can this be played standalone?

[The Yoghurt Effect]

I have played yakuza 1-4 and 0 can I play this and understand

[『johnny logen』]

im a few hours in and it straight up spoils a major plot point from infinite wealth, other than that you can probably play it standalone with little issues. but i cant say for sure until im done

[Jack-o-Lantern]

Originally posted by helmut:

I have played yakuza 1-4 and 0 can I play this and understand

yes you can....
there are references with infinite wealth as story is set in hawaii like infinite walth.
Anyway it's told and explained and narrated anything needed.
If you had played infinite wealth you eventually can spot common places (that eventually changed but are same place). Or find characters found in both titles... But are definitively standalone...

so.... go ahead and get it

[Tozobi]

This is a very difficult question to answer for any Yakuza game. You can absolutely pick it up without having played the previous two games, or even any Yakuza games, and have fun. But you miss on so much hilarity and drama on some of the sidestories if you have not played every game, that you're mssing out on a lot of the fun. e.g the moment you save the first chicken, you get the same staring contest Kiryu had in Yakuza 0 for winning a chicken in a bowling contest, down to the camera angles.
You meet the dodongo final boss in a sidestory where he is repentant, and have him join the crew. You even meet Joseph at the rooftop of revolve, and the bartender references the sidestory from the previous game . And so on.

[AnonTwo]

From what I gathered it technically can in that it will explain itself fine

But it will spoil the other games. Personally I'd say just play the other games first because they're all pretty good anyway, but I guess it's up to you.

I mean once you beat 5 you're back in the Dragon Engine from Yakuza Kiwami 2, so you're almost over the old-game hump.

[マサル]

go through the games and by the time you get to this one it will probably have a sale and patches.