After having played every Yakuza game before this release I was highly optimistic about a brand new IP in RGG's lineup. What we ended up getting was instead lost potential. I think this is one of the weakest RGG titles we've gotten, but I guess I should explain myself. For a new IP I would have hoped this game's setting was taken place somewhere else but what we got was the same overused kamurocho area again, with none of the new additions that Yakuza 4 added. Everything in terms of side content has been reused from Yakuza 6 or Kiwami 2, there's not something here you'll find that's unique other than the drone races and VR game board. The combat is missed potential because we not only have 2 styles to work with, one is clearly superior to the other. There's no reason to use crane style when everything just dies with the tiger style. The one thing that really annoyed me playing was the mortal wounds system. In other RGG games, if you get hit with a powerful attack your character gets up no problem, in Judgment if Yagami gets hit with a powerful attack then that's it, you lose part of your health bar that can only be recovered if you waste large amounts of money on health packets that are located in the sewers of Kamurocho. Some may argue this incentivizes you to play well so you don't get hit but I think it's more of a pace breaker. As it is the game is not hard and is only difficult if you limit yourself. The detective side stuff is really underwhelming and handled poorly, trailing missions constantly plague this game as one of the most boring and uninteresting parts of this whole experience. When you try to find a good hiding spot there's a blue light to signify what things you can hide behind, problem is it only shows up if you're right close to it. So those times where you're scrambling to find a hiding spot because the target spotted you, good luck redoing that entire section. For a detective, you sure don't do much. Lock picking and safe breaking can only be so fun after a while, cause then it starts to get tedious.

If you made it this far congratulations, you now get to hear the things that I DID like from the game, isn't that nice. One thing that RGG has always done well is the story, this game for what it's worth has a very interesting narrative with a lot of twists and turns and it's almost enough to make you forget you're playing a mediocre game. I tried thinking about what this game does differently than any other to give it its own identity and the friend system comes to mind. In Kamurocho you're able to befriend local residents and get to know more of their own life and even open up new side quests for you to do revolving around them. This system was what gravitated me to completing all that I could because Yagami's character interactions are all so charming and hilarious. The music itself is also pretty good but I can only really remember a few tracks, a lot is mostly background noise.

I really didn't want to hate this game but I just don't see the need to replay it whenever games like Yakuza 0 provide a much better experience with better side content and combat. If you like this game, more power to you, but unless they can fix what was established here into a possible sequel.
Then hey, maybe it'd be one of RGG's best.