Just 2 years after the launch of JUDGMENT (JUDGE EYES in Japan), a new chapter of the YAKUZA spin-off franchise arrives at our hands. With an immense emphasis placed on narrative, the products of the Ryu Ga Gotoku studio have maintained a line of content since 2005, with small news in each installment but in essence always similar games. The fans, thankful.
LOST JUDGMENT is available for Playstation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series.
IT WILL BE JUSTICE
The arrest of a man on the subway for groping a girl. A case of bullying in a secondary school. A suicide committed 4 years ago. The recent disappearance of a person. A string of apparently isolated events and without any type of connection in principle, that with the passing of days and the pertinent investigations will be forming a web of the darkest and murkiest that have been seen in a video game.
Once again we put ourselves in the shoes of Takayuki Yagami, the former lawyer turned private detective to correct his past mistakes, and our mission will be to interfere in the most dangerous corners of Kamurocho and Yokohama in search of solving one of the most complex cases and terrifying that have come your way. But it is not only our intelligence and investigative capabilities that will be essential to try to bring our objective to fruition. It will also be necessary to make use of our martial skills, because the places where we are going to go snooping are quite… erm, let’s say, not very friendly.
A LITTLE CONTEXT
Before you continue reading, I am going to make a clarification that I consider important: I am a fan obsessed with the entire franchise YAKUZA / JUDGMENT since birth, so my objectivity in this analysis will be inevitably reduced. In short, all these games seem wonderful to me and my grade will always be excellent when it comes to one of them, regardless of whether the other players consider it that way or not.
The saga YAKUZA was born in 2005 for Playstation 2, by the developer Toshihiro Nagoshi and published by Sega. The artist’s idea was always to show the modern Japanese lifestyle in as much detail as possible and also to take the player into the darkest and twisted suburbs of the Japanese mafia scene, that is, the yakuza. As an alternative, for me, to what was the glorious SHENMUE In early 2000, we covered the life and work of the legendary Kazuma Kiryu, a former member of the Toho Clan’s Dojima family, for 7 games, and we accompanied him from his early childhood until he became a grandfather (almost like the life of Goku , haha).
The Kiryu saga also had three Spin-off games, although only one was translated to the West and, thanks to the success that the franchise is currently reaping, the other two are expected to arrive soon as well. An eighth game within the main chronology was also released a couple of years ago, although this time with a new protagonist, Kasuga Ichigan, since at the time of writing Kiryu’s story already had a closure and there is no news of his back in the near future.
JUDGMENT It was born in 2019, although I don’t know if it is right to apply the spin-off concept, if you ask me I would call it a “sister saga”. How would that be? Yagami’s games take place in the exact same locations where Kiryu’s games take place. The main city, Kamurocho, is the same, with the same streets, businesses, people, and everything else. Of course, it’s still full of gangsters and tough guys who only understand the language of hitting. The main difference is that the detective games take place chronologically after the events of the previous saga, and in addition, they have all the investigative, deductive and legal addition that the previous ones did not have. But, in essence, they have a lot in common.
THE PROGRESS OF THE INVESTIGATION
JUDGMENT It is basically a police story, where we will meet many people and we will always be investigating their interests, motivations, personal relationships and the connection or not that they may have with a crime. If there is something that stands out about the Japanese police narrative, it is that it is very slow, but it is so detailed and things end up fitting together so well that if we closely follow the events, the end result ends up being very satisfactory. Full of setbacks and surprises, a good couple of examples of this narrative are series like MONSTER or, leaving aside the supernatural elements, DEATH NOTE. On LOST JUDGMENT, as I said at the beginning, a series of situations with no apparent relationship will become intertwined over time in a super complex and dark plot that touches the most sensitive fibers. And precisely on this last point I want to make a warning: the game touches on very strong issues but unfortunately so present in modern societies, such as school bullying, depression, suicide and sexual abuse, so those who decide to play it wait to find themselves a plot focused mostly on those themes. It is not a game for children, definitely.
YOU ARE SO CUTE
Technically speaking, I always considered that the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio titles exploited the potential of the consoles where they were launched, always bearing in mind that they are open world games with hundreds of characters moving at the same time, in huge and crowded cities of businesses, streets and things to do. LOST JUDGMENT is no exception, and continues to raise the bar a little more with respect to previous deliveries. The two cities where the plot takes place look absolutely beautiful and super detailed, and touring them is a pleasure. And not only that, but also the urban movement and lighting change with respect to the time of day, being generally quieter during daytime hours, while at night the clubs, bars and gambling houses fill the atmosphere with their neon lights. furious. Special mention should be made of the character models, which always looked very good but this time they are easily confused with real people. The faces have an unmatched realism, and where it was improved a little with respect to previous games is in the model of the enemy NPCs, which continue to have a more generic appearance but this time more detailed and not as repetitive as before. The movements during the matches are wonderful, and Takayuki is truly a fighting animal, with super agile movements and choreography that make the best Asian martial arts movies envy. So in the graphics department everything is great.
And the sound is not far behind. Hours and hours of dialogue recorded with superb performances in both English and Japanese (and lipsync adaptable to the language we choose, wow), lively cities where traffic noise, birds or murmurs fill the environment, and a soundtrack with themes incredible that not only change depending on the situation, from suspense, fear, unbridled action or surprise; but even in this as in all the previous games we have the possibility to get into a karaoke or a dance floor and sing or dance as many (Who does not hear the “Dame da neeee !!”)
ELEMENTARY MY DEAR WATSON
The main difference with respect to YAKUZA It’s the way we play with Yagami. Beyond the fact that the former lawyer fights like the gods and can cut the mandarin into segments to anyone who crosses him like the Dragon of Dojima, his detective side is the most important thing in the title. To solve each case, the procedure always consists of looking for clues, questioning those involved, analyzing situations (we have the option of enabling a first-person observation mode at any time that allows us to fix our gaze in depth on places, people, images and others, and thus look for details that escape the naked eye). In addition, every time we speak with someone involved in a case, we must pay attention to what to say and what not to say to them, based on the evidence we have collected, so that we do not reveal sensitive information but at the same time leading the other characters to ask us. say what we want to hear. Once enough material has been obtained, we will appear in court and use all the information obtained correctly so that the truth comes out.
AND THERE’S SO MUCH MORE, OF COURSE
And, as always in the franchise, there are TONS of bonus content, a lot of optional material that does not influence the main story but that extends the life of the game to infinity. Dozens of secondary missions, the management of a dance studio in a high school, karaoke, drone races, game houses where we can enjoy many Japanese games of chance (Mahjong, Hanafuda, Koi-Koi, Oicho-Kabu and much more ), casinos, dozens of restaurants and bars where we can taste hundreds of dishes and drinks, the promotion of personal relationships with other characters, dates with beautiful girls, skateboarding tests, the possibility of playing a wide variety of Master System games In the office of Yagami, Arcades, darts, golf, baseball, a virtual reality game and a huge etcetera, I assure you that this list that I just went through is minimal and does not even closely reflect the amount of extra activities that we can take to out, so we have guaranteed hundreds of hours of fun with the title.
I LOVE IT AND I CAN’T HIDE IT
As I said at the beginning of this review, I am a fan of this studio and its games, so for me they will always be excellent. It is true that, objectively, they have things that may not be to the liking of all players. The news between one title and the next is always minimal, which makes all games quite similar to each other. Some of the optional content is usually very difficult to learn and not very enjoyable at first, and people who are not willing to read manuals of traditional Japanese games of chance and learn to play them, such as Shogi (the game that Genome and Soun always played in “Ranma ½”) or Mahjong can not only be frustrated but also will lose much of the charm of the series. In addition, there is always a lot of Japanese humor in the franchise, which touches on topics that are not so “fun” out there in the West, such as relationships with minors or the classic perverts who break into other people’s houses to steal women’s underwear.
If we understand the type of culture that these games try to reflect, that their way of seeing things is often not in accordance with the prevailing ideologies on this side of the pond and we also realize that the representation of that far-off society is perfectly faithful, we can enjoy them without problem and, why not, become a fan like the one who writes. If not, well, there will always be other options.