Recent reviews by StefanFr

Neat idea in concept - having to deal with a robot time cop putting you in the plot-time-out zone and an anarchist snake wanting to cause havoc, and actually getting to play around with Mythic rank 10 for more than two fights was much needed.

...But did they HAVE to make the secret paradox ending such a pain in the ass to achieve? I've had to manually track the amount of order/chaos points I've obtained towards reaching it cause I cannot for hte life of me find an in-game counter of any sort, and by the time I was on a 8/7 split, I've realized that the last rift was in a zone that's now inaccessible because of plot progression, forcing me to reload back to a save where I was at 4/2, essentially having wasted several hours of a play session with nothing to show for it.

All this to say that I've essentially had to play through this DLC 2 and a half times just to get all the goodies for the main campaign.

Game's good, and now it doesn't force you to give out your information to Sony!

Was having a lot of fun with the game despite it's myriad issues, but whatever they did to patch the game today made it nigh unplayable as it constantly crashes on startup, or after a few minutes of playing the few times I do get through the main menu screen - I didn't have this problem at all since the game launched, so it's evidently not a problem on my end.
Have tried a lot of the suggested fixes in their discussion post but nothing's worked. Given this and the general state of the game, I can't recommend you buy it atm. Wait and see if it gets fixed.

Does it have its issues? Yeah
Is the game still hella fun? Yeah
Is the game worth its price? Well, 200 hours of my playtime was in EA, and my first playthrough finished around the 65 hour mark (and I'm itching to do a second playthrough), so I'd say yeah!

EDIT: So after a couple weeks time away from the game after my biggest setback, I decided to come back to the game with the mindset of "The failure isn't falling down, but staying down", and ended up finally beating it after so many years of attempts.
I will keep my original review listed below, as it does highlight good reasons as to why this game might not be everyone's cup of tea. But my own thoughts on the game have changed, I do still enjoy it despite it's frustrations - namely overcoming them. If you enjoy a ruthless challenge and seek to triumph in the face of adversity, then I would absolutely recommend the game.

Original review:
The game is fun, for the most part. But by the end-game a single mistake can cost you hours of work trying to make heroes resolve rank 6, which isn't helped by how evasive and dangerous enemies get in champion levels.
It's so unbelievably frustrating to, for example; need a hero with the guard ability for the 2nd Darkest Dungeon, but every hero who reached high enough level to enter that location getting killed due to negligence and/or unlucky RNG, forcing you to re-train another one from scratch (even with all the stagecoach upgrades, the chances of specifically getting a rank 3 guard hero are slim, and still requires a ton of money and work to make them viable for DD).

I've had the game since early access - back when it was a viable strategy to have four heroes with the abusive affliction and go on pure dark runs, as heart attacks didn't exist back then - but was never able to beat it. And my latest playthrough to cross that off my bucket list has been plagued by scenarios like those described above, routinely sending hours of work down the drain.

The game is undeniably good - great storytelling, music and nail-biting difficulty. But if you're like me, there's only so much frustration that you can take before your enjoyment is completely soured. (It wasn't helped by the fact that I accidentally loaded a save before my mods had been prepared, which outright deleted half my roster of modded heroes. That's my own fault, I'll concede, but its still hurts since there's no way to go back to an older save to fix that mistake).

TL;DR: The game is good, but simply not for me. Something something skill issues.

Seems pretty aight, idk I need to play it a little more to be 100% certain.

There's a good reason why this expansion is often called "Feelsbringers", the story is phenomenal and genuinely made me tear up at times, especially the finale of 5.0 (base Shadowbringers) and 5.3 (third post-story patch after Shadowbringers), and the duties in this expansion are some of the best in the game in my opinion.

LALI-HOW FRICKING EVER-HO!
I would highly recommend AGAINST buying Shadowbringers at time of writing. Endwalker releases in just a little under a month due to the delay, and buying the latest expansion includes all prior expansions (so buying Endwalker includes Shadowbringers). Even if you've already completed all the free trial content and wanna play Shadowbringers now, you can't even do that because you need to finish Stormblood first (which will take a while in its own right).
Be patient and save your money for Endwalker's release - or pre-order it if you want some extra goodies, just be mindful that if you do, you won't have access to Stormblood+Shadowbringers until AFTER Endwalker officially launches, as you can only redeem the pre-order bonuses at time of writing.

Hope this helps!

I've been a big fan of Yakuza ever since I played Zero about a year back, been through a bit of a series binge and nearly gave up on the franchise a couple times due to some really frustrating elements, but I persevered.
...Until I got to Saejima's section in this game. He was already my least favorite to play in 4 due to his moveset being too slow for this type of game, as well as his section of the story being the most annoying part of it.
And it's the same here in 5: Not fun to play as, a really long and boring story chapter dedicated to him, and just generally incorporating a bunch of really frustrating gameplay elements: The game gives you 30k yen when you actually get to city part of Saejima's chapter - which is several hours in to his chapter, mind you - but asks you to pay an NPC 50k or play a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pool minigame to continue. I didn't bother with the hunting side story after the game crashed on me 3 hours into it and I hadn't saved, so I didn't have the extra cash the game demanded from me - and I sure as ♥♥♥♥ didn't want to grind street battles for money as Saejima.

I'm sure the game's great and all, but that bald ♥♥♥♥ and everything surrounding him can go straight to hell. I'm skipping this entry and going straight to 6 as soon as I can.

Of the Yakuza games I've played at time of writing this review (Zero to 4 + LAD), this is easily the worst one in terms of combat.

Yakuza 4 uses the same combat mechanics as Yakuza 3 - so you've got somewhat janky controls compared to newer titles, wall-bounding and so forth, though the developers made an active effort to reduce how much even regular enemies block your attacks, which is a welcome change.
That's where the positives end, however: As instead of blocking, enemies seem to have a fetish for grabbing the player, and their ability to do so is even worse than Marth's grab range in Super Smash Bros Melee! Case in point: https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/ncc4du/yakuza_4_enemies_dont_grab_that_often/
Not to mention that enemies seem to have a habit of course-correcting around to hit you in the back - despite starting in front of you - means that you can and you WILL be stunlocked to oblivion. There's been countless of random street fights where I've been completely unable to do anything because a knife-wielding enemy charged at me, spun around and hit my back before the recovery animation of whatever attack was finished (or in some cases, even as I was getting back up from being stabbed in the same way just 3 seconds prior).

Akiyma gets an ability that lets him quickly recover from knock-downs and a get-up attack, but is a sitting duck when grabbed.
Saejima is screwed once he flinches and gets combo'd or knocked down, but has a move that lets him escape from grapples easier... Which never seemed to work in my experiences, and NEVER works against bosses on hard mode.
Tanimura is in a similar situation as Akiyama, but at least has the ability to parry any melee attack if he blocks just before getting hit, which at least gives him a CHANCE to escape from being surrounded. He's still the weakest of the four in terms of pure stats and moveset (tho I found him at least fairly enjoyable despite that).
And Kiryu's got it all: Get-ups, knock-down recovery, and anti-grabs (this one HAS worked a couple of times for me on hard, but still useless against bosses), making him clearly the only character worth using. Shame he's the last one you get to play.

Overall, if you have to skip a game in the series for whatever reasons (being on a budget, already knowing the plot, etc.), this is definitely one you ought to avoid just from how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the combat is.

A fun game to be sure, and a very reasonable price for a bunch of content! However, my first playthrough got cut short by the missing weapon bug around the time I got to the third faction, and my second one got hit with a soft-lock barely halfway through the first faction - both were ironman runs, so I couldn't reload an old save either.
I would highly recommend keeping the game on your radar in case these bugs get squashed, but I can't fully recommend the game in its current state.