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with the show look i adored yakuza like
a dragon despite not being the biggest
fan of jrpgs generally one thing i
really enjoyed about it was that for the
first time in an rgg studios game they
managed to make the streets feel
legitimately dangerous as kasich woke up
in the back alleys of yokohama far from
home freshly betrayed stripped of
everything in a place he didn't know he
and by extension the player found
themselves coming up against truly tough
high-level foes early on making for a
scenario where you really had to watch
your every step it was a continuation of
what i've always maintained is the
team's real penchant for mechanical
systemic storytelling it could get tense
cut to a year later though and you have
the now iconic buddy cop jewel of yagami
and his ex yakuza pal kaito stepping
onto the exact same map almost untouched
from last year's main series outing and
within a minute of leaving the train
station the thugs of yokohama are
literally cowering at the feet of our
heroes as i send their pals flying
across the screen switching up styles on
the fly and creating some delightfully
cinematic moments that were entirely
within my control without even resorting
to the numerous ex actions designed
explicitly for that purpose at this
stage my excitement for lost judgment
had really reached fever pitch as much
as i appreciated how well the jrpg
systems were implemented in last year's
game that more immediate real-time
combat now massively expanded alongside
the scope of basically every system in
the entire game was such a welcome blast
of familiarity as i was able to wipe out
these hordes in such visceral fashion
truly i was playing the sequel to 2019's
best game i loved the original judgment
despite its imperfections and the fact
it wasn't nearly as big a departure from
the developer's roots as they might have
hoped it would be the story and
characters and crucially the way
mechanics would convey that character
made for a tale that was completely
engrossing in its own way separate to
the series it spun off from so needless
to say when it was revealed that a
sequel was on its way that would see
yagami and co taking on a brand new case
i was fully ready to don that belt
buckle riddled leather jacket one more
time and after dozens of hours spent
with it i can safely say that i had a
really good time with lost judgment
almost every aspect of the game has been
made bigger in some way if the original
was a proof of concept for a different
vision of the tried and true yakuza
framework then up front it would seem as
if lost judgment is a step in the right
direction to more firmly establish its
own identity you can move between two
massive open world environments pretty
much it will your investigation will see
you entering a school to put a stop to a
bullying problem which in turn opens up
a whole wealth of potential storylines
and activities that could feasibly take
you away from the main narrative for
vast stretches of time largely setting
aside the ace aesaternal marriage of its
predecessor in favor of the ultimately
more convincing pastiche of persona
right down to the funky soundtrack those
detective mechanics are completely
rearranged as well with a much greater
focus on parkour and stealth to sneak
around still extremely rigid in their
own way sure but certainly less prone to
outright breakage as the numerous
tailing missions were previously the
second you went off script in fact here
if you were just to mainline the story
and do nothing else i'm fairly sure
you'd only come up against one or two
actual tailing missions here and even
they've been tightened up slightly with
new and hilarious features that play
into yagami's fun-loving side a bit more
on paper this all reads like a distinct
improvement over its original it's just
that despite that enjoyment i mentioned
previously i can't deny that overall
there were a few stumbling blocks here
and there that left me feeling just a
little emptier than when i came away
from 2019's game most notably in the
execution of its larger plot without
spoiling anything if there's one way i
can describe the story of lost judgment
and how it's delivered the word that
comes to mind is messy you likely
already know at this stage the rgg games
are sprawling labyrinthine affairs that
more often than not struggle to maintain
their narrative integrity towards their
conclusions the still incredibly
enjoyable bombast of these endings
believing the fact that they're having
to bring in all these different planes
to land with so many disparate
characters and scenarios complicated
further by obligatory wild twists again
more often than not the team pulls it
off despite how crazy it can all get but
i usually come away from these games
with my head spinning by comparison lost
judgment had me feeling this exhaustion
confusion after just two or three
chapters it's not bad by any means it
just gets pretty over the top fairly
quickly in some ways it speaks to how
engrossing just inhabiting these
characters in their day-to-day can be
that the early focus on the school
bullying investigation and the political
games being played underneath it all led
me to totally forget about the inciting
incident of this whole thing that itself
flies off the rails it's just that with
all these different characters and
organizations and competing interests
the game keeps bombarding you with right
through to its conclusion you might
start to get the vibe that in a
narrative sense everything feels far
more fragmented here than it did in the
last game and i think this comes down to
the fact that well it's a sequel to a
fairly self-contained story one which by
the way i really would implore new
players to check out before touching the
sequel and crucially one which kind of
solved the internal struggle of our
protagonist where in a legal system in
which over 99 of cases that go to trial
result in a guilty verdict yagami found
himself stuck between his roles as a
detective and lawyer with the former's
need to find the truth butting up
against the latter's need to win cases a
subtle but meaningful distinction in an
environment where keeping up appearances
is often as important as actually doling
out justice it was a push and pool
compounded by yagami's own past as a
disgraced lawyer with the game
masterfully navigating that nuance as
you're never quite sure whether his
complete dedication to the case is some
righteous fight to get to the truth or
merely a nihilistic deflection from
confronting his own issues a plunge into
oblivion but the thing is like i say
jacoby had kind of figured himself out
and in lost judgment we see our
protagonist attacking this case with a
newfound result he may brandish his
lawyer pin when it suits but the
detective in him has clearly won out the
truth matters above all he no longer has
the same kinds of demons eating away at
said demons are briefly referenced from
time to time but never is anything he's
actually struggling with more a piece of
his past that informs his present
confidence you can see this in the
game's systems where the excellent
mechanical storytelling i previously
talked about gets muddied in the jumble
of new and altered systems before you
were incentivized to engage in yagami's
more self-destructive habits smoking and
drinking cornerstones of the pulpy noir
detectives that clearly inspired his
character built up your ex meter more
efficiently to the point that i would
avoid eating because the health benefits
would sometimes be outweighed by simply
sobering yagami up meaning i would then
have to find a way to drink again here
though yagami is a more accomplished
combatant from the off with an all-new
fighting style and vastly increased move
set bolstered by a frankly staggering
list of upgrades allowing you to really
define your own fighting style perhaps
more than any other yakuza game it also
feels a lot easier than the original
generally the system where you'd need to
fix your health bar after taking heavy
damage is gone now i never found myself
short on healing items or money and on
normal difficulty i think i only died in
combat once by accident after
incorrectly inputting a quick time event
with the extended ex gauge making
remarkably light work of even the game's
toughest encounters the truly important
aspect of this though is that i barely
ever drank my entire playthrough outside
of cutscenes i didn't smoke once where
before i was puffing away like crazy
sure these are all gameplay markers of
yagami being more self-assured this time
round but it also makes this romp feel
less like yagami's story as a result and
the game struggles to fill that space
you know just whose story is it don't
get me wrong yagami is still a really
fantastic character and despite the
similarities to the series the game spun
off from the very clear differences in
characterization between judgement's
cast versus yakuza gave me real feelings
of joy as i realized i was going to get
to be a part of this unique crew once
more the original judgment got super
crazy as it went along as well i doubt
anyone would be able to guess at the
start where that game ended up plot-wise
it's just that without that real deep
personal struggle at the core of it all
lost judgment definitely comes across
more as another wacky installment in
yagami and kaito's crazy adventures the
messiness of the plot is a little more
front and center here the struggle
instead is largely thematic in nature
and it's a pretty heavy one at that even
if it's dealt with in the typical yak as
a fashion of extreme action and drama in
this sense past the flurries of punches
and the inconceivable amounts of enemies
and the idea that supposedly taking it
easy on a group of high school bullies
still sees you smacking them over the
head with a bat you could view lost
judgment as something of an ongoing
debate about what justice actually means
especially in the modern age where the
law is struggling to keep up with
technology one thing the game is
explicitly clear about from the off and
in keeping with the first game is the
fact that the legal system is broken and
fails to protect those that need it
going on to present multiple different
perspectives on how to fix it how
justice should work and spends a long
time exploring those different ideas
maybe it's a weird comparison but much
like season four of the wire the
violence and drama isn't necessarily so
far removed from what came before in
other games but it's the fact it's often
happening directly to children here that
makes it feel all the more harrowing
it's not like we've not seen the effects
of political decisions on kids in the
yakuza universe before obviously but
here it's so much more direct violent it
gets raw at points to the extent that if
stark portrayals of bullying and talk of
suicide get to you maybe check in on
yourself and make sure you're ready for
this ride the game pulls zero punches in
that regard further though it also gets
clumsy at points with said extremity of
its plot revelations melodrama and some
truly daft twists even by rgg standards
sometimes slipping over into downright
farce acting at odds with the weight of
the subject matter being dealt with but
even when it fumbles some of those more
delicate topics and outside of a couple
of notable systems rearing their ugly
head once again from the first game it
never feels like it's coming from
anything other than an earnest place a
genuine human concern as to how we
navigate these darker aspects of society
never shying away from the idea that
things are never as black and white as
they seem that justice is always going
to be a messy fragmented clumsy affair
and it rarely works out perfectly for
all involved there are no definitive
answers and those that claim otherwise
even if their hearts are in the right
place are deluding themselves resulting
in more people getting hurt it's an
imperfect narrative for sure with plenty
of pacing issues as well as a frankly
odd view of how young people use
technology that definitely seems as if
it was written by an older person as
well as the game threatening to buckle
under the weight of its desperate
threads and themes but it's testament to
just how dedicated the game is to
exploring marinating in that complicated
central theme as well as just how fun
its characters still are that by its
conclusion i still found myself with
that lump in my throat that only rgg
games can give me look i don't do review
scores but for the sake of argument if
the original judgement was a 9 or 10 out
of 10 then lost judgment is firmly an
eight while its mechanical shifts might
make it seem like an evolution in every
way past the original judgment its
bungling of certain issues both in terms
of its systems and narrative still leave
it feeling like a series that despite
how enjoyable the game is and the fact
that judgement might actually be my
favorite rgg title is still trying to
find its own feat under the grand shadow
of the yakuza series a footing which
thanks to legal wrangling of its own we
may unfortunately never see the series
fully attained indeed this might be the
end of the road for judgment as a
franchise but i want to reiterate that
if that's a game you loved as much as i
did you're probably still going to get
that same kind of kick from just hanging
out with that motley crew of detectives
one more time
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