I had a lot of fun playing Judgment, but small flaws keep me from praising it outright.

The story had me intrigued from the start, but the game feels a need to hammer in key plot points in a way that slows the pace down and makes characters seem unobservant. The combat is fluid and satisfying, but much of the fighting feels meaningless and unrewarding. The side content helps to make characters and the city come alive, but I resented the times when the game forced me into it when I wanted to follow the main plot.

On the whole, these criticisms are small, but they do bog down Judgment in comparison to other Yakuza games I've played.