despite a terrible final act, FF15 proves to be a great open world game, if not quite a true Final Fantasy one.

Final Fantasy 15’s opening moments had caught me completely by surprise. 

All throughout the game’s massive time in development I’d cringed every time I’d seen footage, every time I’d heard details, every time I’d witnessed another shift in direction towards road movie territory and CGI films. 

But once I’d booted the game up on the brand new PS4 that I’d (doubts aside) purchased to play it, I was stunned to realize how much Final Fantasy XV’s opening moments grabbed me. It wasn’t the bland action scene that actually opens the adventure before flashing back, but the scene that followed it. My main characters found themselves in the middle of a vast open world, complaining about their predicament while pushing their car along the road, a very cool theme song from Florence and the Machine playing over the soundtrack. 

Shortly afterwards, they arrive at what resembles a rest stop, and immediately you’re free to wander around listening to NPCs, to progress the storyline, and even to take on Hunts and venture out into the world, and what a world it is. Final Fantasy XV instantly proves itself as something truly different for this series, and I fell in love with its atmosphere and characters almost from the get-go. By the end, it doesn’t quite live up to its promise, partially due to its lacking storytelling and a complete pivot towards blandness in its final third. But for much of the experience I was thinking of it as among my top “open world” RPGs ever, and while it never really felt right to me as a Numbered Final Fantasy game, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey through Final Fantasy XV. 

What gets my full praise is the vast, fully explorable world. Having begun the series with Final Fantasy X before working backwards, I never got to experience what it was like for PS1 owners back in the day to be blown away by the worldmaps in VII-IX, but when I managed to unlock the Chocobo-riding feature in XV and got to ride across the plains, I caught a glimpse of what that must have felt like. XV’s world isn’t an especially populated one; outposts, (which usually consist of resting quarters, a diner, a couple shops, and that’s about it) dungeons, and campsites dot the otherwise empty world. You only visit two actual cities over the course of the adventure, and even there many of the NPCs your characters meet serve very little narrative purpose and get nothing resembling development. 

Instead, Final Fantasy XV presents itself as a road trip; many of the events in the actual story, regarding warring kingdoms and empires, are mostly only glimpsed by listening to the radio. The journey is instead about Prince Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto (names I had to Wikipedia the spellings of to write this review, a first for FF for me) as they travel the kingdom in a car, taking photographs of each other, listening to music, and stopping at camp spots along the way. Make no mistake, this is a full-on open world game; most people you meet outside this main group of four characters serve almost no purpose except to sell you items, give you quests, or provide small banter in towns. Though there are cutscenes throughout, much of the story and character interaction takes place as you play. It’s similar in that regard to games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. 

What helps Final Fantasy XV to stand out is how wonderfully Japanese it is. Its Japanese roots shine through, in everything from the character designs to the art direction (which is most like Final Fantasy VIII) and the combat system, which, while action-driven, thankfully never enters button-mashing territory. The dynamic among the cast of characters is surprisingly lighthearted, at times feeling almost more like a Tales game than what one might expect from Final Fantasy. The dialogue is very well-acted and it, along with the writing, gives the game a natural feel. 

Exploring the vast world is pretty painless, though I wish the characters ran a little faster. The car can almost always be set to auto drive, allowing you to sit back and enjoy the gorgeous 8^th gen scenery. (This can be skipped for 10 gil.) Letting the car drive itself is recommended, as it can only move along paved roads anyway and its controls aren’t the best. Other means of travel include of course Chocobos, which you can rent and take pretty much anywhere, and yes, on foot as well, though it isn’t recommended for long journeys. The world’s seamless, with no load times separating the field from towns or outposts, and combat’s much the same way. 

A big issue I tend to have with action RPGs is that they become far too grind-heavy and button-mashey. Final Fantasy XV avoids this in two different ways; its combat system is more about holding buttons rather than pressing them, and its difficulty is kept fairly moderate throughout, which will likely be appreciated by turn-based fans but may bum out those who are well versed in action RPGs. Fans may also be upset that Noctis is the only controllable character, and that you can’t even issue commands to the others, though thankfully it didn’t prove to be a huge problem for me. 

Hunts, which can be taken on at diners and other eating establishments, are fully encouraged, not only as a primary source for gil (which does not come from winning battles) but also for EXP points. Interestingly, Final Fantasy XV doesn’t allow your characters to make use of those EXP points to level up except at campsites, inns, or other save points. AP, which allows you a ton of character customization across an upgrade grid, can be used anywhere. It’s a clever idea that further enforces the “road trip” theme, and I ended up appreciating it. The game features a very clear quest menu, both for main story quests and sidequests, and allows you to set blips on your radar accordingly, making stepping off to do side missions something that’s fun and rewarding, not something that feels like an interruption. Doing these is a major part of the Final Fantasy XV experience, and just breezing through for the story might not prove nearly as satisfying. 

It's good that exploring the world itself winds up being such a treat. I’d have loved for the locations you visited to have more of a narrative purpose, but the graphics, which are gorgeous, and the music, which is good if not exactly Final Fantasy caliber, helps bring a lot of personality to the adventure and its world, and it was a world that minute-for-minute I had a blast exploring. 

What goes wrong with Final Fantasy XV isn’t enough to break the game, or to make the game un-recommendable. But these are issues that oddly enough give a game that spent over 10 years in development the feeling of being rushed. Everything plot-wise in the first 2/3 of the game left me wanting more; the characters are so likable (Prompto though feels like a next gen version of Zell, which gets old fast) and the cutscenes so well directed and acted, that I was dying to see more of them than what the game shows you. Snapshots that Prompto takes can be viewed at the end of chapters and at save points, and they show the characters laughing and having a great time at the locations you’ve visited. Why not show some of this to us in cutscenes? Why do characters mention things in passing, (“hey, I noticed in that town you were talking to this person….”) that the game never shows you? Why are almost all the characters outside your main party forgettable RPG templates with no motivation or development? Why is a character’s fate revealed but given not even a second of explanation?

As much as I loved much of my time spent in the game’s first 2/3s, its shortcomings in story and character development, while nothing new for the open world genre, feel bizarre in a Final Fantasy game, especially one given the Numbered treatment. The characters interact very frequently as they traverse the world, and the little plot that’s here moves at a decent enough pace and is well-presented, so it isn’t a silent slog across barren plains like Final Fantasy XII was, which was also sparsely-plotted. But there’s no denying that if you buy FFXV entirely for the main storyline, there’s no way that you won’t come off at least slightly disappointed. 

The developers’ answer to this comes in the game's final third, where a series of events abruptly plunge the narrative into full gear. Though at first I was excited by this more story-driven direction, it turns out that finding yourself suddenly on rails after a whole adventure of freedom just doesn’t work. Granted, you can return to the open world if you choose thanks to a time travel mechanic at save points, but it no longer takes place in the context of the story, which instead forces you through drearily industrial-looking environments and a narrative that somehow feels so simple and yet so ridiculously hard to follow. The sudden melodrama might have meant more if we’d gotten a basis for how these characters became friends and how much they truly mean to each other, but in the far more easygoing first 2/3s, there just wasn’t enough of this to allow me to really care about the events which unfold in the game’s final hours. 

The penultimate Chapter 13 proves to be the biggest offender, where your weapons and party members are removed from you for an unbearable amount of time as you’re dropped into a set piece right out of Resident Evil 6, wandering through sprawling corridors looking for security access card keys as the villain cackles at you over the loudspeakers. Beginning with Final Fantasy XII and continuing with Final Fantasy XIII, this series has developed the unfortunate habit of forcing you into one giant, long dungeon as you near the end of the game, and with Chapter 13, Final Fantasy XV again falls victim to it, dragging what little goodwill still exists in the game’s final third down with it.

In the end, it’s the narrative elements that wind up being Final Fantasy XV’s biggest roadblock to true greatness. There are other issues here and there; the camera can be all over the place during battle, magic is ridiculously hard to use, summons show up seemingly at random, load times after loading up a save file or dying are incredibly long, and the jump button serves little purpose except to make your character jump when you’re trying to talk to other characters. But by far the biggest issue with Final Fantasy XV is that as enjoyable as its first 2/3s are, I just wished that we’d had a beautiful, character-driven storyline running through them. The attempt to provide one towards the end backfires completely and hurts the game more than it helps it. There was a time where Squaresoft was able to release games with central exploration elements, while still managing to tell truly memorable, character-driven storylines. Final Fantasy’s VII-IX are really all that Square-Enix has to look at to see that. 

Final Fantasy XV though proves to be a mostly awesome experience. Despite its lacking narrative aspects, I loved the little road trip through Eos that serves as the basis for this adventure. It’s something XV almost manages to fully pull off, and though its linear and melodramatic final act holds it back from greatness, in the end it doesn’t stop me from recommending Final Fantasy XV. 

I just hope that Square-Enix realizes at some point that you can still tell a great story in a game with open world elements; and that doing so doesn’t require throwing their characters into endless dark corridors. 

3.5/5= Good

(New Review) An HD Remaster that led me to rediscover and enjoy what had once been one of my least favorite Zelda adventures

Hard to believe it’s actually been 10 years…

Twilight Princess was a game that I’d found tough to enjoy when I first played through it. I’d been new to the Zelda series at that point, having only had real experience with Wind Waker and really liking it. But though I’d been looking forward to Twilight Princess up until its release, the game’s strong emphasis on dungeon crawling prevented me from really having fun with it.

Since Twilight Princess, I’d gotten to experience Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask on the 3DS, along with Skyward Sword, which I thoroughly enjoyed, on the Wii. My love for the Zelda series and appreciation for its dungeons developed as I became more familiar with it. Going back to Twilight Princess now, I’ve discovered a game that, while I can completely see where I was coming from 10 years ago, I’ve grown a new appreciation for and one that I’ve had a ton of fun with this time around.

It’s still important to note however that Twilight Princess follows Ocarina of Time’s more dungeon-driven direction, with the game’s long, sprawling dungeons making up by far the bulk of your playtime. It’s something that likely appealed majorly to fans of the dungeon crawling aspects of this series, while those of us who were just as much into exploring the world, interacting with other characters, and appreciating the narrative aspects of the series maybe felt let down by Twilight Princess as a result.

In that sense it’s hard to go back to my original review of Twilight Princess and say that I was wrong, because I still agree that this game features (at least) one or two dungeons too many, and that its story and cast of characters seems to disappear for hours on end at various points throughout this adventure.

But having developed a familiarity and fondness for the Zelda series’ dungeons over the years, I found Twilight Princess HD 10 years later to be an incredibly fun, surprisingly lengthy action/adventure game with some of the series’ best boss fights, atmosphere, and combat. Some of its dungeons, such as the Fire Temple, have become favorites of mine, but even the aspects of Twilight Princess that don’t stack up to other entries in this series don’t change the fact that this is another Zelda adventure, and it comes with a lot of the charm and the fun that Zelda games almost always come with.

The HD upgrade has served Twilight Princess incredibly well. It’s true that its graphics style may not be as timeless as that of Wind Waker’s, and every once in a while it becomes apparent that this was originally a Gamecube game. But for the majority of the adventure, I’d forgotten that this was an old game and enjoyed seeing its beautiful art direction, once hindered by aging Gamecube/Wii hardware, given the chance to really shine.

This is an interesting world; mellow in tone and a good deal less cartoony than we’ve come to expect from this series, Twilight Princess exists in a fantasy setting that you view in both light and dark capacities; a curse which turns Link into a wolf, along with the will of his traveling companion Midna, brings him back and forth between the two worlds. Earlier in the game, which version of Link you control is dictated by the story, but as the adventure goes on you are given the ability and the need to change between them on the fly.

It’s a gameplay mechanic that helps Twilight Princess stand out from its fellow Zelda titles. Inevitably the time spent as the wolf (where you have far fewer moves and items) is less fun than the time spent controlling Link, but this HD version helps remedy the problem by reducing the Tears of Light that you’re required to collect as Wolf Link early on in the game, which kicks up the pacing of Twilight Princess’ earlier hours just enough to make a difference.

The various dungeons you’ll encounter are exactly what Zelda fans have come to expect; the formula of picking up one key to unlock a nearby door, before reaching a dead end/mini boss and earning a power that helps you to access a new area, ultimately leading to another key or two until you unlock the Boss Key and retrace your steps to use it and fight the dungeon’s baddie….are all in full effect here. There are one or two situations where this is switched up (Temple of Time) but for the most part the formula is followed to varying degrees throughout. The dungeons were designed to be incredibly epic in scale, and though many are well-paced and fun to explore, and though they usually use the unlocked powers in clever ways, they’re all quite expansive. It’s a real show of their great design that only in the last several hours of the game (on this playthrough, not on my first) did I really begin to face dungeon fatigue and want it to end.

The world above features many nooks and crannies to explore; ranging from forest to desert, from lakebed to sky, this is a large world with much to see and unlock. This version of Hyrule Field sadly isn’t one of the series’ better worldmaps, and with its iffy horse controls and both natural and unnatural barriers preventing you from going from Point A to Point B on foot, most gamers will likely be making heavy use of the available warp feature to get from one place to another. It always bums me out a little to use this type of feature, knowing how long it took the developers to create this world and knowing how many secrets there are to stumble across along the way. Twilight Princess however seems to have been designed with this warp feature in mind, and eventually I stopped fighting it and warped to my next location most of the time. Not doing so would have added many hours to what’s already a pretty lengthy adventure.

The locations you explore once you pass the empty fields are a sight to behold, especially in HD. The opening Ordon Village and the deep, windswept forests surrounding it are ridiculously atmospheric, while Castle Town feels appropriately bustling. The swordsmanship in Twilight Princess may actually be the series’ best yet, as the system in which you unlock new powers and abilities is a fun one and continues to evolve throughout much of the game.

The music of course retained the mostly MIDI format of the series’ past, (something thankfully finally updated in Skyward Sword, its successor) but it bothered me a lot less here than it did 10 years ago, along with the lack of voice acting; these are the quirks of the Zelda series, and at this point I think I’ve simply accepted and gotten used to them. The interactions you have with other characters, whether in town or in the cutscenes, have that perfect Zelda charm that’s so hard to explain but so easy to like.

It’s all this that makes me wish even more that Twilight Princess didn’t have what I see as its big weakness: you don’t get enough time with this world or its characters. The game early on relies heavily on the capture of the village kids, who remain in captivity for what basically amounts to about 1/3 of the adventure, yet you hardly get to experience a resolution to this story before you’re whisked off to the next plot point, usually involving dungeons to complete and objects to collect. Twilight Princess has a tendency towards this sort of storytelling; big events do happen, though they’re hardly talked about again. Zelda is given such little screen time (about 3 scenes) that she hardly registers, and the less said the rarely-present villain Zant, the better. Castle Town’s a bustling hub, but it serves very little narrative purpose and it too fades into the background. Twilight Princess is a Zelda game where Link barely feels like he’s a part of the world or its events, and it builds to what’s meant as an epic series of battles. It’s just hard to feel that much of anything is at stake.

I’d have gladly sacrificed a dungeon or two for some more character-driven content, or for a couple more story scenes or adventures in Castle Town. I felt the same way about Ocarina of Time, though Ocarina definitely featured a stronger story and characters. All in all, Twilight Princess HD falls just short of what it could be: something that a stronger narrative and a couple less dungeons would have helped make reachable.

Verdict:
But Twilight Princess HD is still a lot of fun. It’s an HD Remaster that I’m glad I played, one that allowed me to go back and re-discover a game that in the past I’d never really understood. It’s a shame that a weaker than expected plot, an abundance of dungeons, and a heavily used warp mechanic bury the game’s world so far in the background, as it’s one brimming with the same charm, sense of adventure, and discoverable secrets that make The Legend of Zelda such a great series. With its strong boss battles, fun (for the most part) dungeons, great art direction and atmosphere further enhanced by this HD upgrade, Twilight Princess HD remains a worthy installment to the Zelda series, and one that I’m glad I took the time to rediscover.

Pros:
Gorgeous HD graphics and atmosphere
Some cool use of a light/dark mechanic
A vast array of fun dungeons and bosses

Cons:
Never really makes the most of its interesting world
Amount of time spent in “dungeon gameplay” becomes excessive
One of the modern series’ weaker storylines

4/5

New Review: Though badly in need of an overhaul, Yakuza 5 again delivers the fun in the series' largest installment to date

In spite of it all, time really does fly.

It was a strange moment when, partway through Yakuza 5, I just so happened to look back and find myself hit with the realization that it had been almost five years since I’d played and reviewed Yakuza 4. In some ways it hardly feels like it; Yakuza 5 is immediately quite familiar, and easing myself back into this world didn’t prove to be too challenging.

In other ways, the degree to which life inevitably changes as it moves along with the flow of time somewhat blew my mind as I played through Yakuza 5. In fact this bit of soul-searching may have proven to be one of the more impactful facets of playing the game, and one very much unintended by the company that released it: a company which provides Japan with a new Yakuza installment every year.

But I digress. It has been three years (!) since Yakuza 5 made its Japanese debut, while a full five years (!!) have passed since its predecessor landed on Western shores. In that span of time we’ve seen many changes in the gaming industry, both in the games themselves and out, but Yakuza 5 is, simply put, Yakuza 5. It refines the formula introduced in its predecessor, with the adventure being broken into chapters each devoted to a different playable character with their own storyline. Where Yakuza 5 differs the most from Yakuza 4 is that it adds new cities into the mix, with the adventure spanning 5 characters in 5 different cities, easily making this the biggest Yakuza to date.

For those unfamiliar with this franchise, the Yakuza games take the form of story-driven beat-em-ups with a heavy “open world” aspect. A GTA-style radar exists in the bottom-left corner, indicating your destination along with the many sidequests available to you over the course of your adventure. The series takes its storylines incredibly seriously, with very well-produced cutscenes, some spanning close to thirty minutes, occurring throughout.

The gameplay in between grants you the ability to explore these richly atmospheric cities, where you can buy food and items from shops, visit and run Hostess Clubs, enjoy the use of batting cages, arcades, and other such mini-games, sing karaoke, drive a taxi, find items, and much, much more.

As you venture through the cities you’ll frequently be challenged by thugs to street fights, which give you the opportunity to beat the crap out of countless people, netting you money and Experience Points to level up your characters. It’s a concept that at first seems incredibly bizarre, something that these games are certainly aware of and treat with a definite sense of humor. Amazingly, at this point in the series’ existence it doesn’t even occur to me to question the system, or to wonder why the police never seem to show up despite the fact that a person was just physically beaten with a motorcycle (yes a motorcycle) in the middle of the street in broad daylight with a crowd of onlookers cheering their approval.

The combat system, while in as much need of an overhaul as the rest of this game, is as fun as it sounds, and that’s saying a lot given how much time you’ll spend with it in Yakuza 5, and how much time we’ve spent with it in the many games prior. Though each character has their variations in combat style along with their strengths and weaknesses, battles usually feature little beyond mashing some combination of the Square and Triangle buttons, with the occasional throw move or weapon thrown in for good measure. It feels dated and not nearly as fluid as it could be, especially when compared to more modern combat-driven games like Bayonetta; Yakuza made its debut in 2005 and the combat system has changed little since, something becoming more evident with every new entry.

I can’t deny though the fun that playing Yakuza 5 brings, something I’ve probably pointed out in each of my previous reviews for these games. The combat system offers moments of jaw-dropping and hilariously over the top brutality, and despite its dated feel it still manages to be addictively fun to fight thugs and expand your character’s stats and abilities. The pattern of wandering through cities that feel almost real, partaking in entertaining sidequests and beating up countless enemies along the way, while the story and its incredibly likable characters brings you to the edge of your seat, is what really keeps me coming back for more, and it’s an area where Yakuza 5 again delivers. It delivers in such a major way that, as with each Yakuza game before it, some of the series’ larger flaws are, if not necessarily forgiven, at least able to be partially swept under the rug. Partially.

As fun and involving as each game can be, my issue with the Yakuza series continues to be that, while it tries, it still doesn’t even know how to come close to matching the truly immersive feel offered by games like GTA or (especially) the Shenmue series. The world’s certainly atmospheric, but the amount of restrictions placed on almost all exploration, including driving cars, riding bikes, entering shops, and even taking certain roads, constantly forms a barrier between the true immersion that I know the series is attempting to deliver. As lifelike as these cities feel and as cool as it is to wander through them, the limits the game imposes on your exploration breaks me out of it at every turn. Many of the inviting buildings you pass by remain completely off limits to you, the game allowing you to enter very few of the locations you see. Force fields exist to prevent you from accessing various roads, and even dictate where you’re allowed to cross the street in certain cities. This is something more evident in Yakuza 5’s new cities, which don’t offer even a fraction of the explorable area or interactivity as the two returning cities (Tokyo and Osaka, known here as Kamurocho and Sotenbori, respectively) from Yakuza’s 1 and 2. Even in those, however, it’s the general rule that a major portion of the areas you see in the Yakuza series remain un-explorable, and it’s a fact that continues to form a barrier between the player and the games' world.

The basic and limiting inventory system, making use of a small grid for item storage and forcing you to send the rest to item boxes, also remains stubbornly stuck in the past, as does the need to pause the game to scroll through the main menu to access recovery items, even in the midst of combat. Yakuza 5 continues to require you to access save points to save your progress, something which isn’t a big issue for the most part, though make sure to set aside plenty of time for the final battles, as you’ll at that point be forced to go for hours without the opportunity to save.

It’s strange that none of these design choices actually manage to make the game more challenging. Whether it’s because I’ve mastered the formula or whether it’s because the game’s too easy is difficult to say, but Yakuza 5 for me was by far the easiest installment I’ve played. Few of the enemies you face until the game’s final chapter put up much of a fight, and with money and HP recovery items proving ridiculously easy to come by, there rarely seems to be much of a reason to lose a battle.

As alluded to previously, Yakuza 5 continues to make use of part 4’s multi-character format. It sees some improvements, partially due to the overarching story being much stronger, and as a result it doesn’t feel as much like “starting over” when you jump to a new character as it did previously. Even with a stronger central plot, however, it falls victim in the same way the other PS3 iterations have of getting in its own way with filler content. This includes an entirely pointless mountain segment where you’re required to spend a good deal of time learning how to hunt, even though the game never once requires you to know this skill after learning it.  Playable character Haruka’s gameplay, which centers on a bland “rhythm game” format, is so dull that I once actually fell asleep while playing it. Yakuza 5 also re-uses, almost beat for beat, the “prison break” sequence of events from the 4th installment, and it’s no less annoying this time around. This series has always featured a degree of filler content, but with the PS3 games it has become almost dangerously in love with its gimmicks, and the sense of urgency present in the first two Yakuza titles is similarly only available in bits and pieces in part 5, as it was in parts 3 and 4.

Still, a stronger and more focused narrative keeps Yakuza 5 on track, despite falling victim to some pretty major clichés. The sniper from the building across the street always manages to shoot his victim at the exact point before he’s about to reveal key information, as if the shooter were able to hear the conversation. Masks are used a bit too frequently as plot devices, and each time the game betrays its secret almost immediately before its reveal with a poorly-chosen camera angle. Still, these nitpicks aside, the Yakuza series knows how to hook you into a plot and how to keep you guessing, and Yakuza 5 is certainly no exception.

Visually this is a tough one to judge, as it’s a three year old game and this series was never exactly known for pushing its hardware. Comparing it to parts 3 and 4 does show some subtle but noticeable graphical improvements, and the fact that almost all main events are now voice acted is a huge step in the right direction for these games. On the other side of the coin, Yakuza 5 has one of the series’ weaker soundtracks; what’s there is great, but songs repeat incredibly frequently, and the game lacks the standout tracks that made Yakuza 4 such a memorable audible experience.
--

Verdict: Yakuza 5 may have taken far too long to get here, but I’m very glad that it did. Though it doesn’t do too much to deviate from the established formula, an improved central storyline from the previous two entries and new locations to explore help to shake things up. That main events are almost all presented with (finally) full voice acting also helps Yakuza 5 stand above its PS3 brothers, even if it still no longer allows itself to carry the same urgency of parts 1 and 2 on the PS2. Though I keep waiting for the series to evolve, especially with regard to letting you fully explore its open world and to bring its combat system up to date, and though I wish it would leave behind some of the gimmicky filler, it’s impossible to deny that what’s here continues to be a blast to play. Those new to the series might have a hard time jumping in at this point, but fans will most definitely be stoked by what’s offered here.

Presentation: By far the biggest improvement is that nearly all the main storyline cutscenes are voiced, making a huge difference. The plot and pacing still doesn’t compare to those in the first two Yakuza titles, and features some true corniness, but stands above those in its PS3 counterparts. Cutscenes look amazing, load times are further shortened. One glaring type-o during the game’s ending is really the only mark on an otherwise superb translation.

Graphics: Art direction and use of color are excellent. As a three year old game Yakuza 5 shows its age, though it features subtle graphical improvements over parts 3 and 4.

Gameplay: This is Yakuza through and through. Core experience feels dated and in major need of an overhaul, but remains enjoyable to play. Addition of new cities is nice, even with it being clear that not as much work went into them as compared to the returning cities of Kamurocho and Sotenbori. Cut down on the filler and give us more to explore and we might one day have greatness.

Audio: One of the series’ weaker soundtracks, but the Japanese voice acting remains top notch. Great ambient environmental sound design.

Replay Value: Probably the longest Yakuza game to date, plenty of post-game content as well. This one will keep you busy for a while.

Overall: 7.5/10

(Yakuza 5 is available as a digital download on PSN.)

(My reviews operate on a .5 scale.)