perfect
But how not to put the perfect score in this game? Famitsu had to ask the same question (the ones who put him 40/40), and as I understand ... Yakuza 5 deserves to be taken as a model by all developers in the world.
I just finished the script: it took me 105 hours and 39 minutes. Admittedly, I took my time in making a number of side quests along the way, but that's another number that will give you an idea of the length of dizzying life of this title: despite all the quests I have already do, I'm only 14.48% of the total!
It is no exaggeration to say that for anyone who is platinum (I'm planning to aim for that matter) is in hundreds of hours it will take ...
But the key is not there. A period of colossal life has no value if you get bored throughout.
Now it is impossible to get bored in this game so the action is omnipresent and infinite possibilities.
Diversity is everywhere:
- Diversity in places: 5 real Japanese cities whose downtown has been modeled as it exists in real life, and a whole bunch of other places (a mountain village, a forest, a prison, a landfill, etc.)
- Diversity in the characters (5 playable characters, including a girl, Haruka, which has a chapter that could have been a game in itself)
- Diversity in action: you can make fights, karaoke, fishing, baseball, hunting, battles snowball, driving a taxi on the road or highway, making bank transfers, pass a job interview, raise a chicken to do to participate in races and win money, read magazines in supermarkets, play a variety of card games or trays, billiards, bowling, participate the lottery, take pictures, eat in restaurants, go to bars, attend a play, flirt hosts, participate in autograph sessions, break up a prostitution ring, play arcade or tongs to catch lint, make purikura (photo booth), making battles dancing in the street, etc, etc ...
And that's just a sample of the many things you can do in this game. I tell you, it's dizzying.
But the more enjoyable it is to do all this in real environments. If like me you have had the chance to walk in the downtown Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo etc ... you walk back into those same streets virtually is just great.
The playable characters are charismatic and hyper hyper endearing, but what is amazing is that even among the NPC, many characters have an incredible care, especially in graphics, since the developers did not hesitate to use much the technique of modeling faces of real people to the faces of the characters in the game (one of the characters, for example the face of Ken Watanabe). This technique allows to give the characters a face and a grain of really hyper-realistic skin. The fact that many of the dialogues are dubbed only enhances immersion, especially when you see the high quality of voice.
The central theme of the game is the pursuit of dreams (this is also the meaning of the title in VO: 「夢, 叶 え し 者」 which means "those who have realized their dreams").
It's mostly from Chapter Haruka that this theme begins to gain momentum, then it has grown more and more ... so admirable. By finishing the game you can understand why the developers have called the game like that. The scenario leads us to reflect deeply on this subject: the different characters often have different philosophies, and their progression in the game on this theme then pushes the player to ask himself questions about it. It's one of the things I liked most in this game, because that's what makes the difference with most conventional action games where you often have a scenario that fits on a post-it and who pass no particular message.
Anyway, I think we can only admire the incredible efforts to made by those developers to be able to execute such a long game, too successful, with few bugs, in summary for me this game is very clearly tHE best game on the PS3 generation, by far.
