Somehow even more peak than the first game, peak fiction, GOAT, RAW, FIRE

The characters, gameplay, story and side stuff are peak RGG

This game I kneel...

this might just be the worst rgg game to date. i've played every rgg game available in english, all of them to completion, and this is the only one that made me feel miserable playing.
(i'm sorry if anything in this review feels a bit out of place, i was writing and revising it whenever i decided to put the game down for a while.)


to start the review off, i should bring up the main focus of the game. the story is abysmal with too much of a focus on yagami hanging out at a high school to stop bullying. you go in expecting some murder mystery, but the game then spends 2 hours straight forcing you to walk around a highschool and watch cutscenes in a high school. the murder mystery is still there, but every time the game gets into it and you think you're done with the high school, you're back at the high school. also, the game doesnt open up until after about 7 hours of padded out cutscenes that go on and on and on, drip feeding you the actual story inbetween its nonsense that i just cant bring myself to care about. by the time i spent over an hour watching cutscenes in that fucking school with those kids and teachers i just did not care about, i started just barely paying attention to the cutscenes and quickly skimming dialogue just to get the school shit over with. no other yakuza game has made me want to skip dialogue on my first playthrough. not even yakuza 3 or 4 made me want to outright skip the story, despite those having without a doubt the worst stories in (mainline) yakuza.

the pacing in this game is just some of the worst i've seen in a game and does nothing but waste your time. and it doesnt help that the game barely gives you any battles in like the first half, so most the time you're just doing investigations, which were barely improved from the first game, you're still stuck in a small area forced to zoom in and find a tiny thing with vague hints and the worst fov youve seen in a game. the trailing missions were barely improved, its still some of the most bare bones stealth where you stay behind a guy, find cover and repeat for 5 minutes until the mission is over and thats just so infuriatingly boring, only now sometimes you can press triangle to hide in plain sight. the saving grace is it's barely used. theres also a new camera mechanic, but its just kinda nothing. this aint dead rising. theres also a dancing minigame... okay. a skateboard mechanic to make you go faster, but it triggers automatically when you hold run, and half the time you just end up tripping when you take it out either by the control change, touching a civilian or just getting on the sidewalk, and god help you if you let yagami have even a sip of beer. it just ends up getting in the way, at least until you get the board thats so fast that the faults no longer matter. even the substories are very nothing, lackluster, generic and boring. the combat is at least improved from the original judgment. crane style is mostly the same but less repetitive and button-mashy. tiger style is no longer "hold square to win" and actually expects you to actually play the game. snake style is the best one, you can counter things when you block at the right time and it allows you to do special moves that gets the enemy to surrender instantly, but it doesn't always work, at least in my experience. there are some good upgrades for the moves too, i particularly like the skateboard upgrade for tiger style. the combat is good, but its no tiger drop. all these fighting styles are fine no longer the brainless styles they were in the first judgment, however they're still not as good as mainline yakuza combat, unless you're genuinely the kind of person to go "yeah bro tanimura from yakuza 4, now HE had the best combat in the series".

another issue is how there are barely any substories that i've encountered. i said earlier that LJ doesnt really open up until about 7 hours in. thats kind of true, however, it doesnt open up much, you get probably 7 substories and a couple of other minor things to do, which seems like a good amount sure, but most of the substories were high school bullshit that went on and on and on, and the other half were just kinda nothing and forgettable. i've always held the belief that the substories are the meat of the yakuza series. but once you're done with those, you... dont seem to get anymore? so you go back to the story and watch more cutscenes that take their sweet time, for a story that you stopped caring about 4 hours ago, spend way too much time doing first person investigations which are just annoying and time consuming. like way too time consuming, you'll spend like 10 minutes looking for that magic pixel you missed, maybe you'll fight a boss if you're lucky, or you'll go back to the school if you're unlucky. and when you're finally thrust back into the open world... nothing. no more substories or anything, so you go back to the couch to rest till morning for the story, and still no more side content... this is the most linear RGG game, theres just no side content, and what little you do get is weirdly hidden behind finding "totally not twitter" posts talking bout a random subject then very slowly walking up and down a street using one of the new gimmick first person devices (or a dog you can walk) to find some arbitrary thing. its just not fun. it wasn't until i was in chapter 9 and 25 hours into that i actually decided to do the dancing minigame again, and thats when it hit me. all of the side content i thought was just missing or hidden, was at the fucking school there are entire substories and gameplay elements and minigames you would never even know about if you don't frequently go back to that school whenever possible. you see squirrel grafitti all over the place, but you cant do anything with them until you go check the squirel at the school at an arbitraty moment in the story way later than you'd expect, long after you've already marked the squirrel, and see a little girl (who is for some reason just randomly at a high school?) staring at the grafitti. theres the aforementioned dancing (which was better in yakuza 5, just sayin). there's skateboarding races, and a skatepark. there's a weirdly in-depth robot game where you try to capture the area with blocks and its actually really fun. there's motorcycle races which i didn't even know about until i was 35 hours in the game. there's more photography. there's dating bar girls (why is that tied to the high school...?), there's gambling (seriously why is that tied to the high school), and there's boxxing. there's also an esports club where you play virtua fighter 5, but vf5 is also in the sega arcade, so it's not locked behind doing high school bullshit. the question is, why do i have to do all that high school bullshit to do any of these minigames, some of which are kinda fun. but others arent.

why are they tied to this singular linear narrative about the high school mystery club? there's this fucking stupidly long side story in this game for some reason. now then, by this point i started skipping all cutscenes that weren't directly tied to the story, and even skipping everything, it took me 10 hours to do most of what the school has to offer, it's like a whole other game in that school with a whole other story. yakuza games have always had a lot of side content but it's never been as linear at this before. so for example, to even get anything else, you need to do the dancing minigame about 8 times, and occassionally going back to the mystery club room. then you get another story with the robots. you do some of that, go back and forth between the robotics room and the mystery room until you earn skateboarding. now then, this is when it gets annoying because the skatepark is outside of the school on the other side of the map so when you need to go back and forth, which thankfully isnt very often for the skaters, its annoying. then you unlock the esports missions. do enough of those then you unlock the gambling missions. do enough of those, then you unlock the boxxing minigame and heres where it gets really annoying because the game loves to constantly interrupt your boxxing after you finish a couple matches. sometimes after i fight, you'll need to leave the ring to get a drink with your opponent. sometimes you'll need to sneak someone around, fairly often you'll need to go back to the mystery club room (which is annoying since its another place thats outside of the school for some reason). do enough of that and you'll earn the photography missions, do enough of those and you'll get the bike missions (which are probably the worst of the school minigames and they go on forever), do enough of those and you earn the bar dating missions. all this content hidden behind whether or not you want to spend forever at this fucking school that you've no doubt grown to hate and do the dancing minigame 8 times in a row. it doesn't help that the school might as well be a maze, and the path your marker makes is always just awful and takes you the long way.

as for activities not tied to the school, there is a bit. you can gamble with koi-koi, oicho-kobo, mahjong, you can play darts, go to the sega arcade and play some games (mostly fighting), there's a working master system but it only starts out with alex kidd, theres a ufo catcher, there are drone races and there's a mario party board. the drone races are something i barely touched. i still have ptsd of the drone races from judgment 1. i don't have the strength to do more tournaments. and the mario party boards are a bit odd compared to the first game. there are now 2 players (one an AI) and a lot of the board spaces will now give or take away stars, which allow you to use certain skills like multiply your dice by 5, force p2 to skip his turn, give yourself 1-2 more spaces on your dice roll, deal damage to your opponent, heal, etc. you start out with very little though and the substory tied to the game is a bit of a pain because the ai will just abuse the system hard. it quickly turns into a game of "who can spam turn skip and get enough stars for the multiplier first". there's always frustration in mario party due to rng but adding these abilities is just awful. do em all and your reward is to see a middle aged japanese man say "oh, word?". the real pain in this minigame however is in its play passes. you need 3 to play and it still uses them up if you lose, but they're so rare that i only earned 9 in my playthrough before i just looked up how to get the free passes. and i waited a while, until like chapter 9. i understand that the reason is you earn so much money from it, averaging around at least 500 thousand yen on the shorter courses and 2 million on the longer ones, which is ludicrous, but i really don't feel like restricting the play passes so hard was an acceptable compromise, maybe earn less money and make it so you only need 1 play pass, that way they wouldnt even need to change the amount of passes and how rarely you earn them. it's not like money is a big deal in the game anyway, you get it like candy and don't have much to spend on thats important. it got to the point where i was buying 99 of every material just because i could. but there are also some staple activities that are just missing from judgment, activities that were some of the best parts of yakuza. no colesseum, no karaoke, no bowling, no pocket circuit racing, all the best minigames are missing and it sucks.

i did every side story in this game (because i believe that no yakuza game is complete until you beat amon) and for some of them, the requirements to get them is so... odd and unexpected. sometimes you need to do weird shit like go to random conversations marked on the map (not all of them though since some do nothing) listen in on them for 30 seconds or so, get a keyword out of it, check the keyword on not-twitter, find the cluster of people talking about the word on the map, then when i go to it, i can finally look around for the substory, which sometimes involves me getting my sound amplifier or tracker out, which is just a whole lot of extra steps for something that should be more straightforwardfor something that was so much straightforward in the other games, even before yakuza started marking the substories on the map for you. its just a whole lot of busywork to prevent you from getting to the good stuff. it doesn't help that there are so few substories. there are 42, which sounds like a good number, but few of the substories really felt special or memorable, so it still just leaves you wanting. once you do all the side stories, you get to fight amon, a staple of the yakuza series. a secret true final boss that tests your skill... but he's just cheap in this game. he restores his health to full every other time he hits you, he spams attacks that i swear are just unavoidable, whenever he does hit you, you get stunned and have to mash X to get up and even then he'll usually hit you with another move that stuns you and often just knocks you across the arena.

the main issue of this game in a nutshell is; too much school bullshit, an uninteresting plot that doesn't even try to get you invested until it's way too late, and everything this game does has been done better in almost every other yakuza game, and the game frequently wastes your time. i cant even see many positives of this game because whatever positives this game does have, has been done a dozen times before and a dozen times better in most yakuza games. if the judgment series is literally your entry point to the yakuza series, maybe you'd like it? but there are better entry points. its not a hard series to get into, dont let the sheer number of games overwhelm you. yakuza 1, yakuza 0, yakuza kiwami, yakuza 7, those are all better starting points and most of those are on just about every modern console nowadays, plus the ps2 yakuza games emulate well. just saying. maybe its unfair to judge a spin-off by the mainline series, but when the spin-off is so similar to the main series, just... worse, i think its completely fair.

oh and this is a bit of a nitpick, but this game has 3 fighting styles and you swap between all of them by tapping the down button, but the left and right buttons are barely used... why not just assign the fighting styles to different buttons? like come on. another nitpick, and this is a bit of a bigger one imo, but there are tutorials that just never go away. like you get these phone messages all throughout the game, repeating the same basic stuff like 'when to use snake style' or shit like that. theres also button prompts that just stay in the bottom right corner of the screen forever. iirc the first judgment had it as well, but it went away after a few chapters when the game assumed you had a grasp on the gameplay, but it just doesn't go away in lost judgment and honestly it gets grating after 30 hours and you're almost at the end of the game with the game still assuming you dont know what the X button does. and god forbid you have an OLED tv or something, get ready for the worst burn-in of its life.

oh and theres DLC for this game, which wouldnt be much of an issue, but some of it was day 1 for $10 and should have been in the game in the first place. theres also a $35 season pass, and you can really tell a chunk of the town was chopped out for dlc in yokohama. theres an entire area of the town from yakuza 7 that just has weird "under construction" shit in front of it, but all it really does is make you take the long way around some buildings and waste your time. it doesn't even cut off a significant amount, only like a small portion south and another even smaller part south-west and only in yokohama, there's no way it isn't just for dlc. it makes the game feel unfinished. well that and the fact that barely any side content is in kamurocho or yokohama, and its all in the fucking school, making the other places just feel barren at times. there are also things in this game that will clearly be expanded upon in dlc in the most blatant way. off the top of my head there's the motorcycle races which has next to no customization or upgrading, but its getting dlc. then theres the hostess dress up minigame which sort of was in the game for a minute when a certain character had to dress up, but that was an isolated moment and theres no spot in the game you can do more of that right now, but you can still buy the dresses and jewelery for when it'll be added as dlc. i know dlc has been a problem in games for over a decade now, but yakuza's always been safe from that for the most part. whenevever there was dlc, it never felt like a part of the game was chopped off or just left unfinished so that they could give it to us later. this game made me feel scammed. i didn't buy the dlc and the game isn't good enough to make me want it either. i aint paying $45 on a game i paid $60 on. a game i didn't even enjoy.

honestly i'm struggling, honest to god struggling to find any real positives about this game. i guess it looks nice, but even the first judgment looked better (unless you play it on ps5 via the remaster) and most other dragon engine yakuza games look as good if not better. i guess the combat is fine, with snake style being the best. as i said before, the combat is largely improved from the first game, but crane style still isnt very good, tiger style is fine and got a well needed nerf because of just how OP it was in the first game and snake style is a welcome addition, but frankly i still think the combat in most yakuza games is better. some of the school games are fun like the robots or the boxxing, but they require you to go through so much bullshit to even get them that honestly it isn't worth it. i guess the master system games are neat, but it doesnt have the best choices. alex kidd is the default and i guess thats fine, he was segas mascot before sonic came around. fantasy zone is an odd choice since you can literally play the arcade version in the sega arcade and its kinda better, but then you also got shit like quartet which just sucks. theres also the sega arcade with some returning arcade games from previous RGG games. but even the sega arcade doesnt have the best picks compared to previous ones. i guess if you really want to play the single player to fighting vipers, virtua fighter 5 and sonic the fighters, but i know fighting game fans and they say the single player is always the worst thing imagineable. me personally? i hate fighting games, so they mean nothing to me. fantasy zone, motor raide, space harrier and super hang-on are all fun tho, even if they're all returning games. the only new one is hama of the dead, which is sort of a rail shooter where you shoot zombies in yokohama, the area lost judgment largely takes place in (returning from yakuza 7). its more or less the same as the previous hama of the dead, but its still fun. theres also some gambing, but you dont get the good gambling games like poker and blackjack until you do side content at the school, all you have early on is oicho-kobo, mahjong and stuff like that. as you can see i'm really honest to god struggling to compliment this game, most of my positives just boil down to something that was in another game or being able to play old retro games. every day i'm considering just trading this in to gamestop and getting no more heroes 3 instead.

personally, i'm glad we won't get a third judgment game. much as i like yagami, the games have too many problems and just... arent fun. only at least the first game had an engaging story, lost judgment has nothing of value that literally any other yakuza game wont give you already (and better). at times it feels like i'm alone in thinking this game is terrible, but i streamed the entirety of it on discord to a bunch of friends (1-7 people depending on who was available), and got the same response out of all of them. they all hated it. some of them were fans of the series, some were new. the reaction was always the same. "this game blows". i'll say this, pc players aint missing much by not having the judgment games on steam.

tl;dr this game blows and i legitimately don't understand how anyone could like anything about this, it is one of the most vile game's i've played, and it didn't even have the decency to be fun

Going into this game I was very excited to see a new spin off of RGG Studios start to branch off more and become its own identity, and one thing for sure, this game is unapologetically its own game; however, after finishing the game I keep finding myself underwhelmed with its overall scope. I really wanted to like the game, but in all honesty I cannot fake it. It definitely feels like one of RGGs weaker titles.

I mostly have an issue with the story and feature creep in this game. The story feels very messy compared to its predecessor and the amount of things you can do in this game are wayyy too overwhelming for its own good, or at least for my interest. I know it's weird to say that when almost every Yakuza game is like that, but this game is different. While you have a whole side career as a club adviser for a High School that doesn't require you to finish it in order to beat the game, it's tied to minigames that I just could not for the life me get very far in. I understand its to help give some logical progression in their respective stories, but it gets exhausting after a few hours. It doesn't have the same impact that Yakuza 5 has with the side quests that each character had. Sure it got repetitive doing Haruka's dance battles or Saejima's hunting dragged out a lot at times, but there was a whole system fleshed out with their side quests that genuinely felt incentivizing. Lost Judgment I didn't feel enough incentives to progress. Maybe that's just a personal issue rather than a general issue, but I leave that up to the viewer.

I know there's a lot that I could have done had I progress, but quite honestly I got the game to experience the story and characters of Lost Judgment, not to play as a club advisor for a high school which I am aware is apart of its world, but eh its inconsequential at best. I appreciate the ambition and massive world building opportunities present to me, but it just felt like RGG got too excited/ambitious and bit off more than they could chew.

I don't know how their development functions, but I genuinely would not be surprised if the story fell through because of the amount of stuff you could do with the high school quests because the story fell pretty flat. It played it safe, and not in a very good way. I won't spoil it, but I will say there felt no major consequence to anyone's actions in the end or a sudden dramatic change in character to express the pressure of the circumstances. I know it's hard for a studio to hit the mark twice with their own franchises, and in a way unrealistic, but man with the way the story felt like a constant plateau the ending just didn't feel satisfactory enough. I'm not saying more deaths or punishments or something, but just something that didn't just feel like another event with a plateau feeling.

The only saving grace for this game would be the cast and the combat. The cast as always is memorable and lovable/hatable. I never got enough of them and I'm happy with the future DLC I'll get a bit more in the end too. The combat is probably the BEST in the entire franchise in my opinion. Everything just feels fluid and kinetic as hell. I don't remember if it was the same in the original game, but there was DEFINITELY some massive improvements in that field with this game and I'm glad it did. I'll take a mid story with over ambitious features if it means having a wonderful combat system.

Overall, I'd say this game isn't a BAD game. Even when it sucks, it still could be a LOT worse, but I just feel like RGG needs to stop overdoing itself. Yakuza 5's and 0's ambitious worlds were fine enough as it was. There was a lot to do, had a lot of satisfying incentives, and it just overall FELT good. I wish they didn't feel the need to keep outdoing themselves (assuming that is the case) sometimes just playing a game about being a detective. doing detective things and maybe even lawyer things is more than enough for me. I don't need to be this all encompassing hero of the day kind of stuff. Leave that for future projects to add to RGG's belt of amazing titles! Please RGG!

I'd recommend this to the following:
-Yakuza fans (obviously)
-people looking for a massive world to explore and have fun in
-Have an inkling for "open world" AAA titles but want a more unique experience.

I really can't recommend this much to anyone else unfortunately, yet in that same sentiment, I think thats ok. Not all games have to be 100% perfect. That's too much to ask out of a developer.

I've played a number of RGG's games at this point, and they're fairly consistent. Lost Judgment is a more mixed experience than my normal forays into the series though. The main story starts off pretty strong for about the first half to the first two thirds of the run time of the game. However, the latter third of the game kind of loses its way and feels like not a whole lot happens for about four chapters. This culminates in a final confrontation that is cool in a set piece sense, but left me a bit cold at the same time. While I enjoy the main villain of the game, I think the story handles their conclusion fairly questionably.

The big side story arc however is very good with lovable cast members, like Amasawa, who I specifically really hope returns to take on a bigger role in later games. This is my favorite rendition of the side content done in these games, and I hope they take from this going forward.

The gameplay itself is a bit mixed. I think the combat styles feel better than the previous game, but runs into a similar issue as most Yakuza games where it often gets a bit stale after spending hours and hours with it. Also unfortunately, many of the new minigames(especially in the school) are fairly weak in my opinion like robotics, photography, biker gang, etc.

Overall, it's an enjoyable game with some of the highest highs in the series, but also with some fairly low lows. As always, any fans of the series will be right at home and likely enjoy it.

One of the best games RGG Studio has put out so far. Everything about it is air-tight: the music, the gameplay, the plot, the graphics, the whole shebang.

The addition of the Snake style was smart since you could hardly counter weapons in Judgment. Plus, combat is more fluid in general with max combo speed unlocked from the beginning and faster stace transitions. The story has people divided, some people love it and some people dislike it. I love it, personally, but I still feel there are some flaws with it. The new charcters, such as Soma, Kuwana and Akutsu synergise well with their environment and the plot in general, they really make the game. But let me tell you, every single song in this soundtrack is a certified banger. Only RGG Studio could name a song Vorarephilia and make it go hard.

tl;dr: vr vr nice game

Truly an amazing experience. While I do personally think the early pacing of the first game was slightly better, this game improved on nearly everything else, having a new fighting style and building upon previous mechanics led to a very fun combat system. The main story is still a great pillar of the game, with emotional moments and serious ideas explored with the interesting perspective provided by Yagami. The side content is quite enjoyable, and there’s a wide variety of options with the school story system that felt very fresh, reminiscent of Yakuza 5 and the many playable characters. This game isn’t perfect; but it has so much to offer, and the themes of truth and one’s “justice” were executed in tandem with a fun cast and intriguing story, allowing me personally to say this is my current favorite game from RGG studios, and a great sequel to Judgment/Judge Eyes.

Definitely not perfect but it's still pretty damn good.

I'm not really sure how I should really describe the story and how it compares to the first game's but I still very much liked the story here. The slight continuity that LJ and Yakuza share were nice little nods that just kinda say, "yea that shit in Yakuza 7 happened."

When it comes to gameplay it's also mostly all improved either by quite a bit or just marginally. It's nice to see that they got rid of the consistent 95% speed that just happens in Judgment's combat while also improving the combat a decent bit. Don't worry about rushing to put thousands of skill points into combo speed upgrades as they don't exist anymore. The base combo speed is already solid. Crane actually feels like a decent style to use now and I think that's all I need to say about combat. Snake style was cool but I didnt really bother with it too much besides parrying so I could get the anti-knockdown buff.

The game doesn't have too many side cases with only 42 of them but instead you get the school story shit with it's own overarching plot. The school story stuff was decent but most of the minigames tied to them were whatever. They were a decent little distraction and a nice way to make a bunch of sp over time. I think had I not done the school story stuff, I wouldn't have at least a 3rd of the skills that I unlocked.

Still has some of that minigame reuse but the tailing doesn't last nearly as long and none of them are anywhere near as bad as tailing Higashi close to the end of Judgment, chase sequences are also slightly less jank. The stealth minigame was boring as shit and the less said about that the better. The faux-Uncharted climbing sections also weren't as bad as I was expecting, they're typically only a minute or two long and there aren't too many of them, you'd think they get progressively longer considering 3 of the upgrades are for increasing your grip meter but Im sure that shit was probably put in for people who are physically disabled and actually need a bit more time to do inputs.

Overall a nice improvement over Judgment.

the side cases are pretty boring, the minigames still suck, the plot suffers from a lot of contrivances and spots of shitty pacing. the combat itself is great, snake style is super fun and the game actually felt hard at points unlike most of the other dragon engine games. yagamis still not that interesting as a character and the supporting cast could be stronger, but the central story is really good this time and the antagonist is great which on its own makes it better than the first game by a landslide.

very glad that RGG learned that having a stoic scary man with no motive as the central antagonist in a murder mystery isn't a good call and decided to actually give us a really fucking good culprit this time

Substories? Raw.
New minigames? Goat.
Plot? Incredible.
Gameplay? The best RGG has ever had.
GOTY? Yes.

This is it, this is peak RGG Studios and serves as a bittersweet swan-song for Nagoshi before leaving SEGA, who could've imagined his last game with the company would also be his best? This game took everything that made the first Judgment amazing and improved upon it in almost every way possible. This is peak fiction and easily one of my new all time favorite games. Also easily GOTY for me.

Lost Judgment is one of the best detective mystery, courtroom dramas I've ever seen in all of fiction. The way the main plot starts out with what seems to be a cut and dry case of sexual battery and just slowly builds into some crazy grand conspiracy as more details are gradually revealed is excellently written and cohesive. Also the central theming around bullying and its consequences is both relatable and realistic, it hits hard and is emotional as hell and the way the game tackles corruption in the justice system is also just as realistic and relatable as the bullying themes. Lost Judgment is a shining example of moral greyness and clashing ideals where even the 'villains' have well thought out sympathetic motives.

While Lost Judgment has no direct connection to the first in plot, it does have it in characters. This game expects you've played the first Judgment because it constantly brings back past characters and most main characters like Yagami, Kaito, Sugiura and Tsukumo already had their main arcs in the first game and don't get much development in this one, so I would implore anyone reading this to play the first Judgment before this one if you haven't already. With that said Takayuki Yagami is easily one of my new favorite protagonists in video games, I already liked him a lot in the first Judgment, but this game made me love him even more. A Former defense attorney turned detective, charismatic, witty, honorable with a strong sense of justice and desire to always search for the truth also an adept in kung-fu? Maybe I'm biased because I love detectives so much, but how can you not love him? On a side note new characters like Kuwana, Soma, and Sawa among others get efficient character arcs instead and Kuwana especially has become one of my all time favorite characters.

RGG games are known for having enormous amounts of side content and Lost Judgment is no different. Naturally you have all the classics RGG games are known for, your underground gambling halls, your batting cages and arcades (At the arcade you can plays darts, and games like Virtua Figther 5, Space Harrier and Super Hang-On among others) you also have the drone racing and VR board game introduced in the first Judgment, but one ​big new feature which adds a lot of side content and mini-games is the addition of School Stories. Since a big portion of the game takes place at a high school Yagami goes undercover as an outside advisor and counselor for the school, infiltrating various clubs, building bonds with the students and helping solve their problems, all the while Yagami is trying to investigate a grand mystery plaguing the halls of the school. A couple examples of these School Stories are the Dance Club where you play a DDR-like mini-game and try to coach the dance team to nationals or the Robotics Club where you build mini-robots and fight them on a grid training to win the robotics championship.

The smaller side cases are also very well written and memorable. Since a big portion of the game takes place at a high school many of the side cases involve problems the students and teachers are going through and this really made these stories stand out much more than a lot of previous RGG games side stories, nothing ever felt like filler or fluff and was always worth experiencing. Whether it be helping past grads find their time capsule or chasing UFO sightings all over town for the Supernatural Research Club there's tons of compelling stories that range from comedic to tragic waiting to be explored at Seriyo High. That said not every side case involves students and even the ones that don't are still great, like trying to stop a robber in a Metal Gear Solid like homage or hunting down bugged electronics all over town in an effort to stop a corrupt detective.

The combat is fast paced, fluid and stylish. You still get SP from fights and activities around town and use it to unlock new skills which help in battle. Yagami still has his Tiger stance , a power focused stance for one-on-one fights and his Crane stance, a speed focused stance utilized for fighting groups of enemies introduced in the first Judgment, but now he has a third stance known as the Snake stance which is primarily used for disarming opponents and scaring them to make them surrender. The addition of the third style gives it even more complexity than the first game. Also there's no more mortal wounds, but instead a mechanic called Mortal Reversal where enemies glow red and you have a chance to dodge and parry their attack with a QTE and another thing worth noting is no more constant, tedious gang boss fights anymore either. Overall this is the best the Dragon Engine has ever felt.

All the boss fights are just as epic and over-the-top as you'd expect from RGG and the ending fights left such an impact on me I know I'll remember them years to come, some of my fave boss fights of all time no doubt.

The detective aspects of the game are still very much on rails, but they amplified and enhanced them giving Yagami some new gadgets such as a bug detector, a sound amplifier and even a detective dog to help sniff out clues. There's far less tailing missions and they're more fairly balanced this time around as well. If I had one minor complaint (and it's far from a big one), just the smallest nitpick it would be there's a few too many chase sequences and they can drag on a bit at times, but the addition of pseudo MGS stealth sequences and parkour moments definitely made up for that and added some fresh and unique ideas for a RGG game.

When all is said and done Lost Judgment is not only the best RGG game I've played, but also just one of the best games I've played in general. From the compelling and well crafted detective narrative to the stylish and fluid combat and the massive amounts of side content, Lost Judgment is a true masterpiece in every sense of the word and if you're even somewhat a fan of detective mystery stories you'd be a fool to miss out on this one.

If this is the last Judgment game, and with that, the last game Nagoshi is involved in, what a send off. This game trumps the first in every way and aside from a slow start engages you in ways I’ve never seen in a Yakuza game. A genuinely detestable antagonist and some major characters with actions that will make you constantly question yourself, this game will keep you hooked and then some.

And the combat, WOW. Best combat in an RGG game, and this is just the best game RGG have ever made

RGG MAKE MORE BRAWLERS PLEASE

Sometimes I wish the boys at RGG would let me down. Also this game is more of a Yakuza:LAD sequel than a Judgment sequel lol

All around great time, probably one of the more ambitious RGG stories with layers upon layers of plot threads and genuinely complicated morals clashing against each other.

Snake stance is a great addition to the combat system, parry has never been a bad addition to a game, and the game has the least amount of Really Annoying bosses I've fought in a RGG game. It feels harder than more RGG games but maybe thats just because the game gives you way less health items to work with, or maybe it's because I never noticed that I didn't equip a chest equipment slot item until the final boss.

And with it has all the other things you like from RGG, fun side stories and mini games, so much bonus content that you beat the game in 30 hours and found you only did 30% of the game, and the entirety of Virtual Fighter 5 for some reason.

If you like RGG don't miss it, lots of yakuza fans miss judgment for some reason and they really shouldn't.

The story is messier and less engaging than the first game's
The cinematics are kinda lame this time around
They added assassin's creed stealth and climbing
They kept the tailing missions
BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH(still good)HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Wow. I can't believe it. How the hell did RGG manage to outdo the first Judgment? I thought it would be near impossible but they managed to prove me wrong.

At first I wasn't feeling the game, but as the plot went on and I got access to more skills, the more I grew attached and the more I realize that this entry in the series is truly special.

Everything from the gameplay to the side stories is brilliant and well made. I thought Yakuza 0 had the best story in the franchise, but this one might take the cake. Hell, I might even consider this entry to be better than Yakuza 5. It's really that strong.

This is a must play. Buy it now. Along with the rest of the Yakuza series. I have never seen a series release banger after banger after banger. Well done, RGG Studio.