YMMV / Yakuza 5

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Yakuza series
Yakuza | Yakuza 2 | Yakuza 3 | Yakuza 4 | Yakuza 5 | Yakuza 0 | Yakuza 6
Like a Dragon series
Yakuza: Like a Dragon | Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name | Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Judgment series
Judgment | Lost Judgment
Other Spin-Offs
Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan! | Yakuza: Dead Souls | Like a Dragon: Ishin! | Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise

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• Adorkable: Shinada maintaining his cheerful demeanour in spite of all the hardship he's faced in his life makes him come off as a jovial puppy at times.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Mirei Park. A Broken Bird who believed in passing one's dream onto others, only wanted the best for Haruka and sacrificed so much for her dream as well as her own, or a Manipulative Bitch who delivered an unnecessary guilt trip to Kiryu so she could push her own lost dream onto Haruka? Did she see Haruka as someone too confined by yakuza ties to pursue a dream, or little more than a tool to regain her own lost dream? Then there's also her reasons for acting as a mother figure to Haruka. Was it genuine affection towards her? Was Park simply addressing her past regrets knowing she'd soon be killed by having the letter? Was she exploiting Haruka's weakness of a lack of a mother figure to emotionally manipulate her?
  • Haruka herself:
    • Was being an idol really her dream, or did she only pursue it for the sake of the orphanage? Flashbacks lean toward the latter while the present-day story leans toward the former. It's also entirely possible that Haruka had toyed with the idea of herself having aspirations of becoming a famous idol before having Park push her further into it. Some players found it strange when it was announced that she was pursuing "her dream" as an Idol Singer when she flatly refused a similar offer of stardom in Yakuza 2 to be with Kiryu.
    • Letting herself get pushed around by T-Set. Was she "too nice" to fight back against them, or was she so used to dealing with dangerous underworld figures that she didn't know how to deal with girls her age?^note The fact that she was able to remain steadfast against Kanai at the station seems to imply this. It can also be argued that she knew fighting back in any way could've hurt her image as an idol. The reason she doesn't fight has also sparked some very heated debates, although the game seems to support the idea that she knows she can't take on thugs larger than herself, and not because she's completely against the use of violence, as Kanai would find out.
    • She also gets a relatively minor case thanks to the air hockey game (generally reserved for the other male characters playing against female characters) including an option to stare at the opponent's chest, which Haruka is still able to do when she participates in one. Does this mean she's maybe into that sort of thing? Is she self-conscious about her rival's size difference? Or, since the option builds her Heat gauge faster than simply playing the game well, are we meant to interpret this as envy in the otherwise innocent upcoming idol?
• Angst? What Angst?: Out of all the people who mourn Mirei Park's death, the sole exception is ironically her ex-husband Majima, who never so much as gave her a passing mention even though her death was a result of her getting caught up in the cutthroat world he lived in and something that he himself tried to avoid, which was part of the reason why they got divorced in the first place.
• Anti-Climax Boss
  • T-Set from Haruka's arc. While they're hyped up to be brilliant idols and the favorite to win the Princess League, they're actually pathetically easy to beat even on the harder difficulty. Really, you'd have to actually try to lose for them to beat you.
  • Played for Laughs in Kiryu's rematch against Yahata near the end of Part 1. If the player completes all the QTEs, Yahata goes down in one punch. And hell, you can't even fail it since the QTEs will just loop themselves until you get it right.
  • Slightly. The rematch between Kiryu and Saejima in the Finale is as awesome as you'd expect it to be, but it's slightly undermined by how quickly it ends due to the boss in question not having much health to spare this far into the game. Which is somewhat justified by the Sequential Boss that came before it in Watase and Katsuya.
  • Also a partial example for Hors d'Oeuvre Morosawa at the end of the "Dragon Mask Redux" substory. You end up fighting him twice throughout the substory and he's only ever as strong as the average street punk. While justified as he's been out of the ring for a decade and is well over 60 years old, one can't help but feel underwhelmed when there's so much build up to your second fight with him in a wrestling ring while donning the Dragon Mask from Yakuza 3 only for him to go down in a couple combos or a single Heat Action.
• Awesome Ego: Sosuke. Unlike most egotistical fighters in the series, Sosuke can more than back up his braggadocios attitude and smugness with some serious ass kicking skill.
• Base-Breaking Character: Mirei Park, who didn't win any hearts when she was introduced as the one who convinced Kiryu to leave the orphanage, and many found the methods she used to convince him to let her take Haruka under her wing to be underhanded and manipulative. Others felt that her intentions were in the right place despite her demeanor, enjoyed that she was a strong, ruthless and intelligent woman who managed to beat the unbeatable Kiryu in a battle of wits, and agreed with her argument that his kids needed to pursue their own dreams. In spite of this, many warmed up to her when she revealed her sad past to Haruka and when it was shown what lengths she went to in order to make Haruka a successful Idol, although others believed her cold personality, the lengths she went to for the sake of her own fleeting career, her regrets contradicting her current actions, and forcing her own failed dream on Haruka made her anything but sympathetic. When she was later killed, many were determined to turn her dream into a reality, while others believed she got what was coming to her. See Unintentionally Unsympathetic for more.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene where Naoki Katsuya is doing one-thumb push-ups in his hotel room. While we're shown the irezumi tattoo on his backside as well as his physical strength, there's no explanation why he's in his birthday suit the entire time. Barely anything about the plot is revealed either so all we really get out of scene is an early reveal for his Crane tattoo which gets shown again anyway not much later when Saejima fights him.
• Breather Boss: Taking on Sotaro Komaki as Haruka to raise her level cap, especially compared to the others who have to face him and Sosuke at once. Her Amon battle, while no walk in the park itself, is also considerably less difficult compared to facing off against Jo and his brothers.
• Breather Level: Haruka's segments in Part 3 count as this, especially after the more action-packed Part 2 involving Saejima's prison break and the subsequent tight pathways and constant Random Encounters of Tsukimono. What drives Haruka's chapters into this territory, however, is the complete and utter lack of random encounters, allowing the player to explore Sotenbori at your own pace. Although the dance battles are completely optional, they are still significantly easier, especially if you take your time to level up finishing her agency missions. Even her training missions are easier by comparison, as Yoko's training consists mostly of fetch missions with an occasional dance battle thrown into the mix.
  • Shinada's segments in Kineicho also qualify to a lesser extent, being sandwiched between Akiyama's short yet intense series of clashes with Ousaka Enterprises and the final chapters of the game. Despite Shinada being a relatively inexperienced fighter, Kineicho is one of the simpler districts to navigate and the vast majority of combat encounters don't demand too much so long as you train up Shinada appropriately.
• Broken Base:
  • After a three-year wait, Yakuza 5 being released as a PSN digital exclusive. Many were just glad to have the game regardless of the format, while others had contention with the 26 GB filesize, either lacking the storage necessary for it or having difficulty downloading such a large file. The game being released late in the PS3's life was also an issue for many who had sold their consoles and moved onto the PS4.
  • Fans were very mixed on Haruka's gameplay, where she engages in dance battles instead of brawling like the others. While many welcomed her parts as a refreshing change of pace especially in a game already filled with a variety of unique games, others didn't enjoy the change and felt her section was out of place in a setting with a dark crime narrative. Needless to say, a lot of people were hoping that when she was announced as a playable character, she'd follow in Uncle Kaz's footsteps and rock Japan by beating the ever living crap out of people (which is parodied here and here). Some others feel that her being a fighter would go against Kiryu's wishes for her to be better than him, or want Haruka to retain her innocence a little while longer, and some have gone so far to say that throwing a single punch would ruin her character forever.
  • While most fans enjoyed Shinada's character and found his Plucky Comic Relief to be a refreshing change to the mold, most were mixed on his gameplay and combat abilities compared to the other characters, while some even find him to be a poor substitute for Tanimura. His story was also met with mixed reactions, with one side enjoying the story behind the baseball scandal, which showed his moments of brilliance, while others felt a baseball story had little to do with the overall plot.
  • The game's epic and emotional finale is seen as one of the best in the series, but many were disappointed and confused by The Reveal of the game's Final Boss, Masato Aizawa, who is fought shortly after it's revealed he's the son of the game's real Big Bad, and felt he didn't nearly have enough screen time to flesh out his character and hype him up to be the game's final enemy. Others however enjoyed the twist, contend he fits well with the game's theme of pursuing one's dreams, feel that ridiculous plot developments such as these are part of the series' charm, and that the fight itself made up for it and was a fitting way to end the game.
  • Something that bothered some players was that for a story that emphasized following dreams and passing them onto others, at the end, after all the effort into making Park's dream come true, Haruka throws away her career as an idol when she realizes she can no longer bear to hide her past and be away from those she considers family - Kiryu. This led some to believe that the game's message was really about family or a place of belonging being more important than one's dreams and aspirations, or that leaving home to pursue something greater in life may not always be worth it. Others appreciated the message of the importance of family, and some even argue that Haruka realized that her real dream was something more important than being a star, or that it was more about her discovering her own dream instead of living out Park's. On the other hand, some claim that she actually did succeed in her goal of becoming an idol and making Park's dream happen by performing at the dome like she wanted, but like Kiryu in the first game, after fighting hard and sacrificing a lot to reach the top, she decided to give up the position after realizing something else was truly more important to her.
  • Some fans weren't pleased that "Bloody Moon" by Gospels of Judas, the Japanese version's opening theme, didn't make the cut when the game was localized. Many more were upset that "Wild Romance" by Kyosuke Himuro, which played during the fight between Tatsuo and Daigo also didn't make it, and was replaced by an unnamed instrumental rock song. Many complained that the drama found in the original fight was now gone, but many others enjoyed the new song just as much, if not more. Some even contend that the use of a vocal song (and the only fight to have one) made the fight more dramatic than it should have been, considering Shinada barely remembers Daigo and the two weren't really even that close.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The Mysterious Man in a mask and fedora in Shinada's story is a disguised Daigo Dojima, which you can immediately figure out once you get a good look at his hairstyle and his voice. The disguise seems to be more for the characters rather than the audience.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Playing as Saejima. Herculean Spirit aside, Saejima hits like a truck once the player gets used to his slightly slower (though not as slow as the Beast style from Yakuza 0) but appropriately heavier style than Kiryu as well as his very devastating charged finishers. Compared to his gameplay in 4, Saejima feels much more polished and refined, with much of the frustrating things about his gameplay in that game being trimmed down and improved upon here. His battle theme, "Hailstorm", exuding unbridled testosterone also helps, too.
  • Ultimate Match Challenge 9 provides an unusual case. Kiryu needs to take down around 20 enemies, however, they all get knocked out in one hit and never attack him, making for some easy beatings to blow off steam from some hard fights. For players who felt uncomfortable with some of Haruka's idol jobs or were dissatisfied by the rather positive portrayal of the industry, this can serve as an outlet for those feelings because the thugs Kiryu needs to beat are Haruka fanboys who are trying to get on stage an approach her during a performance.
  • For those who have played Yakuza 0 and its disco substory where you have to deal with Disco King Ogita, it's satisfying to get to beat the tar out of him in Akiyama's boss fight with him.
• Contested Sequel: While the game received critical praise, it's seen by fans as either one of the best entries in the series or inferior to its predecessors by trying to be too grand for its own good while suffering from the same gameplay and story problems as 4. Many fans enjoyed every aspect of the game from beginning to end with the game's new engine, improved combat, Anti-Frustration Features and variety of gameplay, while others were torn on the characters' unique side story quests, Haruka's gameplay, Shinada's combat and his story, and that some features, moves and mini-games from the previous games didn't return. Many agree that from a gameplay perspective it's one of the best in the series, but reactions to the story itself are all over the place, although some of those who claim the story is the worst in the series maintain that it's still leagues above those offered by its triple-A competitors.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: quite the possibility with Haruka's part, with literally skippable gameplay portions that can be skipped without the story coming to a halt. Considering how divisive her gameplay can get, some definitely take up that choice.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Noa Amon, the only shown female member of the Amon clan, who shows much more maturity than Jo and the others by taking some well-needed advice by Haruka after her defeat. She also sings "So Much More" in the concert battle against her, which has made many curious who her voice actress is, and are disappointed her version of the song isn't featured on any of the soundtracks.
  • In a character popularity contest held after the game's release in Japan, Shigeki Baba came in at #6 following series mainstays Majima, Kiryu, Saejima, Akiyama and Daigo (in that order). It helps that he has an intriguing personality and Character Development throughout the plot, making him probably the most well-received out of any of the game's antagonists, as well his youthful expressive design being based on his voice actor who's also a fashion model.
  • For some fans, the real highlight of Shinada's chapter was the Loan Shark Koichi Takasugi, largely due to Show Aikawa's memorable performance and his fun chemistry with Shinada.
  • Masaru Watase, the boisterous successor of the already-popular Dragon of Kansai, who respects Kiryu and believes in making the Omi great again. In the aforementioned popularity poll after the game's release Masaru Watase came in at #8, one step ahead of his predecessor Ryuji Goda at #9. He's also among the top 20 in a poll for characters that fans want to see in Yakuza Online.
• Fan Nickname: Following the release of Elden Ring, some circles have taken to calling the main antagonist "The Loathsome Dung Eater", as one of the most-remembered details about Kurosawa, who is quite the despicable Jerkass, is the fact that he literally ate shit.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Tiger Drop, as per usual. This time around, it's also a Disc-One Nuke in skill form by virtue of being unlocked as early as Kiryu's Chapter 2, as all you need to do is persevere a little against Sosuke's training and you'll unlock it within the first hour of the game.
  • Unlike in other entries, Kiryu's Bounding Throw (e.g., Square, Triangle, Circle^note  Or X, Y, B on Xbox. ) requires no Heat to use in this game, making it a very effective means of dealing quick and easy damage, even against Bosses. It's incredibly easy to stunlock even the Final Boss to death by just relying on using the bounding throw while they're recovering from... the bounding throw.
  • Speaking of bounds, Akiyama's basic Rush Combo (namely, Square, Square, Triangle^note  X, X, Y on Xbox. ) can keep even bosses glued to the floor due to the reverse axe kick being able to strike enemies on the ground. The extension that adds a rising right kick you unlock early on with upgrades does enough damage and still maintains enemies glued to the floor that fights with Akiyama can devolve into finding the nearest corner and repeating the combo ad nauseam. The only downside is that it doesn't work so well on tougher bosses that can't be knocked down or launched. Even when recovering from being floored by a grapple or Heat Action, they'll have Super Armor preventing you from keeping them glued to the floor like other enemies. This can be seen with recurring threat Kamon Kanai.
  • Saejima's "Herculean Spirit" ability. Once you learn it, he is almost Immune to Flinching while in Heat mode, allowing you to spam his devastating combos and Tiger Dragon Drop Counter-Attack without worrying about a thing. Pair this with his enormous health bar that is further strengthened with Tatsuya's training and it even makes his respective Amon boss fight a cakewalk.
• Genius Bonus: At the start of part 2 chapter 2, Saejima is playing cards. If you're familiar with the game they're playing and paying attention to the cards, you'll notice they're playing Daifugō, known in the west as President or Asshole. Saejima wins the hand by playing four deuces, which is one of the strongest plays possible in this game (only beaten by a joker or a pair of jokers). Himura comments that he's done "a revolution with four deuces", indicating that Saejima was the Asshole and that he just won and got promoted to President. He then says that winning the hand this way is illegal in Sapporo's regional rules (a reference to this game having a myriad regional rules variants all over the world). Moreover, the way he won can be interpreted as a metaphor for Saejima's arc in Yakuza 4 (a man in the lowest possible position in the hierarchy climbing up the ladder after a surprise play of four deuces, the unassuming card with the lowest number but the highest power in this game, representing the previous game's four protagonists), and Himura's comment as foreshadowing that his previous approach won't work anymore now that he's in an unfamiliar city.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The encounter rate of the random thugs you fight while exploring is very high, making it incredibly annoying if you're trying to just wander about in the city as Kiryu, Saejima, Akiyama, and Shinada as you're more than likely to end up in another fight just after finishing one. The only way to mitigate this is either to walk around them, which can be time-consuming, or to use the Beads of Fortune item, which reduces the encounter rate. For some reason, this is exacerbated even further when Shinada is present in Kamurocho, making an already frequent annoyance more aggravating.
  • Non-combat example, but even as Haruka (who doesn't have to fight off waves of mooks like the other characters do) pedestrians tend to get in your way a lot. And unlike in Assassin's Creed there's no button that gently pushes them out of the way, nor is there a Sprint button^note  Which wouldn't be introduced until the next installment, being Ishin. when roaming around in the overworld, for that matter.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Kan Ogita. While he's not too terribly difficult, he utilizes a throwing move that's easy to fall victim to. The problem is that he spams it throughout the fight. Once you're caught in it, it'll be a few seconds before you regain control of yourself, and you're likely to get caught in it again the moment you do. Even his other attacks are tricky due to his unorthodox fighting style and usage of a knife for some unblockable swings. On top of that, he has two whole health bars despite being Akiyama's first boss fight and available quite early in his side of the story. If you decide to go ahead with the story without engaging in any sort of side content for extra experience and combat upgrades, he can make for an especially aggravating experience.
  • To a lesser extent, the two Yamagasa Family members, Isabashi and Mihara, Kiryu fights as his first real boss fight. Individually, their movesets are pretty simple and they're not all that strong. Put them together however and they're annoyingly good at covering for another and keeping Kiryu distracted long enough for the other to sneak in attacks. Further irritating is that they both have effective Counter-Attack moves and that Mihara's main strategy is to grapple Kiryu, effectively guaranteeing that the faster, more aggressive Isabashi is going to get at least one free hit in. It's actually an early enough fight in the game that Kiryu's low level may lead to you losing a lot more health than expected for a first boss. Thankfully, there's a Toughness ZZ laying in the boss room, should the need for healing arise. Also you only need to defeat one of them before using a Quick Time Event to instantly defeat the other which definitely prevents the fight from being too much of an issue.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Haruka being the in-universe and (at the time) real-life poster girl for the Watami Izakaya chain is undermined by the fact that Watami was labeled a "Black Company" due to horrific working conditions that led to employee suicides.
  • Tsubasa Kurosawa is revealed late in the game to have terminal lung cancer, and can be seen coughing up blood. By the time Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth takes place, Kiryu himself is dying from a form of cancer and is also seen coughing up blood.
    • Related to the above, there's a gag where Akiyama is trying to rescue Haruka in their shared chapter, where he's out of breath after running up a flight of stairs. He blames his lack of stamina on his consistent smoking habits, even stating he should quit. Infinite Wealth confirms that Kiryu, who has had a history of smoking throughout the series (though less than Akiyama), is dying of cancer, with smoking usually being the cause of lung cancer^note Kiryu himself speculates his cancer was caused by radiation exposure, but also notes it had spread so much by the time he had it diagnosed that he can't be sure. Suddenly the joke becomes a little less funny when they're affected by its long-term consequences.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The Big Bad is a cutthroat Yakuza who is willing to cross every single line for the sake of his Evil Plan, including ordering for Haruka's assassination. Yet many players end up hating Mirei Park more for her manipulative tendencies and cruel treatment of her employees, not helped by how characters tend to romanticise her after her death despite being a horrible person in general.
• Karmic Overkill: At worst, Ogita was a Jerkass Stern Teacher with a Hidden Heart of Gold, and his Accidental Murder can be seen as him being Forced into Evil due his debts to Ousaka Enterprises, which he wouldn't still be in if Park didn't rip him off and not pay him in the first place. In the end, he not only dies, but beforehand he's tortured, has his arm crushed in a trash compactor, and gets told that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse in regards to his legitimate grievances with Park.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Did anyone believe for one second that they killed off one of the series' most popular characters, Majima, off-screen?
• Low-Tier Letdown: Downplayed but while the combat-ready heroes are all certified asskickers and their sections of the story do a decent matching them up against threats that aren't hugely out of their comfort zone, the same cannot be said for the uniformly challenging Underground Coliseum fights in which it becomes rather clear how much Akiyama and especially Shinada unfortunately lag behind compared to Kiryu and Saejima.
  • Akiyama's a bit of a downplayed example as he does have a couple techniques that let him utterly stunlock a solid chunk of weaker opponents as explained in Game-Breaker above. However, against certain stronger more resilient bosses that can't normally be thrown to the ground, this technique just doesn't work at all even if you use grapples to down them as they just stand up through the damage that would stunlock normal enemies. This can be seen with Akiyama's many fights against Kamon Kanai. Not only that but these bosses being so resilient means that Akiyama can't properly utilize his Launcher Move on these sorts of bosses which removes a lot of his more damaging options. This all culminates in making Akiyama's particular Final Boss probably the main story's hardest fight as detailed more below.
  • Shinada is a more straight example being an example of an intentionally weaker character more focused around weapons and grapples having nearly all of the Coliseum fights render him completely unarmed against opponents that tend to be resistant to a chunk of his grapple techniques. Just about his most reliable option is to use the shortest possible combo and "My Explosive Finish" follow-up ad nauseam to slowly damage and build up heat, and then use the same limited set of heat actions over and over. It's very telling that all of his boss fights in the main story, in which he can actually access his weapons, only have two healthbars at most aside from his Final Boss and even then, that fight has multiple Quick Time Events to reduce the boss' healthbar quicker.
• Memetic Badass: Saejima quickly became one after his chapter shows him fighting against a giant bear in a snowstorm with nothing but his bare fists. After he's thrown several feet into the air, he comes crashing back down with a punch so powerful that it knocks the beast out flat.
• Narm:
  • One of the bigger complaints with the story and its boss fights is that some of the characters fight each other for completely nonsensical and silly reasons just to have a boss fight. Namely, Saejima vs. Baba, where Saejima fights him to make Baba fear death after preventing him from committing suicide. Saejima vs. Aizawa, where the former challenges the latter in a cage fight so he won't give up on his blood brother. Perhaps the worst offender is Shinada vs. Baba, where Shinada decides to fight him even though Baba had already decided to go against his orders to kill Haruka. Although Shinada says it's because he refuses to simply let Baba walk away as if nothing ever happened, believing he's also running away from the consequences he must endure (as Shinada himself did before), the message was lost on many players. Not helping matters is Shinada's insistence on peppering his little speech with all sorts of baseball-related analogies which further muddles the message along with Baba's utter confusion throughout most of it, asking him more than once just what the hell he's talking about.
  • A pre-fight exchange between Kiryu and the Final Boss, Masato Aizawa, is seemingly lampshading the fact how unexpected, and even absurd, his role is.
    Kiryu: What are you doing here?
    Masato Aizawa: To be honest... I'm not really sure myself.
  • The Stinger showing Kiryu supposedly on the verge of death once again, which some find to be an overused and tiresome suspense formula considering how his possible death has been teased in nearly every previous entry besides 4 where it's instead Akiyama who nearly dies.
  • The idea that Sotenbori, a place Kiryu has and continues to end up brawling through among other characters, suddenly became so dance-obsessed that virtually every other corner is willing to participate in Dance Battles for Haruka's chapter (and two substories in Akiyama's) is a special level of silly the series never quite reaches again. For those that don't mind the Lighter and Softer approach to Haruka's personal tribulations, it's just another part of the series' Narm Charm.
• Narm Charm: Taiga versus a bear. Cheesy as hell? Most definitely. Epic and universally beloved? Even more so. And it even gets more epic (and also hilarious) when you remember that something similar happened with Takamura, and the coincidences are way too much to NOT be considered a Shout-Out (The Big Guy, voiced by Rikiya Koyama, knocks a bear out while stranded in the woods).
• Older Than They Think: Kiryu's Taxi racing missions, unlike his regular driving missions, has him engage in highway street racing which also involve a lot of drifting. Many fans see the emphasis on drifting as an homage to Sega's earlier Initial D arcade racing games, but the drifting is more akin to one of Nagoshi's earliest hits, Daytona USA, where its main theme can be purchased as BGM.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: There are fans who feel this way about Yakuza 5, even with the whole series being as narrative-heavy as it is. With how massive the game is, it's very easy to get lost in the large scope of the story. This, coupled with the fact that its side content is the most expansive of the games, makes some players not bother with trying to keep up with the convoluted plotline and instead enjoy the characters and the highly varied gameplay the entry has to offer.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: From a gameplay standpoint, Saejima. Whereas his previous iteration generally started out pretty slow and was overall difficult to use, here he's much quicker and more responsive, as well as being far and away THE tankiest character in the entire series, having the longest health bar out of every playable character in the game (and can even be doubled in size after the fact). Helping matters is having access to both a Counter-Attack of his own (which is a lot easier to use in the remaster because of the increased framerate) as well as the almighty and highly broken Herculean Spirit. Also helps that, as a character, Saejima's also laxer here than he was in his debut, too.
• Rooting for the Empire: In a mild sense regarding the three Princess League songs. We're supposed to be rooting for Haruka as the more talented idol, but there's quite a few players who found themselves preferring T-SET's vocals over hers.
• The Scrappy: A minor one, but the chef NPC Tatsuya, a Special Guest based on the real-life celebrity chef Tatsuya Kawagoe, is subject to some banter from the Japanese end of the fandom, given that his depiction borders on Character Shilling if not an outright walking advertisement who appears in every chapter despite not being particularly interesting. Not helping the matter is that the real world Tatsuya was under hot water shortly after the game's release for unrelated reasons^note Secretly charging patrons of his restaurant 800 yen for water, then defending himself against criticism by saying "it's good water" and that his restaurants aren't meant for poor people anyway. Suffice it to say, fans had a field day with that one.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • As mentioned above, fans who aren't particularly fond of Rhythm Games (or the music that accompanies them) didn't care at all for Haruka's segments in the fifth game. Even some of those who did found her sections to be quite repetitive, in due part to having a dedicated chapter to her mechanics almost directly in the middle of the game.
  • The game's Soul Points system. Even after you raise your level cap and max out your characters at Level 25, they will still have abilities yet to be unlocked. The only way to gain more Soul Points at that point is to play the IF8 mini-game, which awards one per play.
  • In the Finale, Haruka's inventory doesn't get shared between all playable characters, unlike the other four fighters until the Premium Adventure. This means that unlocking Sotenbori Coin Locker will deprive the other character - Akiyama - of its content.
  • Premium Adventure Mode doesn't allow you to make Clear Save Data for New Game Plus, something the previous two Yakuza games didn't have a problem with. For many, this alone made playing Premium Adventure pointless since they couldn't carry over anything they did in that mode to a new story mode playthrough.
  • The Dialog During Gameplay (mainly in the Long Battles, and is text-based unlike other examples) in this game is very intrusive, often to the point of halting them down to a crawl (you can't even pause the game to use a Healing Item during the fact). On a first playthrough, this isn't that big a deal, but in New Game Plus, this can be a major kick in the dick since enemies, on some occasions, continue to take damage until the characters in question finish their conversation, and the text progresses quite slowly, to add insult to injury.
  • Haruka's Comedy Team minigame in the original English release. The Boke and Tsukkomi Routine is already something that relies on wordplay and pacing unique to the Japanese language, so introducing a timing element to a game that is near-impossible to judge for people who aren't fluent in Japanese turns it into Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Largely fixed in Remastered, which makes visible a timing bar during the game, so English players just need to focus on the text.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: After the previous game was considered one of the easiest in the franchise, 5 kicked things back up with more aggressive enemies that generally deal more noticeable amounts of damage, plus some damn hard fights and bonus content. However, it's partly mitigated by the fact that more potent upgrades are available to all, potentially allowing characters like Saejima to become a straight-up Game-Breaker, utterly crunching the difficulty.
• Special Effects Failure: The characters are more detailed than the previous two games, though the remaster does make high-res screens show how dated even these are. But every single character in the game has overly reflective and shiny eyes, which fans have dubbed the "Crying Eyes" syndrome that makes everyone (especially Kiryu and Shinada) look like they're on the verge of breaking out into tears every waking second.
• Strangled by the Red String: The reveal of Mirei being secretly married to Goro Majima. It's a shock to everyone in-universe, but even after it's revealed that Majima is still alive after being reportedly dead, he has never mentioned Mirei's existence before and even after the reveal. The fact that he barely reacted to the news of her untimely death makes their relationship come off as tacked on. This comes even more to play when compared to his relationship with Makoto, whom he at least had on-screen chemistry with. Whilst with Mirei, they never even appeared in the same scene together, and their marriage was only revealed after she died.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Rather appropriately, Saejima's battle theme, "Hailstorm", sounds quite a bit like Shimano's own leitmotif, "Pray Me", especially at the 1:10 mark or so.
• Take That, Scrappy!: If you were ever frustrated trying to train Makoto Tokita into a Coliseum Champion in the last game, he returns in this game as part of the Victory Road line of sidequests, ready for further brutal beatdowns at the hands of Saejima. Amusingly, he's completely abandoned his previous street fighting/Muay Thai style for a more brutish wrestling-based one. Perhaps he also got tired of having a somewhat ineffectual fighting style.
• That One Boss:
  • The final battle against Kamon Kanai. He's fought alongside several of his men, and unlike other Flunky Bosses that tend to keep their distance, he's very aggressive and will attack you every moment he has with a knife combo that you can't escape from once you're hit. He's considered by many to be the toughest of the game's final bosses.
  • Masato Aizawa at the end of the game. As befits a Final Boss, he has a total of eight health bars, multiple phases, and can use all his combos from neutral, including multiple unblockable ones. He also hits like a truck, and by that point you probably used up most of your health potions on the beginning of the Boss Rush finale.
  • Sosuke Komaki is pretty tough to face alone, but it's even worse when you face him and his grandfather at once. Sosuke will not hesitate to use Dragon Spirit and both of then are able to use the Komaki arts, including Tiger Drop.
  • As usual, the Amon clan has at least one. The winner this installment is Jo himself. Coming in with a whopping 10 health bars for you to get through, and that's just the start. After getting through the first 2, Jo enters a permanent Heat mode with all of the Komaki school moves at his disposal, meaning one wrong move will get you chunked by the Komaki Tiger Drop. And once he's below half, the real fun begins. Jo gets a special version of Dragon Spirit that comes with a dash that is nearly impossible to dodge, sets you on fire, leaves a damaging trail of fire on the ground, and will leave you open for a punishing and seemingly never ending combo that utterly shreds your health bar. And don't count on heat actions, as he almost permanently spams his grab to drain your Heat. The only small mercy is that unlike the Amon duel from 4, there's a checkpoint system that prevents you from having to fight them all again if one person loses.
• That One Level: The city of Tsukimono, Sapporo is only unlocked in the last chapter of Saejima's part, and is home to tight pathways and numerous invisible walls leading to constant and unavoidable Random Encounters unless you really go out of your way to only walk around hostile punks which can make for a rather tedious city to navigate.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The race against the Spangled Meteor can be this if you attempt her challenge once it's introduced (as many did), as she's an exceptionally tough racer, and you'll probably have very few upgrades to your taxi by then. Although it's possible to beat her, you might be better off taking on the challenge later when your taxi is well upgraded.
  • The taxi mission involving you tailing a car. Ever played a mission like that in a game like Grand Theft Auto? Try doing it while following the rules of the road. Get too close or too far away and you fail. Break too many rules and the passenger gets unhappy with you. And if you run into a pedestrian or car (or more commonly, if a pedestrian charges into the side of you), a short cutscene plays that finishes by setting you further back. This will almost certainly cost you the mission, as it tends to set you too far back to catch up. And woe betide you if you get trapped behind a busy crosswalk.
  • A lot of people failed Saejima's "Cold Ramen" substory, where if walking too fast doesn't make you fall, all the helpless pedestrians sliding toward you will. Some found themselves distracted by the absurd hilarity of it and failed because of that alone.
  • Haruka's "Aspiring Comedians" substory for those who aren't fluent in Japanese, where Haruka has to not only respond with the correct line, but say it the moment his ends, leaving little room for error. Some of Haruo's lines end so quickly that the response needs to be known beforehand, and it's difficult to tell when he pauses and when he stops talking. Thankfully, the PS4 remake adds a timing bar to show when the best time to respond is, alleviating a good deal of the frustration.
  • Akiyama and Shinada's coliseum battles are much harder than Kiryu or Saejima's. Akiyama has no healing ability and both have combat less suited for coliseum battles. This is especially true for Shinada, as his weapon-based playstyle is severely hampered in most tournaments due to equipment being forbidden.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Yuu Morinaga, who was seemingly set up as one of the main antagonists of the game. Instead, by the time everyone makes it to Tokyo to face him, he's already dead. Adding to the fact that Aizawa is revealed to be the son of the game's Big Bad and is the Final Boss of the game, a sudden twist that many already had contention with, they felt Morinaga should either have been the game's villain instead, or set up as one only for Aizawa to overpower him onscreen to give players a real reason to fight him. This died down after Gaiden, in which he came back from the dead as Kihei Hanawa, given the hints provided about the character; a fact that would be later confirmed by series writer and RGG Studio lead Masayoshi Yokoyama.
  • Akiyama's assistant Hana has minimal involvement in the plot, but she's limited to certain phone calls and doesn't make a physical appearance at all. Her profile picture is nothing but a desk, and when Akiyama returns to his office in Kamurocho, she's nowhere to be found. He assumes she's gone out, and she doesn't appear for the rest of the game... or the series for that matter (unless you count Ishin!).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Akiyama is only able to partake in dance battles in two of his substories. Once that's done, the player isn't give the chance to dance as him again in the same file, not even allowing for a rematch against his opponents. Despite the mixed reception to the dance battles, a lot of players would have liked to be able to dance as him again.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Shinada's chapter, which revolves around a baseball scandal that's largely unrelated to the main plot and ultimately has little connection to it. But as Broken Base above indicates, some fans didn't like how disconnected it was while others enjoyed what it offered to the game.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • A visual quirk of this game that is very commonly noted by players is the way that eyes are rendered to be extremely shiny and reflective◊, making it look at times like characters are on the verge of crying in any scene with a strong light source.
  • Before a Dance Battle starts, the faces of some of Haruka's opponents look rather artificial and creepy.
  • Haruka's generic smiling face◊ is a little odd, too. It's a blank smile that makes her look like a living store mannequin.
• Unexpected Character: After having four playable protagonists in Yakuza 4, many predicted that there would be a total of five come the next entry. But no one expected that the fifth playable character in a Beat 'em Up would be Haruka, Kiryu's adopted niece.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Kan Ogita.
  • In line with Park's status as the opposite, one can't help but see him as this. While largely a Jerkass and a Stern Teacher, it's hard to not see his point about Park's demands, seeing as he's being forced to do a year's work in just half that time, which he notes that he didn't sign on expecting to happen, which Park shrugs off. And him getting fired by Park comes off less as justified, especially when Haruka's last lesson with him has him give Haruka genuine praise, and more as a Kick the Dog, especially when Park grabs the Jerkass Ball and reveals she altered their contract so he wouldn't get anything if he doesn't complete the job, which he's unable to with Park letting him go.
  • And while his Accidental Murder of Park might lose him some sympathy points, it's still hard to not see him as being Forced into Evil, with implications that he regrets what he's doing based on the last look he gives Haruka, and when you consider Ousaka Enterprises' ruthlessness, with Kanai punishing him for not getting Majima's letter by crushing his arm with a trash compactor. This isn't at all helped by Akiyama of all people shrugging off his anger at how Park treated him when he finds him armless and bleeding to death, stating that Park's dubious actions is just how the Idol industry works. While it's not exactly out of character for Akiyama to so be dismissive of Ogita seeing as how he himself Wouldn't Hit a Girl and is probably against unnecessary murder just about as much as Kiryu, it can make him seem like he's being too quick to justify Park's moral failings and the numerous flaws of the Idol Industry.
  • A substory in 0 where he makes a cameo appearance also grants him a measure of sympathy in the form of Harsher in Hindsight. After besting him in a dance battle as Kiryu and choosing the option to show him respect afterwards will not only have him give Kiryu a fluffy pink "Isobe Fan" to spice up his disco dancing skills, but he'll also reveal his ambitions of becoming a dance instructor and will even cheerfully tell Kiryu that if he ever has a daughter, he'd be happy to teach her how to dance. The events of 5 show how badly his life turns after he actually becomes the dance instructor of Haruka, Kiryu's adoptive daughter.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mirei Park.
  • She is introduced as a cold and manipulative no-nonsense businesswoman who convinced Kiryu to leave the orphanage and sever his ties to Haruka in order to hide her Dark and Troubled Past from the public for the sake of her idol career, and even threatened to stop funding the orphanage if she didn't make it big. It's later revealed that Park was a Broken Bird with Abusive Parents, and when she debuted as an idol at 18, she was already secretly married to Goro Majima and aborted his child without telling him, viewing it as another necessary sacrifice to save her career, in which he struck and left her; Park only seems remorseful that it resulted in her career and dreams falling apart, rather than how her actions hurt others. She dreamed of turning Haruka into the idol success story she couldn't be, perhaps to make amends for everything she had done, but also admits she was probably doing it to gain back her lost dream. She was even going to reunite with her ex-husband, but she was murdered before she could.
  • Despite the narrative treating her with sympathy, with the cast urging Haruka and the other protagonists to honor Park and turn her dream into a reality, a good portion of fans accused Park of trying to force her own failed dream onto Haruka through underhanded and manipulative means, felt that she got what was coming to her, and her dream should have been left to rot. Some also accuse her of being a Hypocrite for pushing Kiryu into hiding for his former yakuza past, when she herself has ties to two currently active yakuza which indirectly get Haruka involved with the yakuza again.
  • The games released afterwards push her harder into unsympathetic territory. Yakuza 0 shows what a broken man her ex-husband Majima was and featured a substory ending in Majima liking the idea of being called "Daddy" after saving a little girl who insists on calling him that. He would marry Park four years later in 1992, who would abort their child behind his back, causing him to leave her in the same year, not wanting to get in the way of Park's dreams which ended up failing anyway. Park also takes a varying amount of responsibility for the events of Yakuza 6, as they can be traced back to Haruka's idol career, which Park had pushed her into and put much pressure on her.

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