Judgment is a game I mostly played so I can get the know on the story for lost judgment. Thats not to say that I hated it but I knew that general consensus is that LJ is better, and god I hope thats true. Let me start by saying this game has insane pacing issues. A older review of this game on this site said this game is dragged on for like 10 hours more than it should, and I agree. The trailing missions are terrible, like god awful, and theyre mandatory so you basically get done with an interesting story segments then youre forced to play a 10+ minute walking simulator. This is one of the biggest pace breakers Ive seen in gaming and the main reason I couldnt continuously play this game. The sub stories also kinda suck because they make you do trailing missions. I am not a big fan of the forced side missions, a big part of yakuza for me is that the sub stories are typically good, but you have the CHOICE of what you want to do. I also think the combat here just isnt very good. It has the old yakuza issues where your animations take way too long. My best example in this game is when yagami breaks out of a grab, he stands there for like 3 seconds taunting, so you just end up taking more damage than if you just let yourself take damage from the grab. I like the wall run and leapfrog but I mostly used leapfrog later on. I hate important skills being locked behind finding random skill books or qr codes around the city, I never got the double quickstep so I just had a horrible dodge the whole game. Having to level your attack speed also sucks, they did this in 2 kiwami and 6 but its just way faster to get max speed in those games, not to mention that the upgrade in this feel pretty worthless. It just feels unresponsive and clunky which is weird coming off of 6 and 2 kiwami. Things like having to mash a to get back up is brought back for some reason. I hate older yakuza games for making you mash all the fucking time and I hate it, its why I like 6 and gaiden for cutting down on it. Your attacks also bounce off enemy blocks and you always get punished for attacking by getting frame 1 punished and being in infinite stun lock. My point is that combat is pretty bad, the sub stories kinda suck and the trailing missions are horrible, but what about the good? Well, the story is pretty damn good when its not broken up with the side stuff. The detective choices you make are kinda meaningless though since the story is linear and doesnt change based on what you say. I think the duality of yagami and shono is pretty interesting. Its hard to say shono is an undeniable evil or good person, he's kinda an in between. He is making the cure for alzheimers which would save a lot of people, but he is killing people to get there. I think the most dangerous part is that he wouldnt stop killing until he perfected it. Personally, I wouldnt think its wrong if you told me the guy who made the cure for cancer killed 15 people in order to make it. Obviously, alzheimers is not cancer but both are pretty fucking terrible diseases that are uncurable (depending on the cancer and how long you take to treat it). It why for a lot of the game, I didn't think yagami was wrong but I also didnt think shono was that wrong either. Shono did cause the death of emi, shintani, matsugane and got okubo in prison, on top of others deaths. Its understandable why yagami would want justice nor do I think hes wrong for doing so. But its also a cure for fucking alzheimers which is pretty damn big. The downside for this is that the medicine is just toxic and could never work which they dont say till the end but is hinted at. Kuroiwa is just an evil guy, I dont really know what his motivations were besides just being evil. Him killing and beating people the whole game does make him inherently more interesting because he is built up the whole game. The characters on screen are typically always entertaining and have personality. Its not this crazy in depth conspiracy though, its pretty simple recounting the scenario. The story is what kept me coming back though, despite the lacking gameplay. Do I think this game is worth your time? Yes, 6/10 is a good score on my scoring formula but it is heavily flawed and probably my least favorite dragon engine game so just know beforehand if your thinking about purchasing.