A detective noire thriller is a genre that I least expected from RGG but somehow in classic RGG fashion they manage to not only over deliver but they make this series almost as appealing of an entry into the Like a Dragon universe as Yakuza 0. Judgment manages to juggle a country-wide conspiracy and a thrilling murder mystery without sacrificing the integrity of either, Instead choosing to entangle them making the final reveal 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 hard hitting. The only thing holding back Judgment from getting a perfect rating is the sheer amount of tailing missions that are sprinkled liberally throughout the whole game. The combat at the start of the game can also feel a bit sluggish however the Tiger and Crane speed upgrades circumvent that entirely. RGG as always bring their A game when it comes to character work and construct not only an insanely lovable little club of detectives but also some bone-chilling, psychopathic murderers who would stop at nothing to gouge out Yagami's eyes.

“EEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAGAAAAAAAAAMIIIIIIII!”

This was the first RGG game I finished. I bought Y5 back when it came out on PS3 cause I thought it was cool and I played it until part 4 but I didn't get the story so I never finished it until I worked my way back from Y0 many years later. The reason I did go back and play everything was because of this game, not Y0.

The thing that really drew me to this game before I knew much of anything about RGG was the fact that Kimura Takuya was playing the lead and I loved the HERO jdrama series. He actually plays a goofy prosecutor (instead of a lawyer) that acts like he's in his teenage years in that one too, which almost made me think the game used that show as a blueprint.

Chapter 1 of this game is insanely good in terms of the story hook that it presents. The plot of this game was amazing and it never let me down. The antagonist and the reveal were so good. The combat was pretty decent although I didn't have other RGG games back then to compare it with.

The biggest issues it has is the non-combat stuff and some minor combat gripes.

The non-combat stuff:

-Kim's text messages and the goddamn Keihin gang. The amount of times I would afk for a second only to get swarmed by enemies and come back to a retry screen cause Kim sent a text message...

-Tailing sequences. While they do distinguish Judgment as a series from Yakuza, I just don't like them. They were a pain in all Assassin's Creed games and they're still a pain here. Just remove them.

-Chase sequences are way worse than the older games. It's just pressing button prompts with nothing interesting to do. It was fun as hell in Y5 since you could actually go in wrong directions, kick the dudes, had some control over your own movement. Or the sequences went through interesting pathways like Akiyama's in 4. Here, they're just trash.

-The friendship system is awful. Hated it in 0 and hate it here too. Locking certain substories behind the friendship meter made things a lot more annoying than it had to be.

-As a 35 year old man, Yagami is allergic to women that are anywhere older than 20. The most sus romances I've seen in RGG games only matched by Infinite Wealth's.

The combat stuff:

-Crane is really bad compared to tiger.

-Mortal wounds would have been good if the cost to get them fixed wasn't astronomical compared to what you could normally earn and the place is so out of the way that you almost never wanna go there.

OST was great.

Good game with the added benefit of not needing to play any of the Yakuza games to fully enjoy it since it's very detached from everything else.

tells a really fun classic murder mystery adventure with yakuza gameplay. definitely enjoyable.

It's really really nice to be back in Kamurocho for a whole game again. Feels like catching up with an old friend. And then to be able to experience the best (action) combat in the series within that world is really really great. Yagami feels so buttery smooth to fight as, it's very impressive.

Yakuza games are renound for their side quests, and unfortunately the quality is just not there in this game. Didn't have fun with a single one that I found here, which really sucks. This is not helped by the fact most of them like to use this game's patented detective trailing missions.

The trailing missions are the least fun I've had in a game ever. I would unronically give them a 0/10 and there are SO SO SO MANY. also mortal wounds is fucking stupid what a pain in the ass. the point and click-ish sections suck dick also but I did realise during the final boss fight there was a really early game upgrade that I missed that fixes all my issues with them so it is mostly forgiven.

yagami as a protagonist is whatever. I definitely don't dislike him but didn't fall in love with him like I did with ichiban after his first game.

looking forward to the next game as apparently there is only 1 trailing mission so I guess I will be saying less mean things to the computer screen.

also it pisses me off that they spelt judgement wrong what is that crap.

This was great! Loved the new cast, Yagami's fun, and the main mystery and plot were great! Some pacing issues in the first half or so of the game, but the final 4 chapters whip.

The detective mechanics were fun, and I like just walking around Kamurocho so the tailing bits weren't too bad. The only big knock I would give the game is the side mini games are kind of boring and not fun. Drone racing blows!

Very excited to dig into Lost Judgement later

(I played the PS5 version, but that isn't an option.)
The story was the best part of this. I do have more complaints than praises however. Only one of the combat styles was good. That was Tiger, the one that is kinda meh is Crane.
The tailing missions were annoying. But there were more annoying things in this game than the tailing. The constant stuff with the Gangs was super annoying. I never bothered to even progress with it but apparently even after you beat them they still appear. Mix dodging those boss fight with the mortal wound mechanic and you get an absolute drag of an open world. I also didn't care too much for the mini-games, or lack of them. If anything, play this for the story.

"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.

The characters were great and the story was pretty good as usual but I found Judgment to be pretty disappointing overall. Tailing is a slog, Yagami's combat plays like he's stuck in mud, and the Keihin gang nonsense gets annoying fast.

Judgment also sees the return of some of the worst aspects of the yakuza series. A ton of the objectives are just "run here, run back, run there again, run back". Forced side missions that kill the pacing. Forced minigames, which I'll lump Yagami's detective kit in with since its not like you can go around picking any lock, just occasionally in the middle of a setpiece you'll have to play another dumb minigame.

The story elements are fine, standard fare. A lot of people complain about it being predictable, but I don't really care about that. I'm more concerned with the fact a lot of the progression, including the conclusion, doesn't really feel earned.

I've heard LJ fixes some of the problems with the gameplay so I'll probably play that since I do like this direction for the series, it's just a shame that the first entry was lackluster. But then again, so was Y1/Kiwami 1

I skipped this when it came out and more or less moved on from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise until "The Man Who Erased His Name" came out and I was dragged back in.

While existing in the same universe, there's nothing you really need to know about the series lore wise. Kinda had me wondering if RGG wanted to make a detective game and this was the easiest way to do so. Never the less, if you're a long term fan you'll still see minor NPCs from prior games. The goofy townies that have inhabited this city for many titles now.

Story and character wise this would rank amongst the top entries. Every one of these gets long winded at best and incoherent at worst. While it's a lot to remember and a ton of characters and little threads to tie together, I think it all works out in the end. The villains have a sympathetic edge, the driving force of the plot adds up. Maybe Yagami is rather hypocritical in his actions at times but it's a video game. You gotta take what you can get sometimes.

Judgement has some unique gameplay features that are hit or miss for me and the misses hold this back a tad. On top of the typical RGG action, there's lock picking, chases (which have been absent since like 4?), tailing missions, drones, some crime scene investigation. There are all fairly bare bones. I don't have much beef with them but the lock picking is incredibly generic. It's the same minigame as always and it doesn't help the pacing when you're tearing through an office building of enemies and you need to slow the fuck down to do the boring lock-picking game from Mafia II. The tailing sequences were fine at first but they wear out their welcome. Especially later on when they get on longer. It's tedious filler.

The fighting does have it's own little quirks too. The mortal wounds, the police being a factor, the local gangs that come and go. I never personally had an issue with the Mortal Wounds despite many others feeling it makes the fights too challenging. I could really do without the text message every three minutes from that one old fart who goes, "AH JEEZ YAGAMI THE STREETS ARE UNDER ATTACK!" then his passive aggressive, "aw man, whaaa happen??" when I just ignore it.

After the main story's all said and done there's a plethora of side content. From the detective cases to the Friend system to the Girlfriends, the various minigames. It's a lot of bang for your buck as always with this franchise.

An Engaging, If Uneven, Entry In The Ryu Ga Gotoku Franchise

With Kiryu having concluded his story (well until you get to a certain recent game) in Yakuza 6 but fans still wanting the same Ryu Ga Gotoku goodness, it was time for a new story to take the mantle. Enter Yagami, former lawyer turned detective, he becomes embroiled in a conspiracy that will bring past events back to haunt him.

While Judgment is its own game, its really hard to not compare it to the previous series and this shows that Judgment isn't quite the step forward one might hope.

For one, the energy is lacking, at least compared to the Yakuza series that followed before it. And the sub-stories, while still very good, aren't nearly on the level of past games with many outcomes feeling forced. The new mini-games aren't as fun and the combat isn't as thrilling, especially with an annoying mechanic introduced involving gangs and the level up being simplified.

That said, the graphics, once you get past this weird noir tint it seems to have, are excellent with character animations and facial responses no longer looking wooden (though there is still some derp here and there), the final chapter is really fantastic, with some awesome fight choreography, capping off a thrilling story. This is helped by a really engaging main cast and a cool, captivating antagonist. And while it may present more of a series face, there is still the odd goofy moments that you can't help but smile at.

At the end of the day, this is still a very good game and is still very much worth playing for those wanting more adventure from Kamurocho, the city that never sleeps while still providing trouble and eating the weak.

Rating: 8/10

A good entry in the Yakuza franchise
Most notably the story starts off with a really strong hook and for the most part delivers a really engaging narrative. It does however, as Yakuza tradition, pull its punches quite often and makes you question "if they're so scared to kill any of their likeable characters, why do they all get shot repeatedly?"
The gameplay is solid enough, I played on hard and for the most part it was very manageable up until the end where I felt I was going to have an aneurysm when you really start to notice the lack of I-Frames and unreadable attacks that can kill you in one or two combos.
Side content is solid as always. Almost all new gameplay mechanics surrounding the detective portion of the game, suck. Tailing missions will bore you to tears with how uninteresting they are and the ripped off Phoenix Wright search for clues/presenting evidence mechanics are so watered down they are almost negligible.
Overall, a fun time and the highs of the story make this game worth playing, 8/10.