This is a tough game for me to review, because I want to say I adore it, and parts of it I absolutely do. However, It's marred by flaws that sour the experience to the point where I can't say that.

One of the parts that I adore is the story. This is hands down the best narrative in the entire series and a big part of it is thanks to how it's set out. Judgment has an episodic feel to its plot as the main story consists of several smaller cases that all tie into the games main mystery and unravelling how everything is connected as the game progresses reaches levels of intrigue that's unlike anything in the series. As it reaches its crescendo in the final 3 chapters, it becomes an absolute rollercoaster of reveals, hard-hitting dialogue and incredibly satisfying resolutions. The cast is strong too, Yagami, while not being a fountain of personality, has a level of cheek to him which, when coupled with the banter he shares with character like Kaito, makes for some really enjoyable dialogue. The supporting cast is also very likeable and despite the game only being 13 chapters long, I feel everyone gets a decent amount of screen time. Even with all that said though, it's impossible for me to do the story justice, you just have to experience it for yourself.

The only blemish on the story is the fact that you're forced to do side cases during it. In fairness, these are some of the stronger side cases in the game, but when you're forced to do them during the game's main story, it just feels like padding that ends up hurting the stories pacing. That brings me to one of my main issues with Judgment, for a game in the Yakuza series, the side content here is much weaker than usual. To begin with, side cases feel really repetitive here since a lot of them get repeated up to 3 times, like the Bomber side cases where you just find a bomb 3 different times, or when you have to find a kid who is hiding 3 different times. The game has 50 side cases total but it really only feels like there's about 20 with how much repetition there is. There simply wasn't as much effort placed into these side cases and a big reason why is because of the Friend Events. Friend Events have you befriend people in Kamurocho by performing various tasks like beating up people who are threatening them or buying food at their restaurant. I'm split on this system since while it does make the town of Kamurocho feel more alive than ever and having certain friends help out during combat does feel really cool, the storylines in Friend Events are mostly really generic and forgettable.
However, the side cases still have a lot of highlights like the Haunted Apartment or the Twisted Trio cases which are both hilarious, and that goes for the game as a whole. Judgment retains the absurdity of the mainline games and it makes for some of the most hilarious moments in the series. The payoff for completing all side cases and friend events is great too as you see the friends you've made help out in The Golden Mouse side case which was really heart-warming. Also, this game has the best Amon fight so far. As for other parts of side content, it's hit and miss. The girlfriend stuff is just creepy and Paradise VR is too RNG-Based for my liking (and getting play passes is a pain). Drone-racing is awesome though

As for combat, I'm not very fond of it here. It might just be me, but Yagami's attacks feel really rigid, there's also a huge amount of endlag on his moves which only makes the combat feel more awkward. I did eventually get used to it though, also, this game has the coolest looking heat actions in the series. It's the only Yakuza game in which I went out of my way to see as many obscure ones as possible. This wasn't too hard, since you're constantly fucking bombarded with enemies from the Keihin Gang and it's honestly the worst part of the game. Trying to do side cases and friend events only to have the Threat Level rise to 100% and having to constantly hide from enemies is just infuriating.

Another rough spot in terms of gameplay for me would be all the detective-work based segments. Taking incriminating pictures, Thumb turn bypass and lock-picking are ok but chasing and tailing segments are just awful. Chasing segments seem impossible to fail and sometimes, even when you do the QTE properly, it still feels like you slowed down. Tailing segments are even worse since while they're just as mind-numbingly easy with how rudimentary the "stealth" is, they're also extremely long and are insanely overused. Waaaaaaay too many side cases just boil down to you tailing someone for the vast majority of the mission.

Even with all my complaints about the gameplay, the one thing that remains consistent during it is the quality of the soundtrack. This is my favourite OST in the series. It manages to be just as hype when it needs to be, while having a great level of variety and a way bigger emphasis on jazz which I enjoyed.

Being a spin-off is a blessing and a curse for Judgment. It gets to tell a standalone story without being shackled by past games, but on the flipside, it feels it has to do things differently from the Yakuza games in terms of gameplay, and barely any of it pays off. Even with that said though, I really enjoyed my time with it overall.

Greatest RGG Studio game story-wise that I played. There was barely any down time during my 43 hours with the game, and if there was it was entirely on me as I stepped away from the main story to do degenerate amounts of gambling, drone racing, side questing, friends missions, finding stickers for skills, just taking silly photos, looking at cats. It's honestly almost perfect, wish you did more lawyer-ing during the story tho, the bits that were in court were amazing but way too short and did not require much from you.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this as this is the first yakuza spin-off that I've played, but it ended but being an excellent game. Quite an interesting story with some crazy plots. The combat feels a little stiff from time to time, but I like the animations and martial art techniques. I'm also glad it wasn't the abominable turn-based combat system that Like A Dragon had.

Unfortunately, I ran into some game-breaking bugs where I couldn't interact with some parts of the environment. During the main chapters, there have been times when I couldn't open doors and/or interact with something that I had to in order to proceed. Through trial and errors from reloading older saves, I somehow got through it.

All in all, apart from the irritating bugs, definitely a nice experience for a spin-off and I'd highly recommend it.

One of my favourite games of all time.

The story is amazing and captivating, the combat has had decades of work to feel flawless, and the gameplay is entertaining.

This is one of those games that has left a big impact on me, and will not be forgotten for a long time. It's rare when a game as fulfilling as this releases.

RAWWWW PEAKK KINO FIRREEEEEEE

i love the ost the combat aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

i did the drunk and akiyama heat action on final boss it was so funny

Judgment feels like the game people describe when saying newer Yakuza games are nothing like the older Yakuza games. That's to say older Yakuza were more story/combat focused and new Yakuza are more side stories/minigame focused. I think I've always landed on liking when a Yakuza game can balance the story with it's side content, but Judgment feels like it could never strike that balance, and I feel like the game suffers for it.
So how's does this poor balance affect the game? I noticed it the worst when trying to engage with the games story. What often would happen is a moment in the story would happen where Yagami has to wait for new information to come to him or get from point A to point B. In between this time, an unavoidable side event with nothing pertaining to the story would happen, which must be done to make story progress. This can vary from something at least more charming like an Ace Attorney homage in the law office, or literal who characters just showing up to make you do something for them.
I normally wouldn't point this out in a Yakuza game for being such a big problem, but I got this impression this game wanted to be a more focused crime drama type of story, but it's still falling into all the same pitfalls we've been dealing with since Yakuza 4.
The elephant in the room here is I've been calling it a Yakuza game for this whole review so far, despite the game not having Yakuza or RGG in it's name whatsoever. The reason for that is simple; this is a Yakuza game. And I think that's my biggest problem with it. I was excited for this game initially because I thought RGG Studios was finally making something that wasn't just template Yakuza again. But they just couldn't help themselves, I suppose.
It just sucks because there's some really fun ideas in this one, like incorporating wall running into combat for another layer of street brawling the series is so well known for now. But I also can't overlook how often the game felt like it was wasting my time when I wanted to see the story unfold and it would stop me for another side story.
I'll keep spoilers out of this review, but I will also say I felt like once I finally got there, the story ends up being a bit more of a mess than I was hoping for. For a detective crime drama story that also focuses on attorneys, the Japanese court system, and the law, a lot of revelations are made with no smart basis or evidence and are just accepted by so many characters as facts. It made for a really unsatisfying ending in my opinion, even if those last couple fights looked really cool.
Overall I think this game had some good ideas but just fell into the trap of being just another new Yakuza game despite the new cast and some new systems.

THANK YOU SEGA FOR PORTING THIS TO PC.

I originally played the first few chapters on my PS4, but getting to play it on PC with better frames and visuals really proves how gorgeous this game is. Of course, RGG still supplies us with an incredible story and cast of characters. Like the Yakuza games, I could probably easily replay this in the future.

The only reason it's not 4.5 or 5 stars was just because I didn't always get along with the combat and I feel like the trailing missions were overused. But honestly, this game is amazing and I highly recommend it.

This game feels like RGG hit their stride with the Dragon Engine, though some of that might be a bit cheating since I'm basing this off of the PC version (Remastered + most recent PC ports, which really shows on the technical side).

The combat of the best in the series, and has potential to be THE best (which I hear the sequel definitely reached). The story is one of the best in the series with a fantastic cast of character, the game feels a lot more polished than the previous DE games, the music's great, etc, etc. Lots of praise all around from me.

I also love the side-content in this one, with side cases (the substory equivalent) being more interesting than their main series equivalent. The fact that Yagami can do much more than just fight means that they're more varied and involved, though I wish there more of those investigative bits. Sure, most of them just boil down to hidden item searches, but I really enjoy them.

Though I guess in general, I wish the investigative and detective shit got used a bit more. The first long battle (KJ Art) set a really high bar with how it mixed the multiple play styles of investigation with combat, which I felt the game didn't fully live up to after that. It's not too bad, tho, so this is a minor complaint.

Speaking of complaints, I personally had no issues with the Keihin Gang's presence and tailing missions. Those are the two main things I see people complain about, but I liked having lots of fools to punch thanks to the Keihin Gang and the tailing mission music is a banger so it carries those sections.

Anyway, back to side content. I 100%'d the game, as I usually do with the series (Legend replay pending rn tho), and it was a treat. The RNG in gambling games seems to be more fucked than usual, though, but I loved everything besides that. Paradise VR and Drone Racing are some of the most fun new minigames the series has had in a while, girlfriends are infinitely better than hostesses ever were, and I love all the friends you meet all over the place. This is definitely the best "friends" system in the Yakuza series and the payoff for completing all friendships was really fun with the "Revenge of the Keihin Gang" side case.

Story-wise I can just say it's peak fiction and the characters are peak as well, I'll just leave it at that. Yagami's resourcefulness and approach to situations makes for a much more fun story than Kiryu's "I'll tell everyone else to hang back while I go punch everyone" approach to everything, though Yagami still does that sometimes. Yagami also makes much more sense in that his reasons for not killing make more sense, being a law-abiding citizen. He does also call the cops on anyone he catches. It's better than Kiryu just hoping that punching guys enough will make them change their mind or something, and saves plot contrivances such as having characters getting killed by someone else because Kiryu won't kill them himself. Especially considering I'm coming off of 6 lol

The only issue is the pacing at times, due to forced side cases during the story. It's nothing new for these games, but they do it a lot more than usual in this one. Realistically, it's no big deal during the first playthrough, but the 100% demands that I beat the game again on Legend difficulty and I dread having to redo those bits there.

Dunno what else to say because I stayed up longer than I should to complete the finale in one sitting and I'm fucking dead tired I'm barely awake by now so I'm just rambling. But Judgment is a 10/10, I'm so glad that one boomer from the protag's likeness' agency passed away so we got PC ports and I could play it.

Knowing that this game is developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku is enough for me to play it so... I played it with absolute "Zero" expectations and....

When I finished it I felt like... just as if I lost someone very dear to me, I swayed for 2 weeks to regain

Hope they make a 3rd one because the 2nd was good but couldn't compete with the first at all

With the Yakuza series now being turn based I didn’t know what to expect from the Judgment series.

I absolutely loved it, playing as a detective instead of a yakuza was a nice change of pace.

That being said, the combat is a bit clunky until you can upgrade your skills to the max.