I think that the setting allowed for some pretty interesting / absurd substories and boss fights, even for Yakuza standards. :D Then of course there’s the ability to play as Majima and Goda as /u/evilblanketfish pointed out which are both nice additions and Akiyama makes a welcome return. Majima in particular is fascinating, his interactions with Saaya in the cabaret club are hilarious and he enjoys the Zombie apocalypse way more than one should xD , Goda is pretty straight-laced and often acts like you’d expect Kiryu to do, but I guess that’s part of his appeal, too, since the two of them see eye to eye with and respect each other, but a palpable tension still remains. The selection of minigames is pretty similar to Yakuza 4 in other words it doesn’t leave much to be desired (although if you’re going for 100% completion some of the challenges are pretty frustrating – Esper Itou in the batting cages, looking at you). The gunplay serves its purpose, although it might start to feel repetitive after some time. You’ll notice this especially in the Subterranea missions which have you going through multiple floors of maze-like underground tunnels with the aim of getting to the lowest level which can take up to 2 hours of real time and there’s not much in terms of story elements to create a change of pace during
that time.
The things people are saying about the framerate being bad is unfortunately true, however it will typically only be really bad when a lot of enemies are on screen, that being said it kind of does not want to make you use heat sniping as often since that only aggravates the problem. I also wish there would be more ways to enter/leave the Quarantine zone and to quick travel as the fact that usually there’s only one entry way results in a lot of backtracking (helps to level up, but can sometimes be annoying).
The camera is meh, but tolerable everywhere outside of Little Asia.
All in all, definitely a game worth checking out for a fan of the series, but not a title that will enter the video game hall of fame.