Review: Lost Judgment Offers an Off-Balanced Mix of Action and Mystery

Lost Judgment feels like a genuine alternative to the Yakuza games of yore, albeit one that’s still reluctant to leave its comfort zone.

Lost Judgment
Photo: Sega

When considered side by side with last year’s turn-based Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment essentially splits developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s open-world template in two. The continuing adventures of Kamurocho lawyer turned detective Takayuki Yagami (again voiced by and bearing the likeness of Takuya Kimura) remain firmly indebted to the real-time Yakuza games of yore, taking their fast-paced combat against hordes of goons and mingling it with the investigation mechanics introduced in Yagami’s last outing. Rather than a simple shift in story focus with a few gameplay divergences to match, Lost Judgment feels like a genuine alternative, albeit one that’s still reluctant to leave its comfort zone.

In a story that’s less of a direct plot continuation than a next adventure, Yagami and his ex-yakuza partner, Kaito, make their way to Like a Dragon’s Isezaki Ijincho district in Yokohama. As consultants, they’re brought in by some pals to help investigate a standard case of high school bullying—or, at least, it looks standard at first. The 20-plus hours that follow branch outward to include a decomposing corpse, victims of teen suicide, a gang of yakuza castoffs looking to fill the Kamurocho power vacuum, and a man arrested for groping a woman on the train only for video to surface of him committing murder at exactly the same time.

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The private school setting is the game’s most fully featured new addition, a separate Ijincho location gated behind its own loading screen. The warm-hearted, After School Special-like elements of the Yakuza series take center stage during these segments, with Yagami functioning as a supportive adult figure to various troubled teens. The most elaborate minigames are tied to side missions involving the school, with Yagami using his advisory role for the Mystery Research Club to infiltrate other clubs and groups, including skaters and the eSports enthusiasts whose story involves playing rounds of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown.

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If a fist-fighting, middle-aged man with an extravagant haircut and a leather jacket that probably doesn’t smell very good by this point sounds out of place in such a setting, that juxtaposition is part of the game’s humor. Yagami doesn’t adapt his appearance or his methods in the slightest, still walking around with a humongous wallet chain dangling from his skinny jeans and displaying absolutely no qualms about inflicting the same violence on ornery high schoolers that this series typically reserves for unscrupulous adults.

The action in question is about as refined as it’s ever been in the world of Yakuza, adding a fluid “snake” style focused around countering, parrying, and disarming enemies. In contrast to the often tedious windup of the turn-based Like a Dragon, the real-time combat’s bone-crunching immediacy helps to mitigate the slow start that’s characteristic of the games in this series. But like the prior Judgment, the wall-to-wall combat feels unnecessary when Yagami is ostensibly able to interact with the world through investigative mechanics. And although the story lacks the thematic scope it might have had considering the fraught subject matter, it’s again compelling enough to stand on its own rather than as basic connective tissue for fight scenes that you must win only to then lose in the ensuing cutscene.

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The pacing in Lost Judgment seems a bit off in general, not just in the consistent plot detours that exist primarily to provide more combat, but also in how the game largely foregoes its mystery well before the final stretch. The campaign is at its most engaging when we don’t know what’s going on, and once Lost Judgment departs the school and raises the stakes it defaults to rather familiar scenes of characters chasing each other between different locations. The side stories, too, are curiously protracted, since getting access to the other school clubs requires you to do things like replay the dance club minigame a considerable number of times.

Admittedly, even if the detective mechanics broke up the repetition of Lost Judgement more often, they haven’t improved enough to carry the game as efficiently as the combat does. The climbing and stealth segments are stiff, more restrictive takes on the sort of simplistic mechanics that all blockbuster games seem to have. The interrogations and first-person investigation scenes alternate between requiring no thought at all and being frustratingly obscure, with the game either not explaining its choices very well or failing to trigger the “observe” button prompt until you stand close enough. While Lost Judgment isn’t a uniquely disappointing take on the Yakuza formula, it also isn’t particularly exciting given that it’s so easy to imagine the more daring, experimental game that could have been.

Score: 
 Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio  Publisher: Sega  Platform: PlayStation 4  Release Date: September 24, 2021  ESRB: M  ESRB Descriptions: Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol  Buy: Game

Steven Scaife

Steven Nguyen Scaife is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Buzzfeed News, Fanbyte, Polygon, The Awl, Rock Paper Shotgun, EGM, and others. He is reluctantly based in the Midwest.

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