Having a spin off title of the Yakuza/ Like A Dragon series be focused on a washed up lawyer detective was not something I thought I wanted or even be interested in, yet here we are. Judgment does a great job of not only differing itself from it's mother series, but carves out it's own identity of what it wants to be. While it certainly has hiccups, and some what repetitive gameplay; overall Judgment is a series that grips you with a good overarching mystery and likeable characters.

Now when I say hiccups, I certainly do mean hiccups because I genuinely don't think Judgment really has anything bad per say, but just things they could have done better. For instance, there is nothing inherently bad about tailing (in the game, in real life this could led to a restraining order), but it certainly does get boring after the 5th time you have to do it. There honestly just isn't more to this aspect aside from waiting, and slightly moving forward. If we could have gotten more interactions or more complications to it I certainly think it would have been a far more interesting aspect aside from the usual break it provided an otherwise combat focused game. Investigating crime scenes is also a nice change of pace, but largely we get next to nothing to do and only go through these kind of things once or twice a chapter. The fact this is a detective game, and we honestly don't do a lot of detective work is sad. Yagami isn't Kiryu, and having the game more focused on the finding out over fucking around really would have helped separate this game with Yakuza / Like A Dragon far more.

On top of these minimal detective parts, we have an over abundance in fighting parts with the Keihei gang. While it does get subtly introduced, slowly the alerts and rampage of the Keihei gang is annoying to the player way into the games end and throughout post game. Not only do these higher rates of Keihei gang make the leaders of the gang show up, but the encounter rate for fights get to unbearable levels of suffocation. While they are not always present, and can be easily avoid, the point still stands that they are annoying. I get that the presence of this gang basically helps get you into more fights and gain more experience, but overall I would have preferred more detective experience than combat. In other words, there really are just some moments that suck about Judgment, but it's never enough to get the player to quit or lower the quality of the experience that the story provides. Not bad, just annoying.

The cast of characters is by far the main selling point, and between the oddball cases that it's mother series is known for, Judgement isn't lacking in personality. Heck, a really cool thing about Judgement having slight connections to Like A Dragon is subtle references or nods to the main series with cameos or references during side missions. Plus all the character introductions and chemistry is simply on point throughout. From subtle dialogue choices to slowly learning about a person's past, Judgement really makes their larger ensemble cast shine in a way that the Like A Dragon series doesn't even do.

Really the main course of the game is the mystery behind it all, and while I wouldn't say that it's predictable, it certainly does give the player enough clues to solve it before even Yagami does. It's fairly gripping to on how everything connects throughout, and how each member in Yagami's crew tie into the whole situation. It really is a good mystery in the sense that it's captivating throughout, and while it isn't always at the forefront, largely the game doesn't waste time with it.

Conclusively, Judgment is a wonderful game with a good mystery, great cast of characters, and some annoyances that can be looked over. Considering this is the start of the series, it makes me hopeful that the games only improve on the foundation, and give us more interesting stories about Kamurocho.

The story was definitely one of the best ones in the series, and is also the best first game for a new main character in the series. I honestly have very few problems with the game overall. The biggest issue really is that while there are two fighting styles (tiger and crane), crane style is pretty bad compared to tiger. It was intended to be used for crowd control, while tiger was meant for 1-on-1 fights, but honestly I just used tiger for pretty much the whole game. Crane style has the problem of getting blocked too easily, and often the wide sweeping attacks it has fail to land on enemies as a result of being blocked by just one enemy. Tiger can break through enemy guards, so this isn't a problem for that style, and it also is the only style of the two to have exclusive skills for it, meaning you just don't get some skills during crane style. Outside of that issue, chase battles have been brought back, and are kinda boring compared to how they were in Yakuza 4 and 5, since you just need to follow them until they reach a certain point, which is ridiculously easy and almost impossible to fail unless you're trying to. This game also chooses to not reuse any of the previous characters from the Yakuza series, bringing in an all-new cast. Pretty much every new character is well-developed, and almost every event in the story has some plot relevance, which is really cool to see and makes each scene have more weight behind it. Takayuki Yagami is a very interesting protagonist, and while it sucks not getting to see any fan-favorite characters in this game, Tak is able to be a great fit for the new hero of these spin-offs, and the other side protagonists are all cool as well. There's quite a lot to do in this game, like most games in the Yakuza series. I was a bit disappointed to see they didn't have Karaoke like most of the previous games did, but there's still more than enough things to do besides it. The detective theme fits quite well in the Yakuza series, giving a different take on the Japanese underworld that isn't really something we can see through the eyes of a character like Kiryu or Ichiban. Overall, I think this is one of the best entries in the series.

There is a great detective story buried here, starting with a seemingly straightforward Yakuza murder case that spirals deeper and deeper into a web of wild, far-reaching conspiracies. But Jesus Christ, there is just too much padding. This didn't need to be a 30+ hour game. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's design philosophy is way outdated at this point; except for the pretty neat friend system this game is actually a noticeable step down from Yakuza 0 in terms of overall design (the latter being my only other point of reference from Yakuza mastermind Toshihiro Nagoshi so far).

Although I have a lot of love for Yakuza 0 and even Judgment to some degree, I'm not sure how much more time I will be spending exploring the studio's other titles. No matter how good their storytelling may be, if they truly want to retain my long-term interest, they need to show progress on the design front as well. Judgment is definitely an attempt to break away from their formula, but it's a superficial effort at best. Despite some new gameplay elements tailored to the detective angle this game is going for, you will still spend most of the time between cutscenes engaged in quickly tiresome street brawls and the occasional minigame. Unfortunately, the lack of a story-driven campaign attached to any of these minigames is yet another way in which Judgment feels like a step down from Yakuza 0. Moreover, Ryu Ga Gotoku is simply uninterested in providing interesting combat mechanics and enemies, hoping that the over the top heat action cinematics alone are enough to keep fights engaging. While these cinematics are indeed quite priceless, even the most outrageous ones get stale after the umpteenth time.

This is true for the game at large. The overall presentation absolutely kicks ass and Kamurocho feels alive as ever, but it really cannot sustain a game of this length. You've already seen what there is to see after the first few hours (especially if you're already familiar with the setting from the Yakuza games), so from then on the vast majority of the game will have you running up and down the same few streets, beating up the same few goons around every other corner just to progress the story. The characters are mostly cool, Yagami is a badass protagonist (in his own, aloof way) and Kaito is the perfect ex-Yakuza sidekick. Sadly, the few female characters that exist are relegated to obnoxiously misogynistic supporting roles, serving as either bait, glorified cheerleaders or tragic murder victims.

So yeah, these are some very generous 4 stars I'm awarding here. Gotta give credit to a game where smashing random people's bicycles and maintaining a constant stock of Jack Daniel's are your most powerful combat tactics.

Una historia buenísima, unos personajes estupendos, unas coreografías y actuaciones sublimes que acompañan a un juego que, si bien tiene sus cosillas algo más flojitas y mejorables, no deja de ser un beat 'em up fantástico repleto de minijuegos, actividades secundarias y una ambientación fantástica que aprovecha a fondo.

Solo le puedo reprochar que los combates son algo toscos a veces y quizá los encuentros "aleatorios" son demasiado abundantes, especialmente cuando hay "invasiones" y el número de ellos se multiplica, haciéndolo algo tedioso. Por lo demás, todo es fantástico, si bien algo simple a nivel jugable.

Es un juego lento y denso, con muchísimo que escarbar, pero que recompensa con creces el esfuerzo de hacerlo. Deseando pasar a Lost Judgment ahora para ver cómo han pulido más la fórmula.

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An outstanding story, fantastic characters and sublime choreography and acting come alongside a game that, despite its slightly weaker and with room for improvement, never stops being a fantastic beat 'em up full of minigames, secondary activities and a wonderful setting that's full of stuff to do.

I can only hold against it the fact that combat is a bit rough sometimes and maybe the "random" encounters are way too frequent, particularly when there's an "invasion" and they multiply, making it a bit tedious. Otherwise, everything else is fantastic, even if a bit simple gameplay-wise.

It's a slow and dense game, with lots to dig through, but one that strongly rewards the effort you put into it. I'm really looking forward to jumping into Lost Judgment to see how they've refined the idea.