The definition of insanity is playing Yakuza games over and over and expecting to like them.

My best friend loves Yakuza and has made repeated attempts to get me into the series, but I'm just not having it. Janky combat, shallow side content, stories mired in dry crime family politicking that I just find boring boring boring. You won't find me singing karaoke in Kamurocho, and I certainly won't be putting a chicken in charge of a bowling alley. These games are not for me.

Or are they?

While the Yakuza are still a major fixture in Lost Judgment, the player's perspective shifts towards the law. You play as Takayuki Yagami, a lawyer-turned-PI who starts his own agency with a former member of the Yakuza named Kaito. After a simple introductory case involving a con artist gambling away his victim's money, Yagami and Kaito are called to Ijincho to assist another agency, Yokohama 99, who are looking into a case of bullying at Seiryo High. In those opening hours, you'll find Yagami hanging around the high school with a pocket full of worms, used tissues, and screws and basically doing the "how do you do, fellow teens" bit after being told multiple times to leave. Alas, he keeps coming back drunker than ever, ready to rock a bunch of 15-year-olds' shit and place hidden cameras in the bathroom (don't worry, he pointed them away from the urinals so it's ok.)

However, the mystery at the heart of Lost Judgment involves a man named Ehara, whose son committed suicide after relentless bullying. The legal system ultimately fails to give Ehara's son justice, and several years later he's arrested for groping a woman on a subway train. However, footage is released shortly after depicting Ehara murdering his son's bully, recorded seemingly at the same time as the groping incident, providing him an airtight alibi. To save face, the police dismiss the footage as a deep fake, giving Ehara proof of the legal system's incompetency and inability to render justice. Yagami has to figure out how Ehara committed both crimes at the same time, and soon stumbles upon a larger conspiracy involving the serial murder of bullies.

The Yakuza games have mostly failed to keep me invested in their narratives, but I found myself engrossed by Lost Judgment's story. It does deal with some very heavy subjects, however. If you find yourself sensitive to matters like suicide and bullying then this probably isn't the game for you, as the two are simply inseparable. Suicide is, in particular, a subject that can too easily be portrayed in a manner that is tactless, and Lost Judgment doesn't get it right 100% of the time. There are some very powerful scenes centered around those who are survived by the victims of suicide that are very well done and provide a genuine sense of weight to the act itself, and though some of these survivors could be considered antagonists, Lost Judgment does a good job maintaining a balance between keeping them sympathetic while showing their actions as deplorable. It also has a cabal of these characters pulling the strings from the shadows and even within the government to murder bullies across Japan in an act of retribution, and that stuff swings the other way and becomes ridiculous and perhaps a bit too insensitive. To be fair, I guess this is still technically a Yakuza game, and you better believe it's going to depict suicide through that kind of lens. You'll watch some very unnerving footage of teenagers beating and berating a student to their breaking point, then immediately hop on your skateboard to link up with Ranpo the Dogtective! (Ohh look at him, he's such a good boy!) Thaaat's Yakuza!

The focus on solving mysteries is a large part of why I think Lost Judgment works better for me mechanically, as well. You spend much of your time investigating crime scenes, collecting evidence, conducting cross examination of witnesses, and picking which pieces of evidence to reveal to put pressure on suspects. The Yakuza series is no stranger to long cutscenes of people talking around tables or in bars, and there's a lot of that stuff here too, but it's about subject matter I find more engaging and the fact that you're also able to be more participatory in those conversations helps as well. Plus, it's just fun when you screw up and pull out the wrong piece of evidence. Master Detective Yagami over here going "haha, ah whoops, didn't mean to show you that..."

Of course, it wouldn't be one of These Games if you didn't get in a hell of a lot of fights, and this is perhaps where I think the game is at its weakest. Combat just doesn't feel good, I don't think it's ever felt good in Yakuza. The targeting system is dogshit and will frequently break away from who you're fighting to throw kicks and punches at the air behind you, button prompts for the EX attacks are finicky and don't always trigger when they should, and there's a few too many fights that take place in very confined locations that don't play nice with the camera. Given how much of the game is focused on solving mysteries, combat feels obligatory and is often weightless. There's a couple of repeat antagonists and set pieces where throwing hands feels earned, but most of the time it's like, well, we haven't had a fight in a while I guess. The final chapter of the game suffers from the opposite problem, interestingly enough, in that the detective mechanics are clumsily inserted between all-out brawls, severely screwing with the climax's momentum.

Despite combat feeling kind of tacked on, I still had a great time with Lost Judgment. It's doing its own unique thing with the detective stuff and I'm way into it, but you can still screw around and play Sonic the Fighters, or go to the batting cages, or help a bunch of weird freaks find their missing Kappa statues or whatever, so it's still definably Yakuza where it counts. I feel like I'm getting as much of that flavor as I want with something better at the center of that experience, basically. I also love beating up teenagers with my bare fists and, sometimes, with pipes and occasionally bikes, so even if that stuff doesn't feel great I'm still into it in spirit. Safe to say I'm still not a Yakuza fan, but I am a Judgment fan and I'll probably pick the sequel up if and when it happens, though my detective's intuition tells me it's all but certain. I mean, 90% of these games are prefabricated anyway, and they make their money back, we're gonna get more Yagami, and maybe more Saori. I almost forgot, you can dress up Saori-kun... ehehehh yeah you gotta... gotta infiltrate the hostess bar by making her look pretty eeerhghehehehuhh wait why are the cops outside my apartment