Yakuza 5

Yakuza 5 is one of the most sprawling entries in the entire series – a game in which the player gradually switches between five playable characters across five different Japanese cities. Alongside the returning Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, the player also controls taxi driver Shun Akiyama, singer Haruka Sawamura, and young hockey player Taiga Saejima, each with their own storyline, their own set of gameplay mechanics, and minigames closely tied to their profession, whether that's taxi chases through the streets or actual hockey matches. Each character also has their own fighting style matching their profession, so switching between chapters also means a significant change in how the game controls and how combat plays out.

This variety makes Yakuza 5 the most ambitious entry of its time – within a single game, the player goes from classic street brawls through a taxi-driving minigame and hockey matches all the way to performing on a concert stage as a singer, with each of the five cities, including the newly added Sapporo and Nagoya, having its own atmosphere, its own side quests, and its own cast of minor characters and subplots. The price of this scope is an enormous length and density of content – fully completing all five interwoven stories along with all the side content is one of the longest experiences in the whole series, easily over seventy hours of play. It was precisely because of this scale and the cost of localization that the game reached the West only after a delay of several years, while in Japan it had already released on the PlayStation 3 back in 2012.

Why play it: Yakuza 5 will be appreciated above all by players who already know the series and want an experience that, in scope, number of playable characters, and variety of professions, surpasses most other entries. Because of its length and the number of concurrent storylines it isn't an ideal first entry in the series, but as the pinnacle of the PlayStation 3 era in the series it holds up wonderfully and still ranks among the most ambitious titles of the whole franchise.