LogFAQs > #951247117

#10 - Judgment (PS4, 2019)

While I still haven't caught up on the full Yakuza series and am still stuck in Yakuza 3 somewhere, since it's a whole new protagonist and perspective with Takayuki Yagami as the protagonist for this game, I decided to skip ahead and play this one anyway. I'm glad I did, since it's one of my favorite games of all time now.



As said above, Takayuki Yagami is the main character of Judgment, a private investigator in Kamurocho. Yagami was originally a young defense attorney who managed to get a not guilty verdict for one of his clients, but then said client went on to murder his girlfriend and burn down her house. As such, Yagami resigned from his job. Judgment's story revolves around a serial killer that Yagami calls the Mole, who is killing various people in Kamurocho and gouging out their eyes. The story and characters in this, I think, is the most interesting of the series as it breaks out of the Yakuza crime scene (though it still involves them somewhat) and tells an all-new story, one that gets even darker than most of the Yakuza titles I've played. I was very impressed with how great this game got as I kept playing through it, so much that I went through the last few chapters in the game in a few hours just because I had to see what happened next.

Judgment returns to the multiple styles of fighting first started in Yakuza 0, as Yagami has two fighting styles to choose from; the Crane style which is more effective against groups of enemies, and the Tiger style that is more effective at one-on-one combat. Yagami can also utilize walls in his attacks by doing various attacks through wall jumping. I felt the combat was more fluid than the more recent Yakuza titles, such as Kiwami 2 which only has Kiryu using a single style. Though the annoyance of battles are when fighting certain bosses, Yagami gets inflicted with Mortal Wounds from the more powerful attacks utilized, which can't be healed through normally and require a separate (and expensive) item to recover. It does make the game a bit more challenging overall though, which is a nice plus to it.

Judgment also continues the recent trend of upgrading the better minigames available in the series (though the loss of karaoke is annoying, it makes sense given Yagami's Japanese VA). Most of the mainstays return, some with even more areas than before (three different mahjong ares to win at!). The bowling alley is repurposed as a VR board game where you chase after a king cat while also trying to reach the end. It's as ridiculous as it sounds sometimes. Yagami also has a drone he uses during some of his main story investigations, and he's able to use this drone in races around Kamurocho as well. Some of the races have really tight timing requirements so much that I still haven't finished all of them yet! Judgment also has side cases which usually focus more on Yagami's detective work, such as tailing enemies, taking pictures, lockpicking, and other such activities. There's also friend events for various people in Kamurocho that also have certain tasks available to complete.

Like all Yakuza titles, Judgment is crammed full of amazing content but the story and characters of this spinoff places it higher than the other titles in the Yakuza series, as well as a high spot on my overall games list. I still haven't finished some parts of it yet, though, and I still have to go through Legend mode for the platinum anyway!

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