Judgment reintroduces us to Kamurocho in a brand new light to all the mainline Yakuza games. As a detective, the way Judgment presents Kamurocho to us gives a different perspective to the town we've become so familiar with, despite the familiar combat system.
The intrigue of Judgment comes mostly from its mystery, unveiling the truth bit by bit, chapter by chapter, you inch closer to the dark side of Kamurocho and its people while the allies you make along the way shine a hopeful light on the good of the town. In the web of lies and deceit that gets construed around you, you find that everyone has their own reasoning, their own stake in this game. Nothing is as it seems, but all comes to light at the end.
Particularly from chapter 4 onwards, the game does an incredible job at keeping you interested every step of the way, leaving just the right amount of questions whenever there's new answers. The emotional involvement of the main players brings out the best of the character work and is consistently engaging, particularly for Yagami, Kaito and a few others.
Although it does take its time with its slow start to truly get going and bring forth this grand mystery that you get eager to solve. This time is used to get acquainted with our main characters, although this characterization could've been used elsewhere, but this is not something that brings down the enjoyment of Judgment.

What does bring down the enjoyment is the treatment of one particular character. Saori Shirosaki, one of the attorneys at Genda Law Office, is consistently underutilized and as the only female member of the law office, gets the least amount of attention. Genda, Hoshino and even Shintani get plenty of focus and characterization throughout the story, but Saori is instead treated like a sexual object to be used and gawked at. In two instances, she has to infiltrate a space to seduce men to get information or to get blackmail material on them. In the first instance, Saori finds herself pretending to be a hostess, where the narrative criticizes this workspace through a secondary character, Mika who airs her grievances in the industry and how the murder related to the case affected her. While the message from the narrative is very much welcome, Judgment isn't able to take a true stance against the industry when it's treated as a fun minigame to dress up Saori and have men ogle at her on the streets. This was disappointing, but far from the worst thing.
However, in the second instance Saori pretends to be a journalist to seduce the director of ADDC. Because he has a perverted side, she is practically forced to flirt with him and unveil parts of her body. The player can choose to go further too, unbuttoning her blouse even further. Towards the end, you're able to capture the director grab Saori's ass on video and the job is done. You have the blackmail of him sexually harassing Saori and the section is thankfully over, but not before we get a line on how Saori might secretly be enjoying this.
I didn't intend to be overtly negative in this review as I thoroughly enjoyed the game and think it's a great entry into the series as a spin-off, but the two sections with Saori simply being objectified and used bogged the game down a lot. Very unfortunate, because I could've seen myself loving this game otherwise.