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