As far as franchises go, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Yakuza and Judgment are amongst my very favorites. I have a large collection of Yakuza goods and recently completed a lengthy playthrough of Judgment on PS5 (my review, and Eric Layman’s great review on PS4) having thoroughly enjoyed it. Lost Judgment was going to be a must-have for me this Fall, so I’m thankful to have received a review code for it and to have been able to pour a lot of hours into it, with still more that I want to do.
One of the first things you might like to know is that you need not have played through the original Judgment to have a nearly-full appreciation of Lost Judgment (LJ). It would have been really neat (though very complicated I’m sure) if LJ could notice your savegame from the original game on your system and did, you know, something with it to maybe shape the LJ experience, but that’s not the case here. You can import your savegame of LJ from a PS4 version, but, if you’re starting out on PS5 like I was, then there’s obviously no reason to do that.
Anyway, the main story arc of the two games is diverse, and LJ is set three years after the first game. The story of LJ is massive and expands the deeper you go. This web of intrigue and character overlap and lies and history is a powerful driving force in keeping you engaged and curious about just what the heck is going to happen next. And while a lot of the side missions focus on silly things, the main storyline is serious and a tough social topic to traverse — school bullying, and the heartache and agony that can came from it. The game begins with a mutilated body being discovered, but whose it is, why they were murdered, and all of those questions are things that come to light the more Yagami and crew investigate. The extent of the story is really impressive, just like the first Judgment, but again, you need not have played through the first game.
However, there is a tremendous amount of overlap that makes the LJ so much more robust, charming, and fun if you have played through and are familiar with the first game. Kamurocho, the infamous fictitious city made so popular in the Yakuza/Judgment franchise, is as familiar as ever, with a few changes. While players will have all the opportunity to explore it, they will actually spend a vast amount of time in an area pulled from Yakuza: Like A Dragon — Isezaki Ijincho of Yokohama — and also at the Seiryo High School within Ijincho. This makes what was already a huge game that much bigger; and while the number of story missions has been reduced, the game is a whole lot bigger than the already-massive first one (600+ Shop Missions, by the way).
Lots of characters from the first game are back as well, including Kaito, Sugiura, Genda, Tsukumo, and many others. References are made to events in the first game, even during some Side Missions. Like the first game, there is simply an overwhelming amount of content that you can get into if you’re so inclined. You got your batting cage, claw machines, arcades (as well as a Sega Master system at your office that you can find and load up ten different games for, both US and JPN versions!), finding cats, gambling, there’s just all kinds of side missions and (distracting) content. Heck, even skateboarding all around Yokohama has its own segment of gameplay and pursuits, as well as just being a really efficient way to zip around town (especially seeing as cab fares have gone up from 410 yen to 500, hah). The amount of side content is nothing short of staggering. I pity any completionist that simply has to do everything as they will find themselves under a mountain of things to do, and most of what you’re doing boils down to fetch quests and repetition.
There are a lot of changes to the core gameplay, some more impactful than others, but as I review my notes I’d like to mention several of these here. First, there is now a third fighting style — Snake Style. This third style imbues Yagami in a green color and this style is for counters, parries, and weapon disarms. Enemies hold onto their weapons a lot more firmly than they did in the first game, and this style will help you disarm them now. Snake Style is also used to show Mercy towards the hundreds upon hundreds of punks you’ll fight in the streets throughout the lengthy story mode. You can put enemies into submission or make them faint by doing a Snake Style finisher without destroying them like the Tiger and Crane styles do. New moves and animations for the old styles are here, and of course Snake has all new moves and animations for itself. It seems like Yagami gets dizzy more often in fights these days (I suppose he is 38 now), but, I noticed that getting into and out of fights is a little bit quicker than in the first game which is nice when you’re constantly coming across the fights. That and spotting (and avoiding) roaming thugs in the streets is easier, and new extracts allow you to attract (and avoid) fights, too.
A new Battle Rewards system gives you a big list of things to try to do in battle and you’re rewarding for completing them. The amount of SP that you net from battles — as well as Story and Side Missions — has gone up quite a bit. The reason for this is two-fold: first, the price of upgrades has gone up, and, there are now 184 Skills to unlock as opposed to the first game’s 126. I only ever unlocked about 80 of the Skills in the first game, and I doubt I’ll top 130 in LJ, but suffice it to say that SP comes in more steadily than before, but also leaves quickly.
On the non-combative side of the coin, there are now Parkour and Stealth moments whereby Yagami has to climb on the outside of a building, for example, using drainage pipes and the like to get around. This requires Grip strength, which can be upgraded by spending Skill Points (SP) in the Skills app just about anytime. A meter shows you how much Grip Yagami has before he falls, and players are required to navigate to where they need to get to in a timed manner to avoid falling. The Stealth gameplay totally separate from the old Tailing sequences; these have you sneaking around with Yagami bent over in a painfully-looking way as he subverts guards and the like to accomplish his goal. You can toss a coin or even a little smoke bomb to distract enemies (or choke them out) to help you get around. Often you will need to “Look” at an NPC to advance the Stealth sequences, which are just about on-rails.
Chasing and Tailing have been changed as well. There are less Tailing sequences than there were before, and a new feature called Act Casual allows you to stand in plain sight of the mark but not alert them, for a limited time at least. This is another Skill that can be upgraded. You can no longer specifically Hide behind objects by pressing Circle, but you can still of course hide as needed and adjust the camera to get the view you need. Marks have a new kind of meter to measure how alert they are to your presence, too. Suffice it to say these changes are nice and at the same time I’m glad there were less Tailing sequences this time around than the previous game. It’s not that these are hard, they can just get a little boring. Similarly with Chasing, you and the mark have a life meter now that has to be maintained to keep the Chase going — large recovery item pickups (or those from your Inventory) can be used to keep Yagami running, and completing the QTEs will keep your health up as well. Once the mark’s health runs out, you can then capture them to complete the Chase.
There are lots of new restaurants and each one has a Lucky Item that gives Yagami a temporary buff, such as being able to find items in the game world more easily, or getting better items from random fights. You can expect to get a lot more item drops from random fights than the first game as well. The menu is as big as ever, and still familiar at a lot of places like at the Poppos, but I also noticed things like Mountain Dew in the list of things you can buy (and have to buy, if you’re going for the crazy full-completion run).
I noticed a change in the Map, too. The Locations show a street-view picture of the building as well as a short bio of it, which is helpful given that there are a lot of places to keep up with. New markers for the map include those for School Story side missions, as well as Feline Encounters and Squirrel Searching, which are just other significant components of the game. Oh and as far as Yagami’s Inventory, you can equip Gear now, like Wristbands that give you a small stat buff (like 3% extra attack damage) and special glasses (that you can select to wear, but he doesn’t actually look any different in-game) to help you see more random items to gather (that you can sell or use in extract recipes).
As far as presentation, LJ does not disappoint. I played on the Graphics mode, and thought the game looked and performed great. Load times are maybe just slightly longer than the nearly-instant load times of Judgment on PS5, but they’re still super snappy in LJ. The animations and level of detail is the gameworld is compelling and very well done. I thought the interior of the school was a little drab, but that’s to be expected. The Japanese voice acting team was superb as always.
In closing, LJ is another wonderful and welcomed serving of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio comfort food. This is a longhaul game that will easily take 35 hours if not over a 100, depending on how thorough and how distracted you let yourself be. The content is broad, and there’s a ton of it. The content is also quality, though indulging in all of the optional side content can become repetitive for those wanting to complete all of the checkboxes (my advice: find a balance between playing through the story and doing just the right amount of side content for your tastes). Even if you do the minimum amount of side content and just stick with the main story as much as possible, you’re in for a long, interesting, and fun game. The story matter is heavy, though, and might tax some players into taking breaks more often than they might typically. To balance that, there is a lot of good humor and zaniness that you would expect from this studio, but also some endearing missions in the School Stories section where you do everything from lead a dance team, help engineer robots, box, join a motorcycle gang, and partake in a Virtua Fighter 5 tournament. Additionally, the changes that LJ has compared to the original are all positive, too — big new areas to explore, new gameplay elements in both the action and adventure portions of the experience, and yet the best parts of the original are carried over. Ultimately, this is an excellent game that I readily recommend.
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