the keen-eyed among you will know that I
opened my AK is a kawaii to review with
the statement that Toshihiro negotiate
steam at sega is known more for
iterating on formula than making
sweeping alterations to it but it would
seem that all is about to change with
their upcoming release judgments
following key to use swan song in yak is
a 6 where he beats people up on the mean
streets of camera tool falling deeper
and deeper into an ever winding national
conspiracy no we have an all new IP in
which disgraced lawyer turned
hard-boiled detective Yagami beats
people up on the mean streets of camera
2 as he takes deeper and deeper into an
ever winding national conspiracy oh and
I guess it's also a saturnine oh of
course if you had any interest in the
game and saw the trailers you'd Blakely
already knew this to be the case but
make no mistake judgement is a yak as a
game threw him through the calligraphy
ask aesthetic of prior Yakuza titles may
have been replaced by something sleeker
more akin to a crane procedural but this
look is still being used in the same
ways it still sees the game's lengthy
labyrinth in story broken up into
multiple chapters he still introduces us
to new characters through dramatic
freeze frames alerting us to their name
and profession besides a fresh cast of
characters then and an eye towards
incorporating more detective Lake
mechanics judgment takes what came
before and iterates on it yet again
perhaps a disappointing turn of events
for those hoping for the team to break
out and try something radically
different but honestly what becomes
clear over the 40 or so errors it will
take you to roll credits is that when it
comes to that formula and the story
being told and despite the new detective
systems frequently falling a little flat
judgment often feels like negotiating at
the top of its game and there was a
morning where this all clicked for me
we're in between the grim gargantuan
nature of the main narratives murder
mystery and the downright intimidating
amount of side activities to explore I
decided I needed to pause have a smoke
get absolutely blitzed off a bottle of
whiskey I bought of the store and
drunkenly kickstart a martial arts eBook
for way more money than was reasonable
and at that point I thought what other
game would possibly allow me to do this
see well the team has been making this
same type of game for a long time it's
worth noting that well no one else has
been no one else has been creating these
utterly unique open worlds that fall
somewhere in the middle of rocks
violent chaos and a game-like shenmue's
menial labor and literal clock-watching
judgment captures a kind of heightened
mundanity super well allowing you to
self express in a way that beyond the
whole stomping on faces thing bears some
striking resemblances to real life I
mean I'm sure many of us have spent
money on things we maybe shouldn't have
when drunk
it's mischievous consistent with the AG
amis character rather than outwardly
violently chaos and as much as these
games are known for lengthy cutscenes
filled with screeds of text for you to
read through what judgment yours is the
team's almost unparalleled ability to
convey character through mechanics most
other games would see as insignificant
for example every element in that chain
of events I described earlier carries a
mechanical benefit as well as being
formatic irrelevant the whiskey I bought
wasn't just to move around or wacky like
the smoke break wasn't solely in service
of the brief stories you overhear from
other people in the room these features
have real gameplay implications namely
smoking increases your e^x or heat gauge
while drinking increases the speed at
which that same gauge will fill up
during fights in other words and
contrary to what decades of anti-smoking
ads or warnings about the dangers of
alcohol have taught me getting loaded up
on booze and smoking loads of cigarettes
makes you unquestionably better fighter
here allowing you to pull off the wild
moves that yaga meas disposal help maybe
the ones you learned from that martial
arts II boot you drunkenly pledged far
that's a much faster clip moreover
eating recovers health but crucially
Sobers you up meaning I found myself at
multiple points planning my route so I
could keep my health up without actually
having to eat any food so I'd be better
prepared for random encounters which
despite the options available to me in
terms of reintroduced combat sales could
see a pail on from just a few enemies
absolutely obliterate my HP if I wasn't
careful that is to say the need to
maintain my buzz governed my exploration
of this map to a strange degree my daft
impulse to get Yagami drunk ended up
revealing a key part of his character
purely through gameplay
namely that he's a very different person
to kiri going from fish-out-of-water
gangster to in many ways the architect
card boil detect with a premise and
approach that isn't too dissimilar to
that of characters like Matt Scudder
Philip Marlowe and as you spend time
with the agony you see the unwavering
sense of moral duty
I so loved the boat Kiryu replaced by an
understandable but less heroic desire to
get paid Kira is charming bashfulness
supplanted by Yaga bees often surly
demeanor you won't see Yagami dancing
around in a karaoke booth like kiri you
for example as his penchant for drone
racing and unnecessary jacket belt
buckles attached to he's too cool for
them and further his relationship to the
world of organized crime is complicated
he may bash people's teeth injustice
forcefully as Kiryu but he's an
upstanding law-abiding type that would
mess around with guns or blades those
are illegal no instead he favors good
old-fashioned blunt-force trauma while
liquored up to keep the peace and while
it may seem impossible at first to root
for this edgy gamer detective over the
hooligan with the heart of gold
well yeah kameez rating is honestly just
that good a lot of the time all of his
bluster belies the fact that he's trying
to find his place in the weeds of the
Japanese legal system haunted by his
past and racked with guilt over his
previous actions as a lawyer trying to
reconcile the notion that a lawyer's job
to win a trial and a detective's job to
uncover the truth can be two very
different things
his dogged determination to get to the
bottom of the case Trump's almost
everything else especially his own
well-being and so what better way to get
across this inner turmoil to convey the
noir vibe of proceedings here than
mechanically incentivizing our character
to engage in what are otherwise
unhealthy self-destructive habits these
games feature you slamming people's
faces into the ground with cool martial
arts and also fakes to suddenly shift to
something wholly self-serious just
wouldn't make sense so instead why not
say you know these prohibition here are
detectives were drawing from sure do
rely on alcohol to an unhealthy degree
let's make that the key to being good at
fighting here and it may sound like I'm
making a big deal out of nothing but
little gameplay details like this mean
that the team can maintain the more
somber tone of hard-boiled fiction while
also playing it out against the backdrop
of some of the most entertaining sub
stories seen since yak is a zero where
you may chase a wig that's flown off a
popular celebrities head for example it
continues the creators pretty masterful
understanding of tone and how to convey
it as only the Canon stripping a genre
framework down to its essentials and
figuring out how to effectively
represent that in an entirely different
medium and stale where you'd think it
wouldn't
what's our less effectively implemented
then are the more literal
representations of detective work coming
in the form of tailing missions visual
profiling finding and presenting
evidence north these are all things
detectives do sure but instead of
punctuating an otherwise typical yak is
a game with interesting new gameplay
features your adventures are rather
interrupted by discrete chase sequences
that see actions you'd normally perform
automatically in the open world now
attached to random QuickTime events for
some reason multiple sequences see you
walk slowly behind someone then press
circle when they predictably turn around
with some instances lasting as long as
five to ten minutes and suffering from
strange technical problems when you go
even a little off script first-person
sequences will have you wondering why
the game had to slow everything down so
you could do something as simple as
turning on a light and even with the
game going full-blown Ace Attorney in
the presenting of evidence none of it is
challenging or involved enough to reduce
anything other than a gimmick every part
of the game's detective framework is to
rid of mentary & janky to do anything
other than kill the story's pace and for
all the progress the team had made in
yakyaz a6 in Co a me too in removing the
seams between exploration and combats
creating something more immersive it
seems strange to build up all those
walls between systems once more and it's
all the more disappointing considering
that they can't have already solved the
problem of more organically encouraging
detective like thanking and players the
answer is simple remove the objective
mark a few missions here do that and in
a series that usually points you in
exactly the direction you need to go a
more vague objective will pop up such as
check in with title without any
indication of where you're actually
meant to do that requiring you to trawl
through Case Files and evidence and line
up with street names to find out who
they might be with and where that person
usually hangs out it's simple stuff that
had me feeling way more like an actual
detective than any of the system's
explicitly shoved in my face to do so
leading me to hope that this is the kind
of approach the team gravitates towards
in future installments and that's the
weird thing about all of this this game
was supposed to be a breakaway from
previous titles in the act as a
framework I was excited for that and
yeah it's arguably when judgment is at
its most yakaza
that is at its most enjoyable and again
that this sounds the same as someone
telling a band you
just play the hips but I promise it's
more than that don't get me wrong here I
adore judgment despite its imperfections
I feel like that's part and parcel with
Aniak as a game but that's also kind of
the point
bolting on features from other games
only sticks out because the Yak is a
formula is still so uniquely its own
thing and when making just slight
changes to that formula can sort
effectively convey wildly different
character traits when it allows for
rating this good it makes me think that
cool uncle innovation for the sake of it
means very little when what you already
have continues to be so innovative in
itself so I hope you enjoyed my review
of judgment if you did and would like to
support my work directly you can always
head to my patreon like these wonderful
folks currently on screen your support
is absolutely what allows me to put in
the time necessary to make these videos
and I cannot thank you enough for them
special thanks go to mark berating Rob
Blakely see vas mark Tom vet sook David
Bjork Lucas [ __ ] amore Dallas King
William fielder my dad a Leo Hanna
Timothy Jones the nameless guy Chris
Wright
amigas Zack Casserly Samuel Pickens
chard fire out of him Intel Jesse rain
Brandon Robinson
Justin's Holderness Matthew Natori
Nicholas Ross and Charlie and with that
this has been another episode of rating
on games thank you very much for
watching and I will see you next