The only full fledged story DLC this series has ever dropped. How'd they do? For my money, decent. Thirty bucks is steep though. I got it on sale so I'm not upset with how much I paid but I think that price tag is pushing it. There's nothing in the way of side content. Could break us off like maybe 10 substories or something like that. Of varying size. Just to have something else to do. The game stops you a couple times and ask, "is there anything left you wanna do? sure you wanna leave now?" like uh yeah? fuck else am I gonna go do? Play Virtua Fighter and order Ramen? I did that in the main game already.

That aside, I enjoyed the story. It was an RGG Mystery that refrained from involving mass government conspiracy so that's an achievement. Kaito is satisfying to play as. He's more of a brute than Yagami. His two styles are obviously aped from Kiryu's but there's enough little differences to make it passable. I'd rec this for the die hards of the franchise. Otherwise? You can live without it.

I really dug Judgment when I played it earlier this year so I was pretty hype for the sequel. For my taste, it doesn't quite stack up. I still think it's a pretty solid title but I have my hang ups.

To start on the positive side, the combat is super smooth. Some of the most fluid gameplay they've had. Snake style is a ton of fun, I loved parrying and making enemies look like fools. That said, I could've done without Yagami taking so fucking long to get up sometimes. I get it's to make him feel more human compared to other protagonists (mainly Kiryu) but it started to grind my gears some. I played with the Japanese audio but the voice acting is always great. Visually this thing's beautiful.

Story wise I'm up and down. They went a similar route with the prior title, giving sympathetic edges to the villains. I dug a fair amount of the characters, I liked seeing the gang back again. But I do think this lost me a little towards the end. I'd personally prefer if they did these LA Noire style with different cases. Maybe give me four cases, four chapters each. The long winded conspiracy shit started to drain me. I think the court segments help tie everything together but it's still so drawn out it gets exhausting.

The side content has always been a plus for me with these games. There's a ton of it, some won't appeal to you at all, but surely something will catch your eye. I liked the side cases here though I'm not into the whole listening to people on the street and trying to twitter search keywords to find substories. Some of this stuff was kinda overwhelming with just the amount of content I didn't find too interesting. I don't care about finding squirrel graffiti then wandering in a circle for 2 minutes to find a fuckin' pebble or something. Extracts can be useful but I never really needed them, I'll never care about VR, I don't care much about becoming BFFs with every stray cat either. So for me, outside of the side cases none of them really hit for me.

Outside of the combat I had issues with the other gameplay features. Parkour is boring, the stealth is pretty weak even laughable at times. Tailing still isn't very good. Chases sequences are still just OK. I wasn't too big on the gadgets either. It felt like filler to pad out the gameplay. Nothing kills momentum like fighting your way through a warehouse of thugs only to stop and start lockpicking doors or fumbling around searching for some obscure clue on where to go next.

All in all, I liked it. Overrated to a degree. If they make another Judgment I'll play it, if not I won't lose any sleep.

The AEW experience summed up in a video game. Get injured 3 matches into your career, be forced into a feud with Chris Jericho, have a heatless banger with Moxley on Rampage. Great stuff.

I'd question the honesty of any single person who gave this an even slightly positive review. Outside of a delusional AEW fan, anyone with eyes can recognize this is a piece of shit. The gameplay is not fun or reminiscent of No Mercy in the slightest. You can beat any singles match on any difficulty by simply using basic strikes. I won a triple threat against Omega and Moxley on normal difficulty in about 65 seconds without using a signature. It's unbelievably easy and basic.

Content wise it's laughable. No Mercy came out in 2001 and laps this fucking thing in every department. The Career mode is so bad. 12 storylines of nothing. You have next to no choice in anything that happens. Even if you reject a storyline you're still forced into it. There's some basic ideas that are interesting but nothing is well executed. You can plan out your day through workouts, doing bonus matches on Dark/Rampage (they're pointless), going out to eat, or random events like sightseeing, press conferences and MINIGAAAAAAMES. There's no substance here. You'll occasionally get a text based cutscene. If you're lucky the dialogue is so bad it's worth laughing at.

Outside of the bare bones story mode there's not much more to talk about. That's the hardest part of reviewing this game. How many times can you say, "there's an idea here but its not well executed"? I'm more than willing to give leeway for budget issues but where did the money go? Create-a-Wrestler is basic, every CAW looks the same. I like that Create-an-Arena was included but I used it maybe once. There's not much there either. The match types are lacking so much. No cage match? Backstage brawl? Tables? The game has fucking tables so what's the issue?? The company that does a gimmick match every week has none in their video game. If this thing was going for arcadey-fun at least crank that up and do the goofy gimmick matches we see in AEW.

The only other free mode added was Stadium Stampede. Very hokey, looks like a mobile game. You'll enjoy it some the first time and that's it. I don't even start on the minigames that could be programmed by an 8th grader.

In short: Not good.