Everything I could ask for from a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, and much much more. Every level seemed to top itself in pure freeform exploration brilliance and I'm so ready to replay these levels until I've run out of content (Which will take a while).

On top of the immensely high quality of levels, the ability to tell your own stories within the levels is unmatched, legitimately fun sandboxes that I wish I could just live in. The actual game's story isn't terrible either, a very fitting end for Diana Burnwood and Agent 47, that manages to have the perfect finality, so the series can rest and IOI can move on to 007.
The high quality and polish of the game, as well as the access to every previous level from the world of assassination trilogy (for owners of the previous entries), makes this one of the greatest games I have ever played.

I replayed all these games for the first time in a few years within the span of a few weeks. These games were a massive part of my early teenage years, and are still deeply important to me. Next to Kingdom Hearts, this was the first game series I truly obsessed over, knew every single inch of, and kept playing and replaying for years (this especially applies to City), so I may be a bit biased when it comes to my love for them.

Asylum 8/10: top tier atmosphere but things end up getting a bit repetitive because Rockstar were still finding their footing.

City 10/10: My favorite game for many years when I was a kid, and I personally believe it holds up amazingly, the world has so many nooks and crannies filled with references, fun puzzles, and charm. The combat has just enough going on that when I play on hard I am thoroughly enjoying my time, and man that story is just so satisfying to be in the middle of

Knight 8/10: Yes the complaints about the car are valid, it sure is a good thing that it feels amazing to drive in it though. I really enjoy how the side quests feel integrated with the main story and it makes the world feel wonderful to just fly/drive around in. The combat and predator encounters are just bonkers maximalist gimmick-fests, and while I enjoy City's middle ground more, I still think it's a great time.

9/10 Trilogy
Tied with the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy as my favorite video game trilogy ever. Thank you Rocksteady for the years of enjoyment, until next time, when I inevitably replay City.

Didn't like the final act all that much, which is a bummer because of how fun and relaxing the main 5 levels are. I think there's something really special here, with some fun references and the aesthetic sensibilities of a typical second life server (in a good way). If you love puzzle platformers and the aesthetic speaks to you then I certainly recommend this one, just know that it didn't fully stick the landing in my opinion.

also, if I were to write a one sentence meme review about this it'd say
"Indie devs try not to have secret horror elements in their game challenge (VERY HARD)"

Steet Fighter 4 will live forever, at least for me. It was a game that occupied my thoughts when I woke up for school, and when I went to bed that same night, and even now, 5 years after those sleepless nights, it crosses my mind regularly. Whether it be the gameplay, the iconic matches, the constant weekend lobby battles with my friend that I talk to, to this every day. Street Fighter 4 is one of those games that may feel impossible to put into words, but I might as well try.

Before I was even born, I was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyper disorder (ADHD), I would hyper-fixate on things, jump from one interest to the other, and never stick with an interest for very long, but something about fighting games just stuck, and it all started with Street Fighter 4.

In June of 2014 the Xbox Live Gold membership promised 2 free games, an edgy beat-em-up with middling reviews known as Charlie Murder, and Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition. I would always keep up with this “games with gold” program. I would know everything about the upcoming free games weeks before they dropped and would tend to hype myself up on a lot of them to a decent degree, and this was no different this month. I remember being so enthralled by the game’s simple yet effective character design, and I ended up watching many lore videos on character backstories and the series’ overarching plot before I even knew what a combo was, or had heard the name Daigo Umehara, and it was around that time that I got the game.

To put it simply, I had no idea what I was doing, I almost exclusively played Dudley because Rocky was my favorite movie at the time, and he was a cool suave boxer. Despite loving the character, I had no idea the kind of combo and mix-up potential he had. The name Smug (Street Fighter 4’s most famous Dudley) existed only in passing references when I googled the character, I threw out his big normal moves, and face rolled my controller until he did his special moves and Ultra attacks. Despite my lack of knowledge, I was beginning to fall in love with the genre of fighting games. [1 these bracketed numbers reference little extra anecdotes at the bottom of the review] That simplicity of 2 characters sharing screen, doing everything within their ability to prove that they are the better competitor, well, it spoke to me, and I began playing just about everything I could find for a reasonable price, or on the right console. It was around this time that I met Andy.

Andy is still my friend to this day, and a lot of that started when he saw me playing the terrible port of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the iPad. That’s right, my longest lasting friendship can be attributed to Capcom’s half assed attempt to get their beloved arcade classic on to the app store. Of course, without any comprehensive knowledge of what a quality feeling fighting game even was, I was none the wiser to this port’s faults, and did my best to unlock and play as every character in that game. [2]. We began sharing our love and experiences with fighting games, and he ended up joining me and my Xbox 360 friends from middle school in endless weekend lobbies of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, and that was around the time that I learned a new version of this game I had become obsessed with, came out, and it was called Ultra Street Fighter 4.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a patch, it was a new version, it was a rerelease, it was a lot of things, but it was also deeply influential as to how I went on to view fighting games. Throughout the summer of 2014 I dove headfirst into the genre, I picked up both Street Fighter 2 and 3’s HD editions on my 360, began watching actual people play the game casually (RIP Super Best Friends and Excellent Adventures) and even began seeing what Street Fighter played at the highest level looked like. My previous love for Dudley led me to becoming a massive PIE Smug fan [3] and I saw him do things that blew my mind with that character. The very first legitimate combo I learned was Dudley’s standing Heavy Kick, cancelled into his EX Machine-Gun Blow, linked into his ducking uppercut. It’s incredibly simple for even intermediate fighting game players, but when it came to that cancel, my hands have never had to move that quickly for a video game in my life (I was playing on pad at the time [4]), but I eventually nailed it consistently and felt my eyes open to what fighting games were and could be.

Goofy weekend lobbies, filled with mashing buttons and wake up ultras. ended up becoming avenues to try new combos, test out new characters, and find out if there was a true main for me.[5]. I ended up entering tournaments, both local weekly affairs and annual regional events, and as the high school years flew by, Ultra Street Fighter 4 remained the only constant. 2014 and 2015 were both unbelievably fun years to track the tournaments for that game, due to the Capcom pro tour, wherein Capcom would grant points to people who placed highly in major and supermajor Ultra tournaments, with the highest scoring players being slotted into the Capcom Cup at the very end of the year. It was an amazing journey, that encompassed everything I loved about Ultra’s competitive scene, and then Street Fighter 5 ended up coming out.

I tried so hard to love Street Fighter 5, and for an entire calendar year I convinced myself that I did. I knew the game was a fresh start, and I was on a relatively clean slate when it came to tournaments, so I tried to take that fresh start, and do what I never could in Street Fighter 4: Not go 0-2 in a tournament. At this point however, cracks began to form. I had temperament/anger issues, even during my Street Fighter 4 days, but something about 5 just had me angrier and angrier every day, and I think a big reason for that is that I was mostly alone in that game. Whereas I had a large group of friends to play with and learn from in 4, most of those same friends ended up buying an Xbox One instead of a PS4, and even though Andy bought the game, it was on PC, so it became more difficult to even play with him. The relaxation and debauchery I could fall back on was gone before I realized it, so for every online loss I took, ended with me sitting alone, stewing in my anger, trying to convince myself that I still liked this game.

I may not have referenced it earlier, but Street Fighter 4 came into my life at a very dark time for me, I was beginning to give up on myself, and doing anything to gain attention and validation from a group of friends that never seemed to have the time for me. But Street Fighter 4 started a shift. I had more things to talk about, with people who seemed enthusiastic about talking about them. Life was starting to become worth living again for a reason outside of anything I tried to fabricate. The passion was real, and new interests started growing outside of fighting games. I’m not going to say that Street Fighter 4 saved my life, but it certainly made me care more about it, and I think that’s why 5 ended up disappointing me so badly. I can get into plenty of gameplay reasoning, but at the end of the day, Street Fighter 5 just wasn’t fun for me, and that’s what should matter the most.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 was a game that I ended up taking very seriously, but despite that seriousness, fun never left the equation, and I could talk for ages about the crazy stories I have playing, watching, and reading about Capcom’s masterpiece. It is an incredibly important game that I still play to this very day, because, at least for me, Street Fighter 4 will live forever.



Extra bits: 1: [Around the summer of 2014, I went to a catholic summer camp, that I frequently went to for years, at that point, and I vividly remember nonstop talking about street fighter 4 lore, specifically Dudley. I also remember making up a ton of information too, because my ADHD brain loved to fill in blanks when it came to lore, this bit wasn’t interesting enough for a whole paragraph, but yea, I was mega obsessed with this game, even when I knew little to nothing about it]

2. [The reason for my investment with Marvel vs Capcom began when I found out that Phoenix Wright was playable in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and Ace Attorney had been my hyperfixation throughout the chunk of 2014 before I downloaded Street Fighter 4, so by extension, I loved the MVC series, and I downloaded the only edition of this newfound series on the only mobile platform I had.
Upon further research, my timeline may be a little mixed up, it may have gone Ace Attorney -> UMVC3 -> MVC2 -> Andy -> Street Fighter 4, but I think it’s small enough to not really matter since it all happened in less than 4-5 months]

3: [If any of you have the time and appreciation of naturally formed cringe content, you can see a whole lot of my very old tweets from 2014 where I ask countless questions to people in the upper echelons of the FGC, including Smug, James Chen, and UltraDavid. I even ended up becoming decently friendly with eventual EVO winner KaneBlueRiver after wishing him good luck at EVO. I had no shame at that point, and just wanted to talk directly to these faces of the community that I was growing to respect, despite it being a bit annoying and cringe inducting]

4: [I ended up playing on what’s known as a fightpad, it’s a standard grip controller with 6 face buttons, made for fighting games. I did buy a fightstick eventually, but I never was as acclimated to it as I was with the pad https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/411y3LrFV3L.jpg]

5: [I ended up playing Rose, and she’s still the only true dedicated main I have to this day]

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"