Lost Judgment Review

Judgment was a game I enjoyed for the most part. The game's individual story chapters can drag on for a little too long, I didn't like the forced side cases and the combat much like the rest of the Yakuza series was just so okay it's average. However, the story was gripping even though I do have some other issues with it besides the pacing. I played it because it felt divorced enough from the mainline Yakuza's overarching plot. I did hear some good things about the sequel "Lost Judgment" however throughout my entire time playing I just kept asking myself, "why wasn't this just a TV show instead of a game?"

Yes, I have played the aforementioned Judgment and Yakuza games and I'm aware that they have lengthy cutscenes. With Lost Judgment since I played the main story, a good amount of my time was spent just watching cutscenes and having characters getting into lengthy conversations and exposition. There were multiple times where I even finished food and the cutscenes were still going. Longplays of Lost Judgments's campaign can be 21 hours but the cutscenes are 15 and 6 of those hours are actual gameplay. In a lot of ways, LJ is a TV show where each episode is as long as a feature length film.

With that out of the way, there is already one major issue when starting up LJ's story in that basically it follows the logic of Marvel and DC comics where a major crossover event happened and if you pick up a solo hero or a hero group's comic after that said event, the story is going to be harder to follow. I can accept that but there are also other aspects like there are characters in the story that date back to the days of Yakuza 0 and the first game but I'm just now hearing about them so there are aspects where I'm scratching my head. The Like a Dragon series started off as standalone stories and now there is some greater narrative going on. It's out of left field.

Then there is other major problems like how despite the cutscenes being so lengthy Yagami's allies have less challenges and things to do in the plot. With Saori being about the only exception but she contributes to Yagami's case the same way in the first game. Mafuyu had so little presence that I almost forgot that she was even a character in the story. Kaito, Higashi, Genda, Sugihara, and Hoshino might as well be IMF agents from the Mission Impossible movies in how little they are involved other than just being Yagami's helpers. Tsukomo despite at first having a more active role is not much different than Luther from MI is in the plot as a whole.

I'll give the story credit in that the new characters like Yoko Sawa is kind of interesting and she has enough going on for me be hooked to Yagami's plight. The forced side cases and scenes that don't advance the plot are noticeably toned down. The themes of bullying and vicitimizing are interesting and made me even think about them even after beating the game despite the fallacious logic the main villain has. It however doesn't make me less kind on other issues I had with the story especially where I'm spent so much time watching cutscenes.

Gameplay takes two steps forward and two steps back. The mortal wound system is gone, thankfully. There is only one tailing mission in the main story and there are no progression roadblocks. There are however very scripted stealth segments which just tells you how to do everything and you get a fail state for not doing things exactly the way the devs intended.

There is automated platforming and parkour now. Both are so infrequent that I wonder they are in the game. The stamina system adds nothing other a pointless fail state, it's still your typical automated platforming. If the wallruns are QTEs, it might as well not be there.

Speaking of QTEs, RGG still uses them to this day. They are also uncommon that when they pop it can be a "huh?" Failing one QTE restarts a boss fight and the last two bosses has you do a QTE and then you finish off them off...when 95% of the bosses can be beaten by just depleting their HP.

The combat itself is better in some ways, for one there is a soft lock on when Yagami is facing enemies all though no cycling between targets.

Fighting styles while interesting, I mainly just used Snake since it has an easy to use counterattack and the combos is enough to get me by hordes and bosses.

There are powerful EX moves that are easy to abuse especially one where you are downed and then activate to get a free attack that levels a health bar in. Bosses can't counter this. They also do a lot of damage making me never want to use Burst mode. There is also Mortal Reversals which are so easy to pull off and can can level any enemy or boss' life bar.

Bosses' only major advantage over you is that they can level your life bar before you can heal yourself and many health upgrades are locked.

The skill tree has pointless extra step like finding books.

Overall, aspects about LJ are interesting and improved but it's inferior to the previous game.