Yakuza 5 Remastered

Yakuza 5 Remastered is a PlayStation 4 version of the series' sprawling fifth entry, adapted from the original PlayStation 3 game to run at a higher resolution and with steadier framerates. The game stands out for its sheer scope - the player gradually takes control of five playable characters, including Kazuma Kiryu, young boxer Taiga Saejima, hostess Haruka Sawamura, and others, and the story unfolds across five different cities throughout Japan, including Sapporo and Fukuoka, which otherwise don't appear in the series.

Each character has their own play style - Kiryu fights with classic fisticuffs, Saejima relies on brute strength, Haruka pursues a singing career instead of combat and unlocks rhythm minigames, while the other protagonists offer different approaches to both combat and spending free time in the city. This makes Yakuza 5 one of the most content-packed entries in the series in terms of sheer volume and playtime. The PS4 remaster doesn't add new mechanics, but it makes the game accessible without needing an older console and removes technical rough edges from the original, such as framerate drops in crowded streets or longer loading times between districts.

At its original release, Yakuza 5 was praised in Japan especially for its bold structure with five main protagonists and its finely detailed cities, though it arrived in the West later and with less attention than other entries, which for a long time earned it a reputation as the series' overlooked installment. Today fans see it as a hidden gem of the series that offers an unusually wide range of play styles in a single package and serves as a bridge between the classic trilogy and the modern entries built on the Dragon Engine. Thanks to the PS4 remaster, new players could also catch up on story threads before the arrival of Yakuza 6 without having to hunt down an old PlayStation 3, making it easier to piece together the full continuity of Kiryu's story within a single console generation.

Why play it: For series fans who want to fill in the full continuity of Kiryu's story without an old PS3, the remaster offers a hidden gem with an unusually wide range of play styles in one package.