Unlike RE0 this one actually doesnt suck. Enjoyable, scratches that puzzle exploration itch. Only issue I have really is the doors in the mansion, it asks too much memorization work to remember what kind of key each door requires since theyre visually identical. You end up wasting a lot of time trying out every door whenever you get a new key.
It also felt bizarre to me just how few enemies the game threw at me by the last third even though I was loaded with guns and ammo. I played Jill on normal mode though, maybe it's a different story on hard but im not interested in finding out.
If I had to choose a survival horror I'd probably still play silent hill over this, even if resident evil 1 admittedly has better level design than any SH. I just dont find managing a super small inventory all that fun, even 8 slots on Jill feels suffocating.

Shinji Mikami demonstrates again that he can make a very competent action game. Kamiya should take a course from him on implementing gimmicks seamlessly. Seriously.
I do have some gripes though. The licensed music is 30x better than the filler tracks, having no lock on is painful(especially when trying to grapple) and enemies that can't be touched without first calling in assists are annoying and borderline colorcode design which I hate. I also really wish one of these "rhythm-action" games would let you attack on more variable timings than just quarter and half notes to a 4/4 beat.
But overall... it's a good time. The visual style puts many recent AAA releases to shame while asking a FRACTION of their required computing power. Animations look impressively natural despite the contraints of having to be tied to a certain cadence. While not landing often for me in terms of comedy the character dynamics are quite charming in a way that isn't really seen often nowadays, especially at a higher budget. Also the licensed songs are stellar.
I doubt many releases this year will be able to match the care and SOUL put into Hi-Fi Rush.


Xbox can finally claim they have a game now lol

Not quite as good storywise as Judgement but the combat in this is insane.
Moment to moment experience is much MUCH better compared to Y0 and first judgement. You get to skip all pointless busywork from early on once you get a crazy fast skateboard, if it's not enough you can also use the taxi from anywhere finally (why did the other games not let you call a taxi lmao). Letting me skip tedious running around the map and the excellent combat pushed me into completing the most side content in these games so far. I ended up doing 40/54 side cases and completed all school stories.

Speaking of school stories, They're pretty much exactly what I wanted from the side stories in Y0 and judgement. They're much more expansive and significant than any given side story in Y0 and judgement, and they're tied together into a single overarching plot. It's a full fledged story that exists next to the standard main story of the game. Gameplay wise they're a mixed bag. About half the clubs are pretty fun I'd say, boxing club being the standout. But you also have stuff like the girls' bar and robotics club which are an exercise in tedium.

When I say the combat is on the level of pure action games I'm not kidding. Lost judgement keeps the cool stuff they introduced in the first game like wall jump and leapfrog, but crane style and tiger style have been massively overhauled. Tiger style is now no longer a one size fits all solution, crane and tiger now complement each other. On top of that you can now instantly style switch(which cancels certain animations) and receive 2 new styles. All styles have insane amounts of moves to them, they all fill different roles and you're encouraged to switch between them frequently. This results in amazing potential for creativity, just watch some combo mads on YouTube for reference.

Unfortunately, while bosses are generally great, it feels like the regular enemies can't keep up with your options. They often simply die too fast, to the point that I recommend not leveling your damage until very far in the game. Even aside from the low health, the regular enemies could really benefit from more variety. They have similar movesets and all exhibit the same behavior. When you swarm the player with enemies, you often have to compromise to make the encounter more fair. The way they do it is by making all regular enemies stand around and do nothing most of the time, this is just too simplistic of a solution. In a way it's something they brought upon themselves, almost all enemies in lost judgement have some moves that are not reliably reactable and have indistinct audio cues, so you can't have them be agressive when they're in large quantities.
I hope in a future judgement game that they keep the excellent combat but work on the enemy design, give them more variable behavior, give every move a clear audio/animation telegraph and for the love of god get rid of the Agony and Blind status ailments, shit's gay af.

Fun. Ive only played Y0 from the RGG games so it's the only one im comparing it to.
I was more interested in Yagami as a character than kiryu, the game not being divided into separate stories also helped to keep the pace going.
The combat also kept me engaged for much longer, jumping off walls and over enemies to initiate attacks is a very compelling mechanic. I just wish crane style was much more useful outside of some specific situations, tiger style seems to have most of the meat while crane feels incomplete in comparison.
I was largely bored with the side stories again, theyre still inconsequential to the main story and simply arent interesting on their own merit.
Im excited for lost judgement, I hear they improved the combat even more.

Pretty much your average modern cinematic game. Features all the usual shit like an inconsequential crafting/upgrade system, basic stealth and combat mechanics, and uninteractive segments where you just walk or push some object waiting for dialogue to finish. Occasionaly you come across an interesting puzzle section and maybe a well designed area you need to stealth through, but theyre not the majority of the experience. The last few chapters in particular were a slog; both in gameplay and in the sudden silliness of the story. Main saving grace for this game is decent character interactions and solid art direction.

Went back and actually finished cause I had that itch. I dont say this often; this is a real fun shooter. This is coming from a guy that has hated every third person shooter in recent memory. Only minor complaints are the lack of gyro aiming support and the lacklustre air mobility, really wish adjusting your character in the air was much more snappy and precise.

Returnal has solved my main gripe with other roguelikes, which is the repetition in levels. If you beat the main boss of each expansive biome in Returnal, youre allowed to take a shortcut to the next level without forcing you to run through all the same rooms again. This kind of design made all other roguelikes I tried a real slog past the first few dozen attempts. Returnal skips the needless busywork, providing a fresh new attempt every single run while not hampering the core of what makes up a rogueli(k/t)e.

Here's to hoping the pc release will allow simultaneous keyboard and controller inputs, so I can easily add in gyro with steam input.