PERHAPS THE MOST CONFLICTED I'VE FELT ABOUT A 5/10 IN A WHILE
This ain't your dad's 5/10 that's bland and inoffensive enough to not leave any impression whatsoever, this is one of those that has heaps of strong qualities paired with a lot of baffling ones. It goes without saying that the wide range of side content is welcome as usual and one of the strongest aspects of the franchise so I won't labour the point. There's some excellent music here too which isn't unusual for the series at all, with two of the boss themes being some of my favourite in the entire series.
Visually it's probably the best looking game in the franchise so far and the combat has a lot of great aspects to it on top of being a massive step up from the experience of fighting at 25 FPS on the PS4 in the original Judgment. The one-on-one boss encounters especially are probably the best they've ever been on the Dragon Engine games when it comes to gameplay. Ever since the shift to the Dragon Engine the combat has seen a shift to a more crowd control focused style which utilizes a frequent use of physics to emphasize the player's ability to bob and weave between attacks and exploit openings that sends crowds of enemies flying. While this is a shift I very much liked (and will die on this hill defending Yakuza 6's combat as a result), it didn't translate into boss fights as gracefully, making you often feel like you're just waving your AoE-tuned arms and legs at a brick wall. In Lost Judgment they finally nailed this and it made me enjoy its bosses a lot when I cared about what was going on narratively, giving much more of an impression of trading blows with a peer.
Sadly the main source of my frustrated feelings on the game come from the story. The way the story tackles bullying is for the most part pretty great and is paired with an excellent couple of opening chapters. But after that it lost me for a while in its pacing, with a lot of waffling going on for roughly the first half of the game. This isn't a first for the series but the game that comes to mind with a pace this tedious would be Yakuza 3 which I'd consider the worst in the series.
Without going into spoilers the biggest issue with the story is its handling of one specific character who has both a questionable amount of buildup and has their motive bungled just ever so slightly enough to make them come off as an incompetent jackass. This misstep is so severe to me that I can easily see why people generally give this a 8-10 if they didn't mind this. It's difficult to overstate how easy it is to see the appeal in why people love it, a lot of the quality excitement and emotion is all there but almost all of it falls flat due to this hangup. It's exacerbated to comedic proportions when Yagami continously offers sloppy reasoning and counterarguments to said character just so that they can come off as intellectual peers, which made Yagami a lot less likeable of a protagonist to me compared to the original game.
Seriously Yagami sounds like a drunk for most of the game and constantly repeats points that are established a chapter before at best and a minute before at worst.
Also the game's attempts at making the original Judgment's 'detective gameplay' feel less gimmicky and surface level ended up being even more intrusive and just as surface level so that's cool
This ain't your dad's 5/10 that's bland and inoffensive enough to not leave any impression whatsoever, this is one of those that has heaps of strong qualities paired with a lot of baffling ones. It goes without saying that the wide range of side content is welcome as usual and one of the strongest aspects of the franchise so I won't labour the point. There's some excellent music here too which isn't unusual for the series at all, with two of the boss themes being some of my favourite in the entire series.
Visually it's probably the best looking game in the franchise so far and the combat has a lot of great aspects to it on top of being a massive step up from the experience of fighting at 25 FPS on the PS4 in the original Judgment. The one-on-one boss encounters especially are probably the best they've ever been on the Dragon Engine games when it comes to gameplay. Ever since the shift to the Dragon Engine the combat has seen a shift to a more crowd control focused style which utilizes a frequent use of physics to emphasize the player's ability to bob and weave between attacks and exploit openings that sends crowds of enemies flying. While this is a shift I very much liked (and will die on this hill defending Yakuza 6's combat as a result), it didn't translate into boss fights as gracefully, making you often feel like you're just waving your AoE-tuned arms and legs at a brick wall. In Lost Judgment they finally nailed this and it made me enjoy its bosses a lot when I cared about what was going on narratively, giving much more of an impression of trading blows with a peer.
Sadly the main source of my frustrated feelings on the game come from the story. The way the story tackles bullying is for the most part pretty great and is paired with an excellent couple of opening chapters. But after that it lost me for a while in its pacing, with a lot of waffling going on for roughly the first half of the game. This isn't a first for the series but the game that comes to mind with a pace this tedious would be Yakuza 3 which I'd consider the worst in the series.
Without going into spoilers the biggest issue with the story is its handling of one specific character who has both a questionable amount of buildup and has their motive bungled just ever so slightly enough to make them come off as an incompetent jackass. This misstep is so severe to me that I can easily see why people generally give this a 8-10 if they didn't mind this. It's difficult to overstate how easy it is to see the appeal in why people love it, a lot of the quality excitement and emotion is all there but almost all of it falls flat due to this hangup. It's exacerbated to comedic proportions when Yagami continously offers sloppy reasoning and counterarguments to said character just so that they can come off as intellectual peers, which made Yagami a lot less likeable of a protagonist to me compared to the original game.
Seriously Yagami sounds like a drunk for most of the game and constantly repeats points that are established a chapter before at best and a minute before at worst.
Also the game's attempts at making the original Judgment's 'detective gameplay' feel less gimmicky and surface level ended up being even more intrusive and just as surface level so that's cool