Playing yakuza 5 for the last few days and i'm having a blast as i think its a massive improvement/departure from the previous games. For now, i'm playing as kazuma in a different city that isn't okinawa, kamurocho or osaka, yet. I've come across some new significant mini games that i like a lot. The pick of the bunch is easily the taxi service, strangely compelling as i drive people to their destinations, being mindful of the time, safety and the chatty people.
But on top of that there is a racing game injected into it. Race along the highways to compete against a evil no good bunch of punks. hell, you can even customize your taxi tune it up for extra boosts, decals, colour etc. not entirely feature rich, you can't customize lights, interior, windows etc etc but its a nice distraction to bling my taxi with such tasteless designs that only a serious badass would dare to drive in them.
That said, i do have some issues with the taxi game, The first is that whoever configured the traffic lights/ crossing electrics should be shot. The game has a horrible tendency to ask you to stop at traffic lights and turn left/right on people walking the crosswalk. That's right, the game tries to bait you into driving into people when they have right of way. its not helped that the AI pedestrians sometimes have a deathwish as they will happily cross over the zebra Crossing and run underneath your wheels sometimes. Strangely, the game doesn't penalize you for driving when the crossing is green. in fact a possible strat is to inch foward enough to make the civillians run across as oppose to walking slowly.
The bigger problem is that its partially or heavily luck based. You're on the clock and sometimes you get lucky and no one is around or the lights are green. other times you get caught up in traffic or stopped at redlights for too long. You can run them, but that can cost time so becareful there. But on one mission i had to follow a car and i failed within the first 10 seconds as it sped past the first zebra crossing and i got bogged down by a whole load of people crossing. BS.
Third - this is more speculation - The AI cheats during race games. i could be flat out speed, miles ahead and the AI somehow comes back and over takes me. Granted, i'm in a taxi, but still.
There are a few ui issues but nothing major. it would be nice to see how difficult a taxi job is BEFORE i take the job. whilst it breaks the jobs down into several main caterogies, it doesn't always say which one is regular taxi missions or ones where you just talk to the customer without selecting them.
outside of the taxi mini game? the arcades machines appear to have some DECENT games on them. In this case virtual fighter and that drum beating game (name eludes me atm). i did do a few side missions and once again trivia was on the table. Just as expected i was absolutely hopeless when it came to math, but general knowledge was on point. Or i was lucky.
So overall, very, very entertained. right now here is how i rank the yakuza's i've played:
1. Yakuza 2 kiwami
2. yakuza 5
3. yakuza 4
4. yakuza 3