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The phrase "I'm gonna take my ball and go home!" went through my head on more than one occassion while playing this game.

It's funny, the plot beats and the overall narrative are very vague, so in my head I gave voices to all the various life forms and probably turned the whole thing into a way more comedic experience than was probably intended. Though the narrative vagueness might have been expected, given that Jeppe Carlsen (who was the lead for this) worked on both Limbo and Inside.

It's a good thing that I managed to click way more with the gameplay aspects of Cocoon than I did with either of the previously mentioned games. There is something to be said for puzzle design which feels so elegantly and meticulously crafted - there were plenty of opportunities where the game could have gotten extremely messy with dangling puzzle threads left unfinished that you come back to later, which in other games might cause you to meander about searching for the solution. That doesn't happen in Cocoon, where the play area is smartly limited so you can focus on one thing at a time.

The puzzles start pretty small in scope, but gradually increase to encompass larger areas. But even so, I never felt like I was at a loss for what to do for very long. Every time I got stuck, I would quickly go over the puzzle's play area and make a mental note of every potential puzzle piece, and sometimes I had to stare at a thing for a minute or two until a solution came to me in a eureka-moment.

I don't want to give away too much when it comes to mechanics, but suffice to say that the game successfully managed to blow my mind, especially towards the end. There were some (to me, at least) pretty complicated concepts to wrap my mind around, and damn if I didn't feel like a genius every time I solved one of those puzzles.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio tried something really different with this entry in the Yakuza series, and it definitely paid off. Sure, there are some growing pains, but given how much new stuff there is in here I am more than willing to overlook some flaws.

The turn-based combat works pretty well, there is some depth to it but at points it almost feels like it's stuffed to the brim with too much stuff. Let's call it a first draft. But the combat isn't why I absolutely adore this game.

The Yakuza series has always hooked me with its characters, its detailed locations and the tonal whiplash between soapy melodrama in the main story and the goofy ass shit happening in the side content. This time around, it feels like both of those have been amped up. The main story packs a real emotional punch, and with the new protagonist (Kasuga Ichiban) it feels like the silliness has reached new peaks.

Kiryu has always been a brooding, stoic character with a heart of gold. Kasuga, similarly, always tries to do the right thing, but the characters couldn't be more different. Kasuga is what you get when you take a typical shonen anime protagonist and put him in a (semi-)realistic setting. Of course, all pretense of realism goes out the door a few hours into the game when Kasuga starts seeing his adventure as him playing real life Dragon Quest (which is only really in effect during combat).

There is also a staggering amount of side content in this game. The everpresent substories, while fewer in number, are significantly beefed up. There's a longer story arc in each of them, and most of the substories require you going back to a location a few times to see the story progress.

I only really have on complaint with the game, and that is a pacing issue that occurred in the late game. Combat had been fairly breezy up until that point, with me keeping up with the enemies' levels pretty evenly. And then, out of nowhere, I hit a boss that was 15 levels higher and the game recommending me to just grind it out, so I had to spend a few hours just mindnumbingly grinding enemies in a battle arena.

On the whole though, I really love this game and I'm super excited to see where the story goes in the coming installments.

Going into this game, I was keeping my expectations in check. I had heard some good things, but I was skeptical. After getting done with Yakuza 6 and the bittersweet ending of that game, I wasn't sure about spinning up a new series with a new protagonist.

I'm happy to report that in many cases, this first outing of Yagami succeeds more than it doesn't. After all, this is mostly a Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio-game through and through. It mostly contains the expected melodramatic main story, the sometimes wacky side quests (Side Cases in this game, to reflect the investigative nature of our protagonist du jour) and a smattering of mini-games and assorted activities.

Where I feel like this new detective framework falters a bit is in the implementation of new gameplay features. Yagami isn't part of the yakuza. He's a private investigator, and as such there have been a lot of features added to reflect that. There are tailing missions (pretty boring across the board), investigating a scene for clues (inoffensive at best), presenting evidence in dialogue etc. What I'm getting at is that these are superficial layers of detective-stuff that mostly got in the way and I mostly wished that they were over whenever I found myself in one of those situations.

At this point, RGG Studio games are like a classic rock band and Judgment is their big renaissance tour with new material, but I felt like I just wanted to hear the classics. Every new "song" (if you will bear with me in this metaphor) felt forced and boring.

Judgment feels at its best when it's performing the familiar; combat is in my opinion the best it's ever been, the friendships got somewhat of an overhaul as compared to Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 and are almost all interesting, the side cases are hit and miss (many of the aforementioned tailing missions show up in these side cases). And most of all, the main story with all its production values was an amazing experience. The early chapters were really strong, making me invested in these new characters that I've never heard of. The final stretch of about 5-6 or so hours was amazing, building up relentless momentum that made it hard to put down. The middle chapters felt kind of meandering - there definitely was some table setting happening to put all the pieces in place for the final stretch, but at the time felt kind of inconsequential. In the Yakuza games, I never much minded when the pacing of the story dropped to a lull since I was inhabiting a world I was deeply invested in with characters I've grown to love over the course of multiple games. In Judgment, the plodding middle chapters made me have a harder time wanting to pick up the controller and start a session.

For all of the criticism I've raised in this review, I still feel like Judgment is an overall great package, and I'm happy to see where the franchise goes.