Lost Judgment [PS4/5/XB1/XS]

[fuse]

Starting a new thread to defy @Neon Ignition's attempts to contain two games in one thread. Of all the people to try and keep the number of threads down!



The detective-y bits that made the first game stand out from Yakuza are still here - tailing people for paparazzi-style shots, chase sequences, stealth sections and so on - and they have maybe been tidied up a bit, but still have some rough edges. I haven't had to do any drone photography yet, but scaling buildings is now more of an active thing, with a grip meter you need to consider. You get a skateboard to move about the city a bit quicker, but it's a little finnicky in terms of getting on/off in a hurry. As the team have been very openly said, if you're after the brawler gameplay that used to be Yakuza's thing, this is now where you'll find it.

I'm only a few short chapters in, but by far the thing that's throwing me the most is that quite a large portion of the game is set in and around a high school. Putting aside whatever associations that kicks off in your head (it's Persona for me!), side stories involve you "infiltrating" school clubs, and a lot of fights involve you beating delinquent kids up in typically OTT style. I know the disconnect between the stories in the games and its action has always existed, but it's really bloody hard to turn a blind eye to here. Still, planning on sticking with this.

[fuse]

Chapter 8 now.

Thankfully we've moved on to beating up grown adults rather than actual children, but I'm still not sure if I'm just getting soft, or if this one's plot is considerably more gruesome than the team usually offers up. For the first time though, I'm finding myself compelled to plough on with the main story rather than getting caught up in side stories - not sure if this is a result of the story being compelling (which it is!), or just not having the patience for running around the same old haunts doing busy work... maybe both?

[fuse]

Continued just pushing on and on through the main story, ignoring side stuff, and only really focusing on core stat upgrades, and just crossed the finishing line last night. I have a bit of time before the next game I'm wanting to dive into arrives, so I guess now I will start to explore what I missed; I'd done a bit of the dancing club mini-game because as a rhythm gaming fan I just couldn't help myself, but everything else will be pretty much new. In general, I think the balance between the detective bits and just plain-up busting of heads is much better in this one.

Story-wise, it did get a little drawn out at the end, but I remember finding that to be much worse in the first Judgment title. The central theme to this one still feels a little odd though, as does some of its accepted justice. I note the story's mostly credited to Nagoshi, and as such I can't help but wonder if it's based on some personal trauma that he's wrestled with in the past.

[fuse]

Carried on slogging away at this rather than starting something else new, but after closing out the school side story and solving "The Professor" case, effectively doubling my final playtime, I am now officially over it. The 10 clubs that you have to investigate somewhat conveniently puts you at the mercy of a number of mini-games; some of which are but brief intros, others requiring you to get very involved in half-baked game ideas, regularly interrupted with snippets of story, and generally eating up hours of time.

The bike gang thing feels like a prototype for a Road Rash remake, minus the requirement to actually race, or steer around corners. The practicalities of having to wipe out an entire field of riders before then exploiting the rubber banding and last-minute boosts to win a 'death race' means that each stage can take up to five minutes, and any slip ups then result in highly tedious repetition. Too many stages, a bit of a slog.

I am sure some people will love the Robotics Club game, which is a team-based 'Robot Wars' thing meets a mad scramble for Tetronimo-based grid dominance thing. Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't jump in difficulty at points, requiring grinding out practice fights for parts to keep your team viable, but... it does do that, and as such gets quite irritating. Also no Craig Charles.

eSports club? What's that, you want to teach me how to play VF5:FS? Sure, bring it o- oh it's over already. What a tease.

Skateboarding comes in skate park score challenge and race-about-town flavours, and on account of how clumsily they control, both are overly forgiving and a bit dull.

Boxing is alright but very repetitive, overly long, and quite happy to let you mash through most fights.

Dance club is a four-panel rhythm game that crucially lacks any kind of real feedback. There's a video of dancing and some music, and some buttons you have to press, but do any of them actually correspond to each other in any way? No.

There are more that I can't even remember.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is that this entry, more than any other Yakuza game before it, pushes you towards a loving embrace of the variety mini-game format, and I'm not sure I really wanted that - particularly as spending any length of time on any of these simply reminds you that there are better individual games where you could do these activities.

If you ignore all of this and focus on the story then yes, that has some good bits, but it also has some pretty jarring failures to marry its action to the themes it tries to wrangle with.

Of all the things I expected coming away from this, I don't think I was expecting to feel burnt out by the format and jaded for the series, but here we are. It's probably for the best that there doesn't appear to be another game from the RGG studio on the horizon for a while, I could maybe do with a break.