Played this for nearly an hour before deciding enough was enough. The Yamazaki team have been one disappointment after another, managing to squander the themes which made the series compelling beyond the "wow, cool mystery!" aspect.

Spirit of Justice revels in the worst excesses the franchise: bloated scripts, a fetishisation of technology and black-and-white characterisation of the cast. Add the weird orientalist feel, the setting's naïve portrayal as well as the fact that almost fifteen years in we still have to deal with fixed speed textboxes and you've utterly lost me.

It's as if every title from Investigations 1 onwards were building up to this: a complete reimagining of the series, shaped one game at a time into something alien beyond the most surface aspects. The writing had been on the wall since the gutless Investigations 2, the hints it left of things to come taking monstrous shape in the dull Dual Destinies. Spirit of Justice is just the final form of this new beast, one living in a courtroom-shaped hyperreality entirely detached from its origins.

The game enjoys a healthy rating, the series still has fans clamoring for a seventh mainline entry. As for me, if things don't change drastically going forward I can safely say I'm good, thank you. Time for this old geezer to step off the ride. You kids have fun.

Crazy how much the second game in the series pretty much traced the course of the franchise's next 9 years. Kiryu finally handles like the man dubbed Dragon of Dojima ought to be, a force of nature.

When I first started my RGG journey with 0 and the middling-to-abysmal Kiwamis, 2's story was 'merely' cool and enjoyable. Now that I'm caught up on the "Kiryu Saga", 2's tale stands out in its comparative straightforwardness, a quality the series too often lacks. All-time antagonist Ryuji Goda is a big reason as to why that is, but the overall essential cast, combined with the emotional rawness of the events shown, those are the real key ingredients.

Maybe it's the season, maybe it's the fading adrenaline from a shirtless fight on top of Kamurocho Hills ended with the angriest, most brutal Heat Action in the game, maybe I'm just tired... yet it doesn't feel like a proper year has passed if I don't finish a Like A Dragon title. Knowing the series still has so much to give fills me with trepidation as well as warmth. Despite the turmoil we live in, it's nice to do some virtual tourism, to immerse yourself in a different time and space. At this point, beating thugs senseless in the streets is just a nice bonus.