A pretty good metroidvania where most of my complaints are pretty nit picky. I wasn't too engaged with the story it was trying to tell, the map could show your position a bit better rather than just telling you which area you're in, and stuff like contact damage I'm not a big fan of. For some reason contact damage felt even more irritating in this game for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with how far you get knocked back when getting hit. Final boss kinda sucks, but it definitely made me think more about my loadout composition than the rest of the game did. The game really scratched my metroidvania itch I've been wanting from a game for a while even if the start of the game was a bit of a slow burn before the branching paths to kick in.

Travis Touchdown is the type of character you can put into any situation, and he'll be able to carry the scene no problem. Characters talking with each other is the most interesting thing about the game, and it's so engaging (I adore the talk between Travis and Dr. Peace). The gameplay is mad basic but super cathartic. The frame drops you get by decapitating multiple enemies might as well be intentional hardware impact frames. The in betweens for the ranked missions can be super boring, but I never really found that to be a problem personally.

Super complicated feelings on the game. Overall I liked it (the more I've thought about the game over the months, the more I grew to not enjoy it), but feels like it's worse than the previous game in every aspect (with the exception of the extra side content and somniums). Ryuki's side feels kind of uneventful until the last split in his route, and Mizuki's feels like there's no downtime at all for the characters to sort of vibe. I appreciated the main twist at the time, but I don't like the twist as it only serves to be a twist to the player, and does nothing for the story. Not only that, the amount of stuff the games has to bend it's back over to actually makes the twist work is comical. For Ai 1, I said that the game felt like it didn't have any fat, the same can't be said about this game, too many characters from the previous game show up here and don't really serve much for the story (and the things they do with some of the returning characters I don't like at all), which leads to the new characters not getting as much screen time I felt like they should, like Ryuki. Also god, the QTE's in this game suck, they're like 5 times as long as the QTEs in 1, but the action is super basic and none of them are funny in the ridiculous fashion as the ones in the first game were. A monkey's paw curled when I asked for Ai 2 having a bigger budget.

Shiki is a bit boring personally, and when he isn't boring, he's real rapey. God there's so much rape in this, Nasu what were you thinking. Best thing about the game is getting to know the characters through their routes.

Wanted to come back to this review and flesh out my thoughts a bit more.

Honestly, I think the biggest draw backs of the game are the presentation and the large overlaps between routes. On the presentation front, the background cgs are just irl environments with a filter over them, which isn't bad in itself, but there's also a real lack of variety with the backgrounds. The ost is also insanely small, there's like only 10 tracks in the game and this is not hyperbole (also I can't remember if the game has a single sound effect besides the fight scene sharp clanking noise). The character portraits, while wonky looking at times, has a nice charm to them. The characters are really expressive in the portraits and that's endearing. Switching to the topic about the routes of the game, Ciel's route is really hampered by the fact that like 3/5 of the route is the same as Arc's. The far side routes also suffer from this, but not as much as Ciel's. I'd say only the first third of the far side routes really overlap with each other.

Smaller gripes I have with the game is the way how the dialogue is written in certain scenes. There are moments where characters are talking about concepts/lore about the world, and it lasts like 5 screens, but could've easily been shortened down to, like, 3 paragraphs. These aren't that big of a deal though since they're few and far between, but the pacing really drags in those parts.

Also I'm not against a story having rape in it. Like anything in any piece of media, it can be done well. The ways Tsukihime inserts rape in it's story feels forced, and could've been entirely cut and instead just be replace with 'wanting to kill X' or 'the urge to hurt Y'. There's only one instance in the story where I'd say it's used okay and felt sort of mandatory considering the context, and that's with a certain character's backstory. I can't really see any justification of the addition to rape in most of the scenes, and feels like it's only there for the sake of being 'mature'/edgy.

Easily the most well written story I've seen RGG make from the games I've played so far. The pacing issues from the first game are non-existent in this game, as there's only like, 3-ish interruptions in the story, but those were to introduce mechanics and only lasted for around 5-ish minutes so it was fine. I adore how the Judgment series continues to tackle real life issues in their stories, and with the focus on bullying in this game, as it makes many characters sympathetic and you can understand why certain characters do the things they do. This is the perfect time to segue to the main antagonist of the game. This character has quickly become one of my favorite antagonists I've seen in any media. They do such a good job making the player understand where this character is coming from and sympathizing with them, there are moments where you might even go "hold up, let them cook" at certain points. And that final boss theme is so fucking rad

The combat has had a huge upgrade from 1, and it shows. Every style is now much more balanced and are more varied where each style has been given more utility in certain situations. The addition of the Snake style is also fantastic. One of my complaints with the previous game is that when doing combos, you're stuck during your combo animations with no way of canceling, leading to you getting hit. Games like Dark Souls I can let get away with this because your attacks as well as the enemies are slow but deliberate and you can pick and chose your battles most of the time, but with the Yakuza games, you are consistently forced into small areas with multiple enemies that have very fast attacks. Snake style extremely mitigates that (the other styles still have the same problem with the exception of being in certain states). Something this game does really well is the added incentives of trying out different styles. The addition of the little combat bonuses given at the end of battles is great at making the player wanting to try out different things and use a lot more of the mechanics, and I really hope this small feature will show up in more RGG games. Another way how the game wants you to keep switching styles which I adore are the 'Secret of the X', and the 'Hidden Arts' skills. I love how you can get certain buffs with your styles, and then transfer the buffs to the other styles, constantly making you switch styles to gain/keep the buffs.

One of the biggest things about Lost Judgment are the school stories. I'll be honest, I barely touched any of the side content in this game mainly because I was so engrossed with the story and I didn't want to kill the high I was having with the plot, so I can't really say much about the side content. I will say, from like the 10 sub-stories I have done, they already feel more memorable than the first Judgment. They were more entertaining humor wise, and the scenarios were a lot more out there. There wasn't a single 'oh no I think my spouse is cheating on me' side story I've encountered and I'm grateful.

This game is like a constant 8/10 or above, and is an improvement over the first game in basically every single way. I don't know how RGG has done it, but the Judgment series is 2 for 2 when it comes to the stories. It's a shame that the series is most likely gonna end here because I would love to see more of what they would do with how they depict the law in future games. Can't wait to start the Kaito DLC.