Played this game back when it launched initially on PS4 and loved it, but over the years I've come to develop some retroactive opinions on it that soured it in my mind. A friend recently gifted me the game for PC however so I decided to take the time to re-assess how I feel about it and I came out of it pleasantly surprised. Here's a hodgepodge of my feelings towards the game split into positive, neutral, and negative sections.
+ Still arguably the best story RGG has ever written, everything's so well thought out and the mystery that's built and slowly unraveled is intensely interesting at all times. Nothing that is mentioned is forgotten and everything ties up really neatly by the end.
+ The final long battle and final boss segment is one of the best in the series, the stakes feel incredibly high for Yagami and the stormy setting fits the tone perfectly. I'm also a fan of the little story bit in the middle since it brings the plot back around from Yagami's start, but I know that part's a bit divisive.
+ The English voice cast is amazing and I struggle to think of any particularly bad line reads. The main characters have great chemistry and the VAs definitely seemed like they enjoyed themselves while recording. Yagami, Kaito, and Sugiura are standout performances but I also loved Ayabe and Saori too. All of the antagonists also do an incredible job at being conniving and downright evil at times.
+ The theme of the importance of friends and allies really shines, even with 7 directly following it and using a similar theme. Building up your reputation through both the story and side content really makes Kamurocho feel like it's important to Yagami and vice versa. Scenes like the one after the amour fight or the Golden Mouse side case are great examples of that.
+ The SP and money grind weren't nearly as bad as I remembered, if you're using growth extracts during the story you'll get tons of SP and only need to chug a dozen or so of the expensive hug bombs to top off the required SP.
+ The OST is insanely good from beginning to end, better than most games in the series. Standouts include Destination, Alpha, and It's Showtime, but I'd say every track is really good at worst.

= The combat isn't as frustrating as I remembered but your options are more limited than I remembered, there aren't a lot of heat actions and comboing is limited due to the lack of any useful juggle setups without the use of EX mode and style switching being incredibly slow. Wall grabs are also incredibly overpowered and it feels like you're meant to rely on them waaaaay too much.
= Extracts are cool but their use is still pretty limited, I wish there was more variety and the materials for making them were both less rare and less frustrating to get while also letting you hold more.
= The story pacing is very inconsistent, the first half of the game is glacial in pace (most notably chapters 1, 2, and 3) while the second half is in constant "go-mode", which is when it's at its best.

- Street fights are fucking incessant and never end and the extract to get rid of them is too costly to craft constantly. To add to that, the Keihin Gang system is awful and doesn't add to the game at all. It needed a toggle once you completed a certain side case so you aren't forced to engage in it.
- Damage output is incredibly inconsistent and unbalanced. Having no damage ups in the early game was fine but midgame I needed at least one for a few notable battles. This lead to a certain mid-late game boss getting decimated while the buildup to him was an actual challenge. Late game I decided to max out my damage for Amon and proceeded to crush the final boss. Most Dragon Engine games have this issue, having damage ups as an upgrade is never good.
- Side content sucks in general, the selection of minigames is incredibly weak, uninteresting, and unrewarding. The side cases don't fare much better, I'd argue 3/4 of the side cases are forgettable at best and downright boring at worst. There are a handful of standouts but I'd say they don't outweight the bad ones.
- Yagami's characterization in the side content is incredibly inconsistent. They sometimes just decide he's a perverted creep for no reason and act like it's a funny joke, then you play the story or do another activity and he's nothing like that. The girlfriend system also sucks and none of the women are written in an interesting way, plus it feels creepy for 39 year old Yagami to be dating a 19 year old.
- Some incredibly important skills are unlocked waaaaaay too late, with chapter 5 and 6 being the main point for a lot of them with the requirement of Quickstarter. I shouldn't need to go through almost half the game to be able to increase my Heat Gain or get Re-Guard, and I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be if I missed getting Double Quickstep since if you miss it in chapter 1, you can't get it until chapter 5.
- Tailing is downright miserable and used far too much. I don't think a single tailing mission is fun despite the fact you do more or less at least one per chapter in the story alone. The one you do in chapter 12 is a desperately miserable example of the mechanic at its worst, with the tailing mission lasting nearly ten whole minutes.
- The Amon fight is terrible due to inconsistency. His gimmicks are neat but he's either a brick wall that's a frustrating ordeal to even get to phase two or he decides to be incredibly docile and you can nuke his ass from orbit in seconds. The reward for beating him also isn't worth it since you can easily get ¥1,000,000 from a single good King Koro-Nyan in VR.
- Too many enemies have too many stun attacks. Some bosses can decide to stunlock you by repeating them over and over and you can't even block them with Re-Guard once you've been hit by the first one. Some of the Keihin Gang members and the final boss are notable examples of this.
- The completion process is downright terrible. KamuroGO formats store completion TERRIBLY and makes it annoying to keep track of every location. I desperately wish it was an alphabetized list instead of a grid, but it's at least separated between restaurant and minigames. City completion is even worse, with garbage requirements like "Defeat 1000 enemies with each style", "Play 300 minigames", "Destroy 1000 objects in battle", and "Use EX Actions 300 times". I love 100%ing this series but I genuinely did not enjoy 100%ing this game both times I've done it.

All-in-all, Judgment is really damn good. I think the game's a must play for the sake of the story alone and it stands as a really solid entry in the series, but the side content isn't something worth bothering with aside from a handful of decent side cases. Definitely a solid entry in the series but I'd struggle to find where I'd place it in order from best to worst.

I think Judgement is amazing, and I don't think Judgment needs Yakuza to be amazing. I believe it is at its best when it strays away from the storytelling style of that series, or uses that style to contrast itself. Compared to the bombastic ever-present, crime world shaking melodrama of the titular decade spanning franchise, Judgement decides to zoom in a bit more, tell a simpler story, and make the people the story is about its #1 priority. This games biggest “moments” see fully realized characters reaching the end of their respective arcs and watching as their shifting alignments shape the world inside and outside Kamurocho, where every single thread of fate will intertwine in the climactic finale.

Actually, lets rewind a bit, because like I said, Judgement really is just a simple story, a story about one man, Takayuki Yagami, and how his perceived failures turned him into a detective, seeking forgiveness for his actions. I could not think of a more perfect protagonist for this sort of story than Yagami. Supremely likeable, but incredibly selfish, he has just the right level of bullheaded determination and craving for justice that gives you hope that he can crack any case wide open. That isn't to say Yagami is just some kind of truth cyborg, he's portrayed as a very logically flexible and legitimately intelligent protagonist, which plays perfectly against his endearing oaf of a partner, Masaharu Kaito.
Kaito, and the rest of the Matsugane family, feel plucked straight from the Yakuza series in a way that seems directly opposed to the murder mystery vibe running throughout the game. He's brash, impulsive, and never beyond a joke, even in the most dire of scenarios, but it's loyalty that makes Kaito such a definitively loveable ally. He brings a simple approach to any scenario that helps Yagami out more than any like-minded genius could.

We'd be here all day (and things would start entering spoiler territory) if I really wanted to start diving into the delightful layers of the entire main cast, and even most of the secondary cast, but the main point I'm getting at here is just how uniquely personality driven Judgement's story ends up being.

One big example of this is the games priority on friend events over side quests. Friend events are unique interactions with permanent fixtures of the overworld, barfly's, restaurant manager's, weird cat bloggers, and after these interactions are over and these people's questlines are "done", they never go away. It gives this tangible, lived in quality to the world, as you turn a corner and see your landlady, or the in-universe inventor of Kickstarter. Judgement ends up creating a unique tapestry of associates, friends, and allies that goes to show Yagami's networking ability in real time.

When it comes to the side-quests however, I can't say I was as much of a fan of their general presentation. Despite having some good laughs, and fun writing for the most part, the side quests all ended up having a similar structure that disincentivized me from even seeking them out after a certain point, especially when the main story reaches about the midway point i was so enthralled that accidentally hitting a side-quest event trigger felt way more like a nuisance than it should have.

Which i think is where an interesting line begins to form between Judgement and the Yakuza series. The DNA of Ryu Ga Gotoku's beloved series can be seen all over Judgement, from its setting, to its combat, but that's why I think the distinctions in tone matter so much. Judgement's existence as a mystery story following a singular protagonist leads to a much more streamlined approach to the storytelling, as the player is encouraged to piece together the mystery right alongside Yagami, rather than simply be presented a story, moment to moment. I personally loved this, and found myself itching to play the game every single day after work into the small hours of the morning. I grew up on a steady diet of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa and those series' taught me that even if the mystery is a bit obvious in places, being in the middle of a spiderweb of deceit and intrigue is just fun in and of itself.

I honestly could go on. I could talk about the incredibly fun, if not slightly unbalanced combat system, how warm and comforting the girlfriend mechanics were (as lonely as that makes me sound), Ayabe being the perfect foil to Makoto Date, and plenty of other things, but I think I'll just leave it there. Judgement is a wonderful experience filled with endlessly charming characters, brilliantly written dialogue, and a brisk pace that sunk its hooks into me and never let go. It's so much more than "that yakuza spinoff". I hope everyone reading this finds the opportunity to play it so I have more people to talk about it with.

Also, if I wrote a one sentence meme review for this game it would be:
Kaito is just Kiryu if Kiryu had sex"

From the minutiae of mechanics and the problem-solving flow, up to the grander plot about overambition paving the way to hell – am I the only one who can't escape the thought that this used to be a Shun Akiyama game, that somehow mid-production turned into a detective-lawyer thriller? Nonetheless, it's a Takayuki Yagami game, and it's almost brilliant. Wish it trusted players to figure out large mysteries by themselves and detective activities in general were better fleshed out, but this has to be the finest constructed crime stories in the medium, and the ways side activities turn into personal stories is just neat as usual. You just can rely on RGG to not miss.

One of RGGs best. The detective game I always wanted and more. Can really feel Nagoshi's passion and his desire to create a detective game and it shows.

The story was excellent, leaves you lots of clues to slowly unravel the mystery and there's plenty of "OH IT WAS THAT" moments when a reveal happens and an old scene comes to mind that will make it feel even better. Balances its serious and yet more light hearted and funny moments fantastically as the studio always does. Just a very well written story

The characters I ended up absolutely loving much more than I thought. The game features an entirely new cast in order to make it be more accessible to newcomers. Going in I was initially worried because I was wondering if they would be able to give all these new characters enough moments to stand out and be compelling. My worries were absolutely for nothing, as I LOVE this cast so much. From everyone to the MC Yagami and his loveable assistant Kaito, to even Izumida from the prosecutors office all of these characters made me like them and have at least 1 thing to remember them by. I won't talk about all in detail here as it would get insanely long (more than it already will be lol) but I love this cast of loveable misfits and cannot wait to see them again in Lost Judgment.

The gameplay is great as well, uses the Dragon Engine much better and in a more refined way than the likes of Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 and really had me warming up to the engine even more. Jumping off walls and even enemies later on added another super fun element to the combat and I had a blast fighting throughout the whole game.

Side content was great, almost 100% all of it (which I almost never do), but I do have a few issues. It is all very interconnected which is great and makes it feel more rewarding, but sometimes if you just want to take a break from main story and do a substory it can require you to grind up some friendship NPCs or some other objectives. Especially to unlock some of the last side cases. Now it never felt like a big grind to me as I enjoyed it and did them as I came across them but I can understand if someone were to think so. Only other thing is that a lot of restaurant workers are apart of the friendship system, yet they finally removed eating as a way to up stats in this game. Which i like from a gameplay POV because that could get very annoying in Y6 and K2 but in this instance since to start some of the friend links by eating, you actually have to take damage to be able to eat (without an unlock later on in the game which lets you eat at full health) which could result in some moments of me having to run around waiting to get in a fight to take damage so I could finally get the friend meter starting. None of this was really a super big issue to me but its this little issues that I feel the LJ can improve on the most and really just make sure there is no weaknesses in any part of the game.

Overall this is one of my favorite games of all time, from everything to its mystery, story, characters, game play, and side content I consistently enjoyed myself so much throughout my entire playthrough. I can't wait to get to Lost Judgment, and if that really is a "perfect" sequel I could see myself dropping this to a 9/10 (4.5 star) in hindsight, but for now its an EASY 10, and one of RGG's finest games. Thank you Nagoshi.

"Kamurocho, it's a city of dreams where even from the gutters you can shoot for the stars"

Judgment (Judge Eyes in Japan) is a 3rd person beat 'em up/action RPG spin-off of Ryu Ga Gotoku's mainline Yakuza series, but other than taking place in the same city of Kamurocho there's almost no ties to Yakuza and Judgment stands alone as a self contained story separate from the Yakuza series so don't worry about having to play them before Judgment.

In Judgment you play as Takayuki Yagami, a disgraced former defense attorney that got a client he believed to be innocent an acquittal, but they ended up murdering their girlfriend shortly after so believing his "judgement" wasn't sound enough he left the lawyering profession behind. Three years later, still living with the guilt of his failure as a lawyer, Yagami is now a private detective based in the city of Kamurocho, alongside his best friend the ex-yakuza Masaharu Kaito the two run the Yagami Detective Agency and get wrapped up in the mystery of a serial killer known as "the Mole" who kills Yakuza by gouging their eyes out.

Judgment is a murder mystery and what good is a mystery without twists? Thankfully there's plenty of twists and turns in Judgment that will have you guessing all the way until the end and with each new reveal the plot gets even more complex introducing more characters and slowly pulling at the threads of a grand conspiracy until everything is finally unraveled for one of the most climactic finales I've ever experienced in a video game. The way everything comes together in the end and how all the plot threads and characters connect is just absolutely masterful writing and gives such major payoffs in the end.

Another thing worth mentioning is the incredible voice performances both in sub and dub which really help bring this cast of characters to life. I especially have to commend Takuya Kimura and Greg Chun for both making Yagami one of my all time favorite characters.

As with most Yakuza games when not tackling the main story there's a wealth of side content to complete as well. From the 50 "Side Cases" which act as Judgment's form of Yakuza's sub stories and could be anything from helping someone find their lost cat to getting proof of infidelity these smaller cases are how Yagami makes his living paying in both money and experience and they help flesh out the world of Kamurocho better. I will say that one of the side cases which revolves around rival gangs and spans the length of the whole game is cool and one of the best side cases, but the mechanic it introduces with the "Threat Meter" and how the gangs become more aggressive and increase the random encounter rate a lot until you go out of your way to beat the gang leaders becomes tedious and breaks the flow of the story at times.

Along with the side cases there's also a friendship system that allows Yagami to become friends with almost everyone in Kamurocho by helping them with their smaller matters, all these characters have their own minor arcs and also give benefits once they're your friend from giving a discount at a shop to helping in battle or even unlocking new side cases, there's always incentive to befriend everyone you see. There are also plenty of mini-games in Judgement with everything from darts and poker to Mahjong and Shogi or Virtua Fighter 5, Outrun and even a Kamurocho themed rail shooter called "Kamuro of the Dead", plus my personal favorite a VR Mario Party-esque board game called "Dice and Cube" you could spend hours of your time on the mini-games of Judgment alone.

Gameplay of Judgment can be broken down into two types. The first being Yakuza-like beat 'em up combat. During combat Yagami has two different combat styles based on kung-fu, the "Tiger" style which is primarily used for 1v1 fights and the "Crane" style which is used for crowd control against multiple enemies. Yagami can also perform special cinematic finishing attacks known as "EX actions" and even after seeing them for 50+ hours I never get tired of how over-the-top and stylish they are, the martial arts choreography (especially in the boss battles) is just action packed and top notch. A new addition to Judgment that the Yakuza series didn't have is a mechanic known as "mortal wounds" and this happens when a boss or powerful enemy does a charge attack or uses a weapon like a gun or sword on Yagami. It'll permanently shave off a piece of your health bar until you go to the doctor or use a med kit and honestly this is one of my biggest complaints about the game and I don't understand why this was even added because it just breaks the flow of combat and becomes tedious at times.

The second type of gameplay revolves around Yagami being a detective and outside of combat you'll engage in Ace Attorney-like investigation segments where you have to search your surroundings for clues and evidence in a first person mode and when not searching for evidence you'll also have to use disguises and tail suspects in stealth missions and that brings me to my next biggest complaint about the game. There are WAY too many tailing missions and some near the end of the game or during specific side quests get very tedious and felt poorly balanced. I like the concept of tailing and giving the game more of a detective feel and I understand wanting to show off a new mechanic, but they went a bit too overboard with it as far as I'm concerned.

Graphically Judgment is a beautiful game and replaying it on PS5 really helped enhance the realism which really fits the gritty tone of the world and story and the OST is great too with jazzy noir sounding pieces that enhance the detective atmosphere to triumphant and bombastic orchestral tracks that have a very law-and-order feel or crunchy heavy guitar centric tracks for intense boss fights, there's plenty of variety to the OST and it all fits the themes and enhances the atmosphere of the game.

Overall Judgment is an incredible game with a murder mystery narrative full of crazy twists and turns that will keep you guessing and plenty of compelling characters including a fantastic lead protagonist with tons of depth and development further enhanced by great voice acting performances. Featuring hours upon hours of enjoyable side content, fluid and stylish combat full of top notch martial arts choreography and intense boss fights, beautiful graphics and an OST full of memorable tracks and while it's true there's a few flaws and tedious new mechanics such as mortal wounds, tailing missions and the over abundance of random encounters thanks to the threat meter, these are very minor problems that only slightly detract from my over all enjoyment of the game and both the story and combat of the game are so good that I've thought about the game non-stop since the first time I played it 5 years ago and that's ultimately the reason I decided to replay the game and if a game made that strong of an impact on me you can bet I also strongly recommend it and think everyone deserves to have that kind of experience as well and take it from me, Judgment will give you an experience you will not soon forget.

[This one is cobbled together from my review notes and also the 500~ Discord messages I exchanged about the game with some friends, so it’s a bit scatterbrained compared to my usual fare.]

When talking about games in a longrunning franchise, certain phrases tend to pop up around controversial entries.

“This game was one step forward, two steps back” and its variants.

Judgment confounded and still very much confounds me because it’s a step in every direction at once, with its directions seemingly mapped to someone’s rhythm game dance mat.

The premise of this game is simple: Dispense with the Yakuza franchise’s typical crime plots, machismo drama and half-naked rooftop brawls and replace it with a detective story that gradually branches out into a conspiracy tale. In the same vein, Kiryu takes a vacation from the series and is replaced by Takayuki Yagami, a guy who frequently calls to mind Geoff Keighley in that Yagami too is a relatively uncharismatic and drab man surrounded by the most interesting people on Earth. Rather than fighting with epic, powerful brawling moves, Yagami is a more agile and crafty fighter which is ludonarratively in touch with what I assume must be a frequent need to evade the authorities for chatting up high schoolers.

Right off the gate, the most immediately tangible difference between this game and its parent series is that Judgment has opted for a return to the quasi-noir style of Yakuza 2 - albeit if you play the current gen version you’ll have to fucking squint to notice it. It’s most obvious with Yagami’s constant internal narrations and an overarching feeling that you are but a cog in a machine you can’t really comprehend. Furthering this is that the Yakuza are no longer cool, noble modern heroes. They’re petty, lying criminals with no regard for civilians and a nasty habit of letting ambitions cloud judgement - pun not intended.

Yakuza games north of 2 have an awful tendency to drop about 50 NPCs on you in the first few chapters and only 10 will matter, and with Judgment they’ve bucked this trend in favour of sticking to a very small pool of characters. If you start with the franchise here you won’t get inundated with keywords, but it does expect you to remember who everyone is.

This, unfortunately, works against it. The worst sin a detective/murder mystery story can carry is being predictable. And Judgment is very predictable. Having a smaller cast means the suspect can only logically be someone within that cast, and the game makes no attempt to throw the player off or surprise them, as characters frequently interject to shoot down any suspects that aren’t the suspect. As a result, I’d figured out the killer’s identity by the middle of the game and their motive just shortly after. It’s not great, and the insistence on padding out a relatively unengaging conspiracy plot means the back half of this game drags.
I will admit, though, that there’s a good chance it was only obvious to me because I’m very attuned to the unspoken languages used in detective media, Yakuza games and games as a whole. In an RGG Studios game, the big bad is going to be someone who was face-scanned from a real actor. That’s just a fact, and it narrows the list down to four people.

As a detective story, the game also fails because there’s not a lot of actual detecting going on. Most plot beats are sussed out via pure instinct, and the trailing/investigation stuff often doesn’t actually matter due to the story progressing once Yagami makes a wild connection that Kaito calls ridiculous but ultimately ends up being right. Chapter 9 is AWFUL for this! Yagami essentially solves the entire plot barring two loose ends, and though everyone rightfully calls it out as absurd, Yagami is right.

Fortunately! There is a silver lining to this: The cast is exceptional, and despite the actual story being banal drudgery it is hard carried by excellent character dynamics, fantastic development for the main players, and a wonderful ability to pace out interpersonal reveals. I don’t like Yagami himself, but the supporting cast are phenomenal and the dynamic between the ever-growing members of his detective agency is worth the price of admission. Kaito might be RGG Studios’ best supporting man.

This is also the start of RGG Studios respecting the player’s time, so there are now optional
intermissions between long exposition dumps. While the story already drags, these excel in keeping things from feeling too suffocating - though the last couple hours are egregious even by franchise standards. On the ‘two steps forward’ front, the story manages to avoid the sins of past Yakuza games (4 and 5 especially) by knowing when to slam the brakes… Except in Chapter 7, which might be the most unwieldy exposition dump in the series. Other scenes go on longer, yes, but Chapter 7’s is so hamfisted it might as well be a pig.

There’s just one problem. A really really big problem. A problem so big that I can’t forgive it, even when I can forgive the obvious killer and the plodding middle third and the frankly weird left-turns the story makes near the end.

This was Toshihiro Nagoshi’s last big hurrah as a writer for RGG Studios and it unfortunately shows. With 0, 6, and 7 he took a backseat role which saw the writing quality rise dramatically, but the games he was a proper lead on tend to have some problems with the writing of women and Japan’s various minorities - Korean and Chinese primarily. It’s rather telling that the first mainline Yakuza after his stepping back from the role contains women in prominent roles and a direct addressing of the franchise’s prior treatment of Korean and Chinese migrants.

Judgment unfortunately maintains the spirit of his earlier work, and the game is suffocatingly misogynistic. Every female character in this story is either a plot device, revolves around the affections of men, or is someone for Yagami to prey on. It pains me to say it after the series managed to pull itself out of the misogyny pit, but Judgment is worse about women than Yakuza 1 was. Special mention goes to Mafuyu, whose entire character can be summed up as “Yagami’s ex” and she never evolves beyond this.
It is both hilarious and depressing, then, that this is the only RGG title to make an overt commentary on misogyny. Halfway through the game, you play as Saori - An assistant at Yagami’s old law office - and go through the hostess minigame from Yakuza 0/Kiwami 2… Which the game uses to comment on the misogyny faced by hostesses and indeed any woman faced on the streets of Japan.

This is tone-deaf in a million ways, yeah, but it stands out especially for being an uncomfortable commentary in a game that itself is incredibly misogynistic. Furthermore, for as much as I love the post-Nagoshi RGG games, they still include the skeevy and relatively unpleasant hostess minigames with absolutely zero sense of self-awareness. In another game series this would’ve been fine, but in a franchise with a still-growing black mark it has all the grace of a pigeon trying to do taijutsu.

Ah, speaking of clumsy martial arts, now is a fantastic time to discuss the gameplay.

I like the gameplay, but it’s not good, really. It’s a significant shakeup for the series, focusing less on brawling and more on acrobatics. Almost none of Yagami’s moves are reused, and for the first time in years we have a protagonist with a 110% unique fighting style - two of them, even!

And… One of them sucks. Badly. Really badly. Yagami has access to Crane (wide kicking attacks for crowds) and Tiger (Open-palm karate attacks for single target fights), and Crane is an utter waste of space. It gets no upgrades and its supposed use case is also perfectly doable by the versatile, powerful, hard hitting and exceptionally fast Tiger style - which also gets infinitely stronger as the game goes on. There’s some occasional uses for Crane as a combo extender, but normal melee attacks in this game do so little damage that this isn’t a meaningful use.

Instead, Judgment is focused on powerful single hits. Yagami can jump over enemies and bounce off of walls as preludes to exceptionally strong heavy hits, and Tiger style gets both the Tiger Drop from Kiryu’s games and Bruce Lee’s one-inch punch. The primary focus of combat in Judgment is scrabbling around to get an enemy on the backfoot before you hit them really hard. Truthfully? I like it. Kenzan and Ishin both added ‘new things’ but were ostensibly just skins for the standard brawling Yakuza combat. Playing as Yagami feels much more tense, as though he’s outmatched and has to basically cheat to survive. It’s telling that his hardest fight is against a guy who fights mostly the same.

But it is ultimately a messy and undercooked system that’s enjoyable in spite of its mechanics rather than because of them. People have mercifully reassured me that Lost Judgment is better about this, opting to become “Yakuza DMC” rather than a half-finished mod for Kiwami 2. As a small aside, I need to harp on the game for just how bad the hyperarmor problem is. Even mooks on the street are able to resist several blows which makes the early game feel like wading through mud.

There is one aspect I’ll praise without caveats though:

THE DUB.

I’m blessed/cursed with enough passive Japanese knowledge to know what constitutes a ‘bad’ performance in that language, even if the specifics are harder to articulate because I’m hardly conversational let alone fluent. The JP track in this game is very… Stilted. Yagami’s VA isn’t putting his heart into it and is fulfilling every bad stereotype about getting TV actors to do VA roles without much prep, and the side characters are a massive mixed bag. Again, I’m assured that Lost Judgment fixes this.

The dub, though? Goddamn. Everyone is putting in work. Greg Chun and Crispin Freeman act their hearts out during the various Yagami/Kaito dynamic scenes. Steve Blum returns to larger videogames as Higashi and kills it, reminding everyone why he was so prolific once upon a time. The venerable Fred Tatasciore appears as Kyohei Hamura and utterly owns the role, providing an infinitely better antagonistic presence than the actual antagonist, and Cherami Leigh manages to salvage Mafuyu’s drab character with an excellent performance. I was really fond of Keith Silverstein’s role as Satoshi Shioya, too, and was sad he was such an underused character.

I’m a big fan of Yakuza 7’s dub and likewise think it’s superior to the JP track, but with Judgment I am infinitely more confident in making that declaration. It’s frankly a shame that the series’ dubbing legacy is tarnished thanks to Gaiden’s utterly lackluster efforts. Here’s hoping Infinite Wealth is better.

In the end… God, I really did want to like this one. It’s so cool and the cast is so wonderful that it actually makes me kind of sad to have my review be so glum, but there’s just too much shit I can’t excuse even for a franchise that demands you put up with some shit in the process of experiencing it.

Kaito is my best friend.

É sempre bom revisitar Kamurocho, parece o quintal de casa visto o tanto de tempo que já passei pela cidade entre todos os jogos da franquia. Judgment é um spin-off de luxo do Yakuza, coloco dessa forma pois ele se passa no mesmo universo mas não tem relação. Dessa vez a história se trata sobre um tema que eu sou completamente apaixonado: Murder Mystery. A ideia de pegar o universo de Yakuza e criar uma nova história com um novo protagonista foi brilhante, pois a forma que o RGG conta suas histórias estão entre as melhores experiências que já tive com jogos, todo o dramalhão, todo o tom épico e emocionante estão aqui, então é muito bacana ver eles tendo uma abordagem diferente em suas historias, mas mantendo os elementos que amo tanto. Graças ao bom Deus dessa vez minhas expectativas foram correspondidas.

Yagami é um protagonista brilhante, carismático, divertido e bem desenvolvido pra um cacete, toda a forma que o jogo trata o trauma que ele passou é sensacional e o cast todo já me conquistou de cara. O plot é devagar, mas é um devagar engajante, afinal somos um detetive tentando descobrir o que diabos está acontecendo e o jogo segura bem o mistério. Eu tinha achado o reveal de quem é o assassino meio que vindo do nada, mas apartir daí o vilão cresce e achei ele sensacional. Diferente do Yakuza, não estamos lidado com alguém que tenha algum pingo de honra, mas contra um assassino cruel e sem piedade, é um baita de um contraste bacana.

E o jogo é lindo de morrer ein? Rodando liso no Series S, a Kamurocho na Dragon Engine é um colírio para os olhos. O gameplay do jogo é bom pra cacete, super divertido e responsivo e sem falar ma parte visual, todas as acrobacias que o Yagami faz são de cair o queixo com seus dois estilos e as heat actions são as melhores da franquia. Visualmente com as auras é incrível também, faz o mais recente Ishin parecer um jogo de PS2 em seu gameplay. Quero destacar as cenas de ação do jogo também, elas são absolutamente incríveis, sejam os QTEs dos bosses ou durante a cutscenes, são coreografias absolutamente insanas que são um deleite de ver. E estava achando que já tinha visto de tudo e a batalha final consegue ser incrível e isso considerando que a franquia já tem várias batalhas memoráveis, tá maluco.

Judgment tem uma história bacana, um gameplay divertidisimo acompanhado por personagens sensacionais, é um jogão e estou feliz de finalmente poder ter zerado. Ele vai pras pendencias de jogos pra platinar, já que não pretendo fazer o 100% por agora, mas no momento eu vou ali na Microsoft Store comprar um negocio e já volto.

Obs: Essa é a capa mais linda de toda a franquia fácil.

+from front to back the best writing any rgg game has had other than yakuza 0. if that game is a gritty fxx semi-prestige with tints of bushido virtue, this one is a slimey and bawdy network crime serial that doles out gruesome reveals and hearty laughs in equal measure. it's episodic and perfectly suited for multiple play sessions while also managing to tie together a reasonably complicated conspiracy with many moving parts together without any major contrivances.
+so many great supporting cast members, whether from genda law, tokyo PD, random hoodlums in yagami's orbit, or any of the yakuza families that appear. much better than the usual yakuza formula, where a character will get like one moment for characterization and then will immediately die. and speaking of which: the deaths in this game are legitimately impactful!
+there's a lot of effort here to modernize rgg scenario design beyond being just dungeons of dudes to beat up, and when they get it I think they do a good job. infiltrating KJ art at the start of the game demonstrates this perfectly, with a wide range of tasks and hingepoints that make the mission more dynamic
+the new mortal wounds mechanic helps maintain that yagami is conceptually not the superhuman that kiryu is, and it prevents the player from just tanking damage like they might otherwise. it also makes guns more dangerous than ever before, which is probably how it should've been from the beginning.
+at first I wasn't sure what to think of dice & cube given how goofy it is and how weirdly the party game mechanics are incorporated in, but now I think it's one of my favorite ways to grind in the series. all of the combat scenarios they throw at you are wild and wonderful, and I just love getting some crazy new weapon like the railgun to try out on a pack of goons.
+ass catchem. this is probably the closest rgg has come to making a cumtown bit in-game.
+I honestly like how they balanced out yagami's personality traits to make someone more morally complex than previous rgg protagonists. before yagami, all protags were honor-bound warriors who deal in the underworld, with each game navigating this contradiction to some extent. yagami has others he's working for, but at the end of the day he's on a self-serving mission to redeem his own prior failing. justice is his guiding motive, but his methods are entirely less than legal; he'll stalk, kidnap, and torture in order to obtain evidence that he needs. he sleeps on a couch in his office at the age of 35 and spends his free time dating girls 15 years his junior. he should be utterly unlikable and yet the authenticity and straight-shooter personality takuya kimura brings to the role seals him as a genuinely interesting character that fits the game's tone perfectly. they absolutely nailed a grey morality with him that has shades of kiryu while being radically different in expression
+the drone is honestly cool as fuck and handles well too. finding QR codes around on various buildings is a fantastic twist on the old locker-key mechanic.
+the friendship system returns from y0 and is so well integrated here. there's 50 different friends around town, many of which you initially meet through the story or through shopping. returning to each friend frequently and fulfilling missions for them raises their approval and can eventually score you new items at the shops, skill books, and rare materials if you work through each friend's story. they really nailed it here by expanding it from y0 and having many random side characters appear as friends even after their plot relevance has ended. it goes a long way towards making kamurocho even more of a persistent and living locale.
+side cases replace substories perfectly. the y5 and onward model of substories that were mainly conversation-based one-shots were perfectly fun, but they lacked the experimentation that came before and that judgment returns to the formula. each case feels like a proper side quest chain with multiple activities and a solid stream of laughs, and even though there are fewer than in prior games the friend quests supplement them.
+kamuro of the dead is a neat bit of HotD worship that fulfills my rail shooter urges with a nice range of zombies and a full six levels. not as good as the scuba diving minigame from y6 imo but still up to snuff
+quickstarter makes choosing certain upgrades and perks a lot more manageable, as anything you don't buy has money contributed towards it up to the 50% point. if you're not gonna pursue stuff like shogi or D&C in the early game, you can save a lot of money buying their quickstarter upgrades later down the line
+one of the best finales in any rgg game without question. the characters feel so much richer than prior yakuza characters, especially in the villain department, where the motivations of each antagonist vary and their alliances mutate as the game continues. I even enjoyed the action stages in this section, even though neither of them were very long.
+you actually get to mow down cops in this one. fucking incredible.
+good things about drone races: the handling is interesting and versatile and the tracks are well designed
+the main plot actually incorporates side content in, with full side cases being interleaved into the main scenario. at times it's pretty obvious that they're just filler, but it's done much more tastefully than many of the prior rgg games. you also get many more breaks to go do side stuff in this one, including in the middle of long info dumps surprisingly enough. a surprising QoL change that I would not have thought of myself.
+didn't use extracts much but they're sort of neat! esp since carryable weapons are completely gone

-my one issue with the pacing: to keep the audience hooked they basically have yagami figure out the entire mystery before getting any evidence around the 2/3 mark. it's lampshaded frequently and there's still reveals afterwards to keep the drip-feed going, but their plot solution for this issue is to just torture various people until they yield the required evidence. it's grimly funny in its own way though. this is more of a positive I guess but they spend a lot of time in this game lampshading the usual ridiculous plot points of a usual yakuza game to paper over the issues with this game, and to be completely honest it worked on me.
-combat sidesteps the loose freeform brawling of y6/yk2 and instead combines various old yakuza mechanics with methodical martial arts, and it's really a mixed bag for me. early game feels slow and ineffectual, with yagami's combos all doing roughly the same thing and his kit being boring early on. once he gains more abilities its definitely better, but it's still slow and clunky.
-styles make a return in a different configuration: there's now separate styles for crowd control and for one-on-one combat. the problem is that tiger style (one-on-one) is so much better than crane style that it eclipses it completely once charge moves are in play since you'll need that high damage output + the guard-breaking abilities. tiger style yagami is sick, but they really needed to give crane more notable abilities past mid-game to help it keep pace (though the final attack upgrade made them a bit more equitable)
-running is now accomplished by tapping the cross button instead of holding it down, and this running can be used in combat to wall-jump and leapfrog opponents. this handicaps yagami's maneuverability in fights considerably however, as quicksteps now must be done when locked-on (which makes them circle around the opponent instead of allowing proper free quicksteps), and his walk speed is slow. his quickstep cancel is also not as universally applicable as kiryu's, which is a big deal when certain attacks can decrease your max health.
-the keihin gang... easily the worst combat sidestory of all time, no question. the gang appears frequently and drastically increases the encounter rate until you take out one of their leaders, of which there are only four. unless you really want to go refight the same minibosses repeatedly to keep them at bay for a bit, you're stuck slogging through random battles until they leave on their own. you're also sent a passive-aggressive text once they leave guilting you into fighting them the next time, and it's unskippable. fuck off!!
-trailing sequences are atrocious auto-scrollers. there is basically no way to lose unless you walk up to the person you're trailing, and the stealth options are limited beyond pre-set hiding points, so each of these was like 5+ minutes of staring as my phone and holding the analog stick forward occasionally.
-chase sequences return in an endless-runner form that relies heavily on QTEs. boring and trite after the first couple occurrences.
-too many parts of this game lean on kamurocho... like you spend a lot of time staring at various representations of kamurocho's streets. D&C, the drone races, kamuro of the dead, the chase and trailing segments... all of these use kamurocho streets as stages and it's the most prominent sign that this game was limited on budget.
-later in the game there's a lot more traditional rgg action stages, and they're just not up to part imo. playing these after playing the top-notch dungeons from y6 is a shocking difference.
-the arcade is packed with choices, but the new emulated games just aren't as good as prior offerings imo. fighting vipers and motor raid just don't get me as excited as vf2 and virtual-on did, for instance.
-they really needed toughness ZZs in this game at the very least. eating seven bentos in a row to restore a fully-upgraded life gauge is so fucking annoying, not to mention running to every convenience store in town to load up on bentos, sushi, and oden.
-game crash right after the finale escort section X_X
-search mode is unreasonably stiff and more often than not ends up being 3D pixel hunting. intensely claustrophobic when you can't find the solution
-rocks to have a second phase on your final boss and it's exactly the same as the first one.
-bad things about drone races: doing five 3-lap races in a row is way too much commitment. I only played the first three leagues, but they all had the same courses as well (although the second league had all of the courses reversed). also basically entirely build-dependent, which requires grinding for materials
-there are so many fucking materials in this game. I like going out of my way to pick things up in yakuza games but this is honestly over the line. there's also special materials you can get from friends... why is there no way to track who has what in the game? unless I completely missed something
-hunger gauge from y6 was so perfect and they went back to the old system.... why?? bottomless stomach isn't hard to get, but unlike y0/yk1 you aren't ever told how to get it in this game. I was literally waiting for enemies to hit me once per fight just to keep working on restaurant completion.
-"Made in Dreams"-ass pinball game

on one hand this is top-notch for rgg studio in terms of writing, pacing, structure, side stories, characterization, absolutely anything other than the gameplay itself. whenever I'm just reading the dialog I'm having the time of my life; I probably laughed more with this game than any other in the series, and for once I was really impressed with how they wove a mystery that actually suspended my disbelief. every time I pick up the controller though I'm either wading through muddy combat, snoozing through a trailing mission, or half-heartedly playing a minigame before pausing it and scrolling twitter. fixing a small thing here or there would put this as an actual all-time favorite of mine rather than something I enjoyed with reservations; hell, just lowering the encounter rate would've really brought up my minute-to-minute fun. with the cast being so fun and the foundation in place for a great game, I really can't wait to try lost judgment and see how it improves on this framework.

In the words of YMS: "It's closer to a 9 than a 7"

Another banger from the Yakuzaverse. While it's slow to start (even for RGG standards), once the story really kicks into gear it's a hell of a ride. No wonder many people say that this is the best of all the Like A Dragon stories.

The combat is a blast, with combos being much more fluid and varied than previous games. I saw a lot of complaints about the more "detective" gameplay elements (tailing, evidence collecting) before I started the game but I didn't mind them at all. They set Judgment apart from the other LAD games very nicely. The side cases add the usual RGG tonal rollercoasters, from the sad and serious to the downright bizarre and hilarious. Those, as well as the new "friend event" system and the usual minigames (darts, batting, drone racing), make this game incredibly dense.

I was worried going into this that I wouldn't enjoy the new characters but all of the main cast are varied and interesting (especially Saori, who goes straight into my top 5 LAD waifus). While Yagami isn't quite on the level of Kiryu or Ichiban for me, he's still a well-rounded protagonist and a much more intriguing character than I originally anticipated. My only (minor) complaint is his penchant for dating women 10-15 years younger than him but hey, that's what the game gives you.

I'm trying to catch up on the LAD games I've missed before Infinite Wealth drops so I still have Lost Judgment, Gaiden and Ishin! yet to go. Onwards we go!

Horrifying confession. I might be European. I keep spelling it “Judgement” as opposed to “Judgment”... I just think it looks better. Anyways.

Judgment was a game I had my (judge) eye on for the longest time. I’ve been longing for a good detective story/murder mystery in a video game for a while. I’ve played a couple that came close to giving me what I was looking for, but none of them quite did it for me in the manner I was hoping. Then there was Judgment, with a premise that fit the bill to a tee.

I didn’t want to hop straight into Judgment, seeing how it was (kind of) part of a wider game franchise, a la Yakuza. Personally, whenever it feels best, I like to have a bit of context when going into a piece of media that’s rooted in such deep history. With my online friend group getting swept by a nanomachine that forced them to go through Yakuza games like it was crack cocaine, it gave me the motivation to play through Yakuza 0 first. And I greatly enjoyed it! It was a lot of what I’d expected from general talk and seeing out of context clips around the internet and that was by no means a bad thing. It’s a master at interweaving heartfelt and compelling character driven storylines with over the top, meathead action bullshit. But a good portion of the absurdity comes from the premise of the games themselves. For 0 alone, you focus on two protagonists with DEEP ties to the biggest criminal organization in Japan and their goals are far from small. A big worry I had going into Judgment was wondering how the game was gonna go about meshing Yakuza’s absurdity with the more lowkey tone you’d come to expect from a detective story.

I am happy to say that after finishing, I feel Judgment did a wonderful job at doing so, even if there are some hiccups here and there. You still have the insane action set pieces, which I love a lot, but a bit to my surprise, Judgment is very much of a slow burn narrative. After coming off of Yakuza 0, where each chapter did its best to either hype you the fuck up or tug at your heart strings, it was interesting to see how much more slow paced Judgment’s story was in comparison. And I actually think it befits the overall tone much more. There’s a lot of room for intrigue and tension when uncovering the many truths of the story in such a gradual manner. It all culminates in the final few chapters, where it certainly hits the dramatic tension you’d expect from a Yakuza game, but in such an unbelievably satisfying manner due to sheer amount of build up leading up to that point.

I also think it works to highlight the disposition of the protagonist, Takayuki Yagami, and his role as a freelance detective in a small city. You get the sense that you’re actively fighting for your mere position as a detective in the story, as you’re mostly powerless in the eyes of the many antagonistic forces. Any outside help feels earned and there’s many points in the main story where your allies go off to collect more information on their own. This gives Yagami downtime that either leads to mandatory side cases or the freedom to do whatever you want. The mandatory side cases are the worst part of the story, as I’m sure many people would agree. They pretty much never coincide with the grander narrative, and while they’re, a lot of the time, very cute (Captain Cop Kaito my beloved), the fact that you’re actively forced to do them takes a lot away from their charm. What goes from what could’ve been a fun story the player happened to stumble upon starts feeling almost like a pace breaking detour.

But speaking of side cases, GOD I love Kamurocho as a setting in this game, it’s so incredibly lively. From the friendships you can develop with over 50+ NPCs that grow as you actively check in on them and hear their stories. To the dating sim quests with well developed characters that hit the game’s themes in a surprisingly mature sense (#Nanami’sStrongestSoldier). To the side cases that act as Yagami’s source of income and connection to the general population of the city. And just the overall visual beauty of Kamurocho and shit like being able to go in and out of buildings in real time. It’s just peak video game immersion.

The cast generally embodies tropes you’d expect from a TV show of this story’s genre. From Yagami’s headstrong, partner-in-crime Kaito or the endearing underdog Hoshino, they’re a lovable group that, while not the deepest bunch around, had me smiling by the end of their arcs. Yagami himself, however, is on another level. Probably up there with my favorite video game protagonists already. There’s such a profound sense of realistic, down-to-earth charm in his character. He has the inspiring perseverance and soft nature you’d expect from most protagonists, but his unique personality and flaws are what make him so captivating. His laid back, snarky demeanor mixed with his unabashedly blunt way with words creates such intense interactions in drama heavy scenes. He has dense character dynamics with every cast member, pushing them forward by adapting to play the role of mentor, rival, or friend and over the course of the story, you’ll begin to see how his connections affect him. His own personal journey of coming to terms with the truth of his past and how the situation unfolds over the course of the narrative is intriguing and resonated with me hard, especially in the way his arc concludes.

Judgment utilizes Yakuza’s core theme of how our past comes to define who we are in the present to push the general idea of learning to pursue the truth, no matter the cost. Yagami reflects this perfectly, but it permeates well, subtly or not, through most characters in the game. Also here, the corrupted aspects of society largely extend past Kamurocho to perfectly depict how government facilities are able to abuse their power for the sake of personal agendas and the fear that comes with opposing these injustices as an everyday citizen. Self destruction is another core theme of Judgment. How the prospect of glory or the idea of the “greater good” can lead one to corruption. On this topic, I think, in a way, the game also serves to critique Yakuza culture and how it can contribute to self destruction. Just as one example, there’s characters who reflect how a strict sense of loyalty can lead us astray from our personal ideals and I think it works particularly great in this story, because it’s presented from the perspective of someone largely uninvolved with the Yakuza’s business.

Regarding gameplay, with 0 being my only experience with Yakuza at the moment, this is my only exposure to the Dragon Engine, so I unfortunately can’t comment on how it builds off its predecessors. But god fuckin damn, I ADORE this game’s combat. There’s a realistic sense of weight behind each attack and it’s balanced wonderfully with the water-like fluidity of Yagami’s kung fu. On top of that, his athleticism allows him to perform endlessly fun tech, like wall jumping or leapfrogging, that both act as great crowd dispersers and just look super cool. In most fights, there’s this great dichotomy in picking between the two stances; one focused on wide, area clearing kicks and the other specializing in 1v1 focused attacks with huge damage. From what I’ve read, the detective gameplay is somewhat contentious, mainly regarding the tailing missions. I’m fine with everything present, as I think all the mechanics do a good job at selling Yagami’s role as a detective, despite their brain dead simplicity and they never really felt too intrusive. Tailing missions are lame, but only one in the endgame actively annoyed me.

To conclude, Judgment was everything I wanted out of it and I’m really happy about that fact. It’s a traditional detective story that’s packed to the brim with love and care from the creators of a now iconic game franchise and I’m happy they were able to expand their horizons to create a game like this. I’m very glad I played Yakuza 0 beforehand because, while I don’t think it’s required at all to enjoy Judgment, it still gave me a sense of appreciation for this game that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And I’m also just super interested in delving further into the Yakuza series at some point in the future. Who knows, I might replay Y0 and Judgment after I’m done with them all for the sake of the full picture.

Regardless, absolutely can’t wait to hop into Lost Judgment. Excited to see both the combat changes and how it builds onto the story of Takayuki Yagami.

THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

Judgment and Yakuza: Like A Dragon (Yakuza 7 for technicality’s sake) make up for what I believe is an interesting back-to-back combo following the big franchise soft-reboot button Yakuza 6 pressed. Both pivoted towards newfound directions, with new leading protagonists, all while honoring the legacy of the games that laid foundations before them. It may be a lil strange to say, for something I feel is relegated as the kinda unimportant spin-off to the main series starring the actual yakuza people came to play for, but Judgment surprised me for stacking itself up as being the better refresh point for Yakuza/Like A Dragon to me. It still carries on the real-time brawlin’ beat ‘em up combat from the older entries, but everything else is wholly unique from what RGG has brought to the table before. There isn’t much overlap between Judgment and Yakuza/Like A Dragon, if at all. The most you’ll get is the Tojo Clan being a background presence and Kamurocho returning as the primary setting, but none of the important characters are even indirectly mentioned. There’s no shoe-horned in cameos from any of the series regulars, whether they be in the main story or side cases. There’s nothing linking Yagami and his supporting cast to whatever happened in Kiryu’s games, and that ultimately became why I preferred it over Yakuza 7. It doesn’t rely on or feel hindered by that legacy. Instead, relying completely on its own unique strengths to stand head-to-head with some of the stronger entries in the franchise.

Yagami is a protagonist who eerily felt specifically tailored suited to my needs and interests, which is to say -- I really love him. The decision in making the new protagonist a detective is brilliant because it already sets up what makes Judgment stand apart from Yakuza/Like A Dragon. Kiryu and Ichiban’s games are bombastic, melodramatic, with plots escalating to grandiose heights to stress the stakes at play. It never often leaves you with much room for something smaller to breathe in. You never think about what goes on beyond their wildest exploits in Kamurocho, for example. There're glimpses here and there, if we’re keeping this within the confines of the main plot, but Kiryu nor Ichiban can dwell on it because that’s not on their agenda as yakuza. With Yagami, the scope narrows the focus down to something more grounded with characters who feel like the faceless NPCs Kiryu would stroll past by, or villains he demolished easily like some small-time obstacle to get to the big villain he cares about fighting. Yakuza/Like A Dragon bounces dramatically between two polar opposite tones, from bloodied seriousness to unabashed silliness. It pings pongs back and forth almost effortlessly, never compromising the integrity of its own storytelling in favor of it. Judgment straddles on that established tonal wavelength by sitting comfortably in the dark end of it, yet never reaching the deep end. Yagami’s personal mission to uncover a murder mystery conspiracy helps explores these aspects that the mainline games just can’t really do, but that’s fine. Judgment does a fantastic job of breathing life into its rendition of Kamurocho as the red-light district where crime makes it a living hell with constant fights on the streets, but its people are survivors who push through the day.

The side content is mostly a miss, easily Judgment’s biggest sore spot. The side cases are harmless, but they aren’t terribly memorable, especially already knowing the quality output RGG can pump out by now. Weirdly, almost no mini-games except for a returning few and Drone Racing, which wasn’t really my thing. The friendship mechanic is a nice detail that plays into the game’s grounded rendition of Kamurocho where the focus is strictly street level, but they felt like annoying distractions from how thick the main plot would get. The incentive never felt strong with completing much of this, from either the standpoint of unlocking certain benefits to enhance gameplay or to deepen Yagami’s role as a detective. The worst offender had to be the Keihi Gang which evaporated so much interest I had diving into the side content because RGG annoyingly forced them onto you. I personally wish Kim suffers through the nine circles of hell. The Dragon Engine feels like it's more put together here, with collision physics playing more nicely than they did with Yakuza 6. Though, I can’t even deny how unbalanced Yagami’s fighting styles feel with Crane Style feeling very useless with just how much better Tiger Style is for dealing with enemies. I think this could’ve been a bit better if both styles didn’t have a restrictive move set of combos to dish out, a slight disappointment until you unlock Tiger Drop and it gets more fun. Strangely, a lot of stuff gameplay-wise here felt like RGG was relapsing back to more archaic tendencies just as much as they’re pushing into newer things. You could tell me this game had been secretly in development since maybe Yakuza 4 and I’d probably believe you.

Still, it pulled very hard into its own strengths by the end. With a final boss that goes down as one of my absolute favorites from RGG. A case was solved, people died, people lived to see another day, justice was finally served, convictions were upheld, and after everything was settled… Yagami charmingly treats it like yet another normal day in the office. I can’t really think of a more fitting ending to this memorable experience with a cast of characters I’m really excited to see what takes them next, especially my GOAT Kaito. I’m hoping for Lost Judgment to smooth out the rough edges here and polish everything up to peak, because I think the potential laid here is promising as hell.

Considering this is RGG's third action game done in the new Dragon Engine it's impressive that it already feels much better than the other two titles, Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6, but while improving on a lot it also tries new things that are somewhat hit or miss. Overall though at its core it's still very much so a Yakuza type game, where the main story takes a break with substories; the usual stuff. Regardless it's safe to say they didn't reinvent the wheel, but it sure is a good step in a new direction.

I originally expected this to have more emphasis on problem solving but it really is leaning more into the other Yakuza games and they tossed in 20 tailing sequences that make Assassin's Creed look considerate of your time. I did tolerate it because I really like the series at this point, but I must imagine what someone feels when this is their first game.

The combat is pretty good, with shades of Akiyama in the moveset. Bonus points for the first DE combat I enjoyed. Sadly, with no coliseum equivalent here and no climax battles, I can't help but feel we're losing out on a lot of combat gameplay. The drone racing was amazing and possibly the most difficult minigame in the series so far. The sidecases were great when they didn't ask you to tail people or get spliced into the main story (which makes them feel like filler). Unfortunately, that takes out more than half of them. The friend system was also interesting, and then you realize each restaurant/shop has one, with multiple ones being the same. Girlfriends are introduced here as a more personalized hostess while also being just worse in general. Half your girlfriends are half your age making it so fucking weird. Y6 at least had a unique minigame, whereas here they turned it into stupid texts. You could take your hostess on dates to karaoke to see a video of each of them in a certain song. Now you take your gf on pointless activities with nothing special about each of them. The loss of karaoke really didn't help how I felt about hostess/gf. Chases now are auto-run, with most of them not even having you catch up to them. I miss actually throwing bottles at them and cutting corners rather than just qtes.

My most hated aspect of the game was the stupid Keihan gangs. This shit gets spammed all the time and always alerts you with a text. During the event, it's rare to take one step without running into enemies. Of course, once the event is over, you must then be told by text over and over for the entire game. The random crafting materials out in the world made me feel like a little kid running to pick up a piece of candy. They're easy to pick up but also just seem so pointless when I didn't really interact with any extracts. Sure, some of them are used for drone crafting, but it was much easier to buy them at Ebisu. It really just feels like there is a lot of padding compared to the other games.

I did like Yagami and his buddy dynamic with Kaito reminded me of the great parts of Y0 with Kiryu and Nishiki. Too bad they didn't decide to put more effort into this. Imagine deciding to leave the Kaito and Yagami fight as a filler sidecase in the main story for no reason. Even with the other sidecases in the story not being voiced, it was a huge disservice to have this one lumped in. The rest of his allies were pretty good with no complaints, and the story was enjoyable with a solid mystery that sticks the landing.

I know these don't really matter for most players, but I have to complain about the final quickstarter projects. Even if you do everything else in the completion list/trophy and game the VR each time you are forced to go in, you will still need around 10m more yen to fully complete. It's just another hour or so in VR to get it, but at this point you really shouldn't need to grind for more. I was even gaming the quickstarters for the entire game, letting the meter fill to 50% before contributing.

They removed Puyo Puyo in the remaster and replaced it with Virtua Fighter 2 when you can already play Virtua Fighter 5 & Fighting Vipers...

I wanted to play this game for a long while because it checked all my boxes - plainly speaking, Yakuza meets Ace Attorney. I'm really happy the wait was worth everything because this just became my favourite game ever, which speaks volumes, not to mention that I was obsessively playing it day and night, it's that good.
While I was waiting for it to get ported to PC I heard many good things for this game, but I wanted to see it all for myself and dug in blind, without any big expectations because having played 6 Yakuza games I expected something of similar quality. Turns out, I was wrong.

I can say with confindence that this is in my opinion the best RGG game (tied with Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 7, which in my are peak gaming, in terms of story and combat). The plot was amazingly done, it felt so fluid and smooth and everything fell together nicely when we consider the full picture of everything happening in seemingly ordinary ''yakuza serial killings''. Usually, even in a good chunk of Yakuza games the plot gets a bit too much and flies over your head or the protagonists cough Kiryu cough are above everyone and pull some asspulls to get their point across.
It was very refreshing to see a bit of a slower setting, with a more realistic protagonist. I like how Yagami has throughout his journey a lot of rising and falling and bumps along the road which remind us how he's just a normal person who can get in danger when he digs deeper than he should. Also I love how most of stuff that Yagami needed to finally get to the truth was because of his various bonds; Kaito, Higashi and the Matsugane gang, Sugiura, Hoshino, Saori and Mafuyu too. Everyone got their time to shine and I like that very much, their bonds really felt genuine, not to mention how every of the characters I mentioned are amazing, the writing in this game is excellent imo.
Now for the antagonists, Mole was soooo interesting and the whole web around them, got me thinking a lot about the plot and their identity which kept me entertained the whole duration of the game, I actually felt like a part of it. I wish I could write a bit more about it all but it's spoiler teritory so that's that.
The ost is brilliant and the atmosphere is top notch. Kamurocho is so bright and walking around making friends along the way was amazing, even though some of the friends weren't that good. The things that made such a great impression on me were, of course, the classic cozy Yagami Detective Office, but more importantly, the last segment of chapter 12 which gave me chills and the last segment of the final chapter, I unironically felt creeped out and it was so well done I was at the edge of my seat all the time.

To sum it up: Yagami as the protag is a breath of fresh air, he's charming (KimuTaku wink wink), witty, interesting and not afraid to fight for what is right, the other main characters are stunning and brimming with personality, the plot is superb - this is imo the best written rgg game, ost and setting - brilliant. Can't wait to play the sequel and see more of the story.

Judge, jury and no executioner

Judgment is a nice change of pace from the regular Ryu Ga Gotoku's offerings which have mostly been Yakuza games and the occasional period piece (obligatory bring Kenzan and Ishin to the West) and a licensed anime game via Fist of the North Star. Introducing Kamurocho from a brand new perspective in the eyes of Yagami, a disgraced lawyer turned detective kinda gives the area a bit more life than I thought it would. It shares a few similarities with the Yakuza series but it manages to be its own thing with the introduction of certain things.

Judgment's story is honestly amazing with how much of it all pays off in the end and manages to perfectly tie up everything barring some pacing issues that I felt that kinda hampered my enjoyment a bit. The supporting cast and characters are definitely some of RGG's best here with how much heart they have and managing to give each character their spot in the limelight. I didn't like the inclusion of some side cases essentially being mandatory for story progression barring a few that was actually great character development but most of it felt like filler to me after a while. There's just a lot of depth in the story that I never really saw in the studio's previous efforts that I really appreciate here and hoping it continues the trend in the sequel while cutting some of the fat.

Judgment continues the brawler gameplay style via Dragon Engine and I have to say it's much improved over its predecessors here. Yagami moves with elegance and flows like the wind with his two main specialized stances, Crane which is mostly used for groups and Tiger which is more for duels or 1v1s specifically. Almost every motion is fluid and flashy to the point you can even bounce off the walls and do some cool attacks and pulling off flux fissures never gets old. Judgment introduces a lot of new gameplay elements such as chase sequences, tailing people, drones and investigating areas via the first person perspective. I'm mixed leaning into the negative on these elements with only really thinking the chase sequences are fun to play and everything else essentially being tedious after a while. Tailing people is what you sort of expect here, it makes sense for a detective to do this but it's never really stimulating and essentially just following someone but being farther away than usual. The drone is okay although a bit weird to control even with the alternative schemes and sort of find it baffling sometimes when people don't see the drones literally outside of a window in a cutscene. I wish the first person investigation segments had more to it but they're incredibly easy and simple that it doesn't really indulge the detective fantasy if at all here. The standard suite of side activities are here as well such as going to arcades, eating at specific restaurants, drinking at specific bars and a variety of sports such as baseball and bowling. The drone racing is alright and the VR board game are cool additions nonetheless. You can even have a girlfriend in this game which is kinda funny since the game pushes a love interest towards you too.
The soundtrack for Judgment is amazing which is nothing new but I feel like the mixing in the game is a bit off. This is not to mention the lack of audio options in the game which mostly has the battle themes completely muffled compared to the sound effects which is a huge shame considering some of the best battle themes in their video game library come from this game and the inability to personalize audio settings to properly enjoy them in the context of the game is something I feel should honestly be mandatory in games at this point. Probably not a huge concern to most people but I care a lot about audio in games as it is. A small point for the English dub being amazing here and how I experienced the game as well. A far cry from their initial effort with Yakuza back on the PlayStation 2.

Great and elegant combat, some tedious gameplay elements which I can attest makes sense in terms of the detective role you have in the game accompanying a great narrative and characters makes this a great game for those wanting a darker look at the underbelly of Kamurocho. A real shame this game might never head to PC but it's definitely worth getting a PS4 or PS5 for it along with a few games if you haven't already. A story about a detective finding out the dark truth and coming to terms with the ideals he held onto be morally correct or not.