Lost Judgment (PS4)

I’m no stranger to the Yakuza franchise, and i’m glad Judgment got a sequel considering Yakuza from now on will probably follow in 7’s footsteps and will continue as a turn-based RPG series with Ichiban as the new protagonist of the series, not that i mind of course as Yakuza 7 was excellent, however what i missed from 7 was being able to beat the crap out of thugs with the fast-paced action combat that the series is renowned for in the fantastic setting of Yokohama – which is the biggest and most content rich map in the franchise to date, and we finally have a game that delivers that.

Not only is the combat in this game extremely fast paced and fun, we of course also have a great story that lives up to the predecessor that is ‘Judgment’ which i would recommend playing through before you play this one as you will feel lost (no pun intended) as to who these characters are.

I won’t go into spoilers about the story but it’s got about as many twists as you’d expect from this franchise and i welcome it, if you like the story in these games – you’ll love this one as well, though i’d say Yakuza 0, 2 and 5 still hold their positions as the best games in the series, and the only reason i bring up Yakuza is because this is a spin-off series in the same universe, sometimes having character cameos from that particular series, you don’t need to play any of those to understand the Judgment games though.

This game has great combat, great story, oh and the game is cram packed with content, you can easily get a 100+ hours out of it if you’re going for 100% completion, tons of classic arcade games, you get to collect Sega Saturn games, gachapon and claw machine prizes to decorate your office with, you can buy and wear different costumes, all the classic staples of the series are here, not to mention a ton of side-stories to complete which all have their own charm, you can also skate around in this game and even buy new skateboards to get around Yokohama and Kamurocho a little faster, and that’s not mentioning even half of the content the game has.

I don’t really have anything i hate or dislike about this game, there are some things i could nitpick i guess, like the aforementioned skating being a little bit janky and not really having it’s full potential utilized, i miss the first person camera, “technically” it’s there but it doesn’t allow you to run, also the costumes cannot be used in Premium adventure, also there’s some plot holes here and there, but in all honesty these negatives don’t really matter as the positives completely outweigh the negatives, as this series continues to prove that you don’t need a vast and empty open world to have a good game, a small but extremely detailed world full of personality is just so much better.

Which is why this is getting full marks from me, 5/5