As much as I enjoyed it I’d say it’s my least favorite Dragon Engine game so far. Every other one I’ve played (all but Fist of the North Star and Lost Judgment) has been the peak of the series for me. Kiwami 2 is a great remake that ended up being my favorite in the series, 6 was an emotional high that could only come after six games of build up, and 7 was a great starting point of a new arc and new set of characters with a battle system that was refreshing and a genuinely really great RPG system on its own. I spent about 3-4 chapters of Judgment not really invested and somehow liking literally every single character that wasn’t Yagami but at some point that changed and Yagami finally clicked with me and the story finally picked up and I suddenly couldn’t put the game down. The parts of Yakuza as a series that I love are still in here they’re just a little more buried than I would want. The pacing is really bad at points and the combat honestly feels worse than 6 or Kiwami 2, but the good definitely outweighs the bad.