"Judgment" Review - Elementary, my dear Kaito!

Available for: Playstation 4

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

My history with the infamous Yakuza series is pretty limited. Like many new fans, my first foray into this fabulous fist-fight focused saga was 2017's Yakuza 0, which was good enough to win the esteemed position of Game of the Year from me. Beyond that, the only other game in the saga I've played is last year's Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, which made the top 10 in the end of the year lists, but wasn't quite as good as Yakuza 0. Now we have the new spin-off of this series in Judgment, which is quite good, but not as good as last year's title. If you're noticing a downward trend here, you aren't alone. But I digress. I've taken a month or two to focus on recovery, and though I still can't do things like run or jump, I'm able to walk unassisted, meaning that the Broken Leg Review Saga is over now! So, it's business as usual over here at The Right Trigger. Now, Judgment...I mentioned that it isn't quite as good as Yakuza 6 which wasn't as good as Yakuza 0, but what does that mean? Well, dear reader, what it means is that Judgment is a great game, but it comes with the most caveats of any Yakuza game I've game. So, furrow your brow, pick up your magnifying glass, and allow me to lay out the positives and the negatives of this terribly-named Yakuza spinoff.

Judgment abandons the stern Yakuza protagonists of old in favor of Takayuki Yagami, a disgraced lawyer turned private detective working in the mean streets (and stomping grounds of former saga protagonist Kazuma Kiryu) of Kamurocho, Tokyo. Having accidentally gotten a serial killer off the hook in his lawyering days, Yagami now lives his life in a cramped little office that he shares with his only other employee, an Ex-Yakuza named Kaito. However, Yagami's life takes a different turn when various Yakuza individuals start turning up dead with their eyes gouged out across the city. After being called upon to collect evidence for the defense of a rival Yakuza captain, Yagami's dedication to justice flares up, and he begins uncovering a vast conspiracy involving drug trials, a mysterious assassin nicknamed "The Mole," and corruption that goes (as it often does in Yakuza titles) higher than anyone could guess. I can tell you with certainty that you're going to walk away from this title disappointed if you're expecting the same intricate web of motivations and double-crosses that you expect in a mainline Yakuza title. Compared to past titles, the story here is quite tame, but that's not really a negative. In fact, just about every plot twist and reveal hits well enough that the constant barrage of plot twists we're all used to isn't really missed. So, the story is a little different, but like in every Yakuza title, every single character you meet is well-formed and boasts a unique physical design. That, at least, hasn't changed. This is a story full of some of the most well-meaning villains and flawed heroes in the saga's history. There are also side characters called "friends" that you make by interacting with the city (i.e. going to restaurants, etc), and these aren't very well-crafted, but they aren't supposed to be. You see, every Yakuza title I've played has a "point." For Yakuza 0, the point was the often unnoticed power of real estate in politics. For Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, the point was the bond between parents and children. For a great deal of Judgment, I wondered what the "point," was. At first it seemed to be the Japanese legal system's infamous 99.9% conviction rate (if you're brought to court, you're guaranteed to lose no matter what), but that theme faded away pretty quickly. These games don't get made without some idea driving direction decisions, so I wondered why nothing was showing up. Then, as I continued utilizing the friend system and befriending the various business owners and day laborers in Kamurocho, it came to me. In previous titles, you were always a Yakuza, so the people you met were always part of the criminal underworld. That's a pretty niche group of people, you can't deny. But with Judgment, it's different. All of Yagami's closest friends may be Yakuza, but he was never a part of that. Yagami is first and foremost a citizen of Kamurocho. That being said, the "point" of Judgment is showing Kamurocho in a different light. Rather than simply a hotbed of Yakuza activity, Judgment revolves its side content around Kamurocho as a community. It isn't some grand overarching statement about the nature of parenthood or a unique thesis on the power of relatively unnoticed industries, but it is still an interesting take on the universe.

So the story is handled a little differently and the characters are as strong as you'd expect. What about the gameplay? Well, that can be answered by mentioning the vast number of recycled animations from Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (a topic that we'll cover a little later, don't you worry). So yeah, in terms of combat, if you've played even one Yakuza game, you'll know what to expect. You have a light attack and a heavy attack, and you take out crowds of enemies using combinations of the two. In addition, as you fight you build up your "EX Gauge," which when filled to certain levels allows you to execute "EX" actions such as bashing an enemy's face in with something you're holding or working together on the fly with a friend who happens to be in the area (my favorite instance of which involves Yagami being tossed a bottle of hot sauce, then proceeding to pour the hot sauce in the eyes of a nearby enemy). It's what we've seen before, except "heat" has simply been relabeled to "EX." A slightly different combat offering that Judgment brings to the table, however, are Yagami's two fighting styles: the crane and the tiger. Rather than revolving around attack speed as the combat styles of Yakuza 0 did, Judgment's fighting styles revolve around enemy numbers. Attacks in the style of the crane are more widespread and work better when faced with lots of enemies. In contrast, the style of the tiger is tighter and is therefore better for boss fights or other 1-on-1 scenarios. I personally never noticed much of a difference between the two, but it's a nice thought.
Outside of combat, Judgment also provides a couple new gameplay styles. And they're...ok. Firstly, there's the chase sequences. These are somewhat-railroaded somewhat-not segments where Yagami chases after somebody and you simply go through quicktime events to dodge things. Secondly, there's the tailing sequences. These are exactly what you've experienced if you've played an earlier Assassin's Creed title. Tailing segments haven't improved in the history of gaming, so they're still somehow simultaneously boring and ridiculous here. Finally, there's the "investigation" sequences. These put you in first person mode and have you walking and looking around very slowly for evidence. None of these extra gameplay offerings are particularly good, and the tailing segments do tend to last longer than you ever want them to, but they don't really hurt anything.
Like any other title in this series, you can bet that there's plenty to do in Kamurocho. You can play darts, shogi, mahjong (which I actually somewhat learned how to play in order to get one of the friend options), and of course, you can do the best side activity in any Yakuza title: Karao....oh.....wait....there isn't any karaoke in this one. So yeah, whether it's because Sega's replacement of Yagami's voice actor meant that karaoke had to be cut, or whether it's because everybody at Sega decided to sniff all the glue in the office, karaoke is no longer here. But it's ok, because they've replaced it with a side activity that is actually pretty fun: drone racing. Yagami owns a drone that he can customize and race, and if you let yourself get into it, the process of finding new parts for the drone and winning races can actually be pretty thrilling. I always say that in every game that has racing, the racing is the worst part of it, but in Judgment that's not the case. I ended up liking it so much that, in a moment of weakness, I ended up getting a super cheap drone myself! That's how fun it is, dear reader.
Unfortunately, not every decision made in this game is as fun as the drone racing. You see, at a certain point, Yagami gets on the bad side of the Keihin Gang, a group of thugs who causes trouble in Kamurocho. At this point, a new feature gets introduced: random periods of high enemy numbers. Essentially, at random points you'll get a text from Yagami's stupid shrieking mimsy friend, Kim, saying that a couple of the leaders of the gang are in town looking for blood. Once you get this text, the "threat" level of the map goes to 100% and can only be brought down with time or by defeating each leader in the city. During the period of time where the meter is above 0%, you'll run into gangs of enemies pretty much every other step, and it's SO DAMN ANNOYING!!!!!! After the first day or so of playing with this on the board, I started to get angry every time I got a shrieking text from Kim because I knew that no matter what I did, I was going to get interrupted every other second! I'd find myself going "Oh, for crying out f***ing loud!!" every time I heard the "they've spotted you" soundbyte. I get it, the point is to introduce a little bit of chaos into the mix, but all it does is take away from the experience. And what's worse, if you make the mistake of not fighting the gang leaders and instead just trying to play the freaking game, when the threat level reaches 0 and the enemies leave, you'll get a text from Kim saying "hey maaaan, what giiiiives you were supposed to heeeeelp meeeee, maybe you shouldn't be so seeeelfiiiish!" Yeah, Kim, well maybe Yagami should've let them beat some sense into you that one time!....
f***ing Kim....your contact photo in the phone makes you look like a sissy...
But yeah, outside of some uninspired new gameplay features and Kim's nagging power hour, the gameplay here is still top-notch.

That brings us to the technical side of things. I think the best way to emphasize the technical state of this game would be to bring up a realization I had while trying for the Mahjong friend. At some point, I realized that there were two types of menus in this game: one at around 30 fps with one button layout, and another at around 60fps with brighter color and a different button layout. And I figured this was odd, but whatever. Well, as I played a newer version of Mahjong, it hit me: It isn't that they made two types of menus...it's that they only made menus for newer things. This version of Mahjong had an updated rule, so it had the newer type of menu, while the old version of Mahjong simply re-used the menu from Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. Not only did they copy and paste the look of some of these mini-games, in other words, they copied and pasted the menus without changing a thing. That's the way to describe the technical side of Judgment: lazy at best. Earlier I mentioned that some animations had also been re-used. What I mean to say is that all the animations used for "EX" actions (save for the hot sauce one) were simply lifted from Yakuza 6. Now, re-use of animations is a common thing, and it isn't necessarily bad, but when you consider that they re-used menus without updating them alongside brand new menus, only creating something new when they absolutely had to, that's an unprecedented amount of laziness. Sadly, this isn't where the technical issues end. There are also frequent framerate dips (and the graphics aren't that great in the first place, making it stand out even more). Also, you can always tell when Yagami is about to get a text/call or when a cutscene is about to trigger, because there's always a freeze time of at most 3 seconds before it happens. If the entire screen up and freezes for a sec, you can bet that it's because something is about to happen. It's obvious that very little testing took place for this title, as that would be the kind of thing that any QA-er worth his salt would've been able to pick up on. Not even Anthem has that kind of thing happen!
Now, what's good about the technical side of things? Well...those new menus are pretty smooth....and the soundtrack is good...yep...that's about all there is.

Now, before we conclude, there's one thing I always talk about in Yakuza titles that I haven't yet touched upon with Judgment. That topic, dear reader, is sexism. I'm far from what one would consider a social justice anything...but these games don't make it easy to keep from looking like one. This series just has this problem with sexism that it never quite seems to rectify, and I always find it worth noting. At its best, its an earth-shattering plot twist that devastates all the characters involved being "wait, you were married before?!" At it's middle, it's Kiryu chatting up cam girls online while he's looking for his missing teenage daughter-figure. At it's worst, it's placing bets on matches where skimpily-dressed cosplay girls in fetish outfits beat the ever-living S**T out of each other through orgasmic moans. But, as I mentioned in my review for Yakuza 6, the series has been making baby steps with each game. So...how does Judgment score? Well, I'm happy to report that this is by far the least sexist game in the saga...but that being said, to say that something is the "least" sexist does imply that it is still sexist. And it really just boils down to one measly thing, not even that bad, but still not great. In one of the girlfriend arcs (there are 4 "girlfriends" you can pursue), the object of Yagami's affection has a hard time with commitment and doesn't trust guys (a fact not helped along by the fact that Yagami is presumably dating 4 women at the same time), so in an effort to act like she hasn't recognized Yagami's affection, she brings along her friend to a date. Now...if you were from a country that isn't quite caught up with the rest of the civilized world when it comes to women...how might you play up this situation for comedy? If you answered "make the friend fat and totally into Yagami," you'd be correct! Now, when I say "fat," this is "fat" by non-American standards, but nevertheless, it's undoubtedly the point of this friend's design. For the rest of the date, you have to either be a decent person or ignore the friend completely. As I said, compared to a stewardess and teacher very nearly making out as they beat the ever-living S**T out of each other, this isn't so bad. But it was a moment where I had my head in my hands, thinking, "guuuuuys, come onnnn! I don't wanna have to keep writing these paragraphs." So yeah, not the kind of thing I'm gonna take points off for (unlike last time), but still worth noting. They'll get there someday, I hope. On the positive side, on the one or two occasions where you end up deciding exactly how to "pretty up" one of the game's female characters, it's because she's joining forces with you temporarily to get information out of someone, which is the kind of thing I believe female cops have to do on the job all the time. So while a usually objectifying minigame exists, it has a purpose that isn't just fanservice. One could argue that you don't need a minigame for that plot point, but *shrug*.

I have perhaps sounded conflicted about Judgment, but that's not really the case. I don't regret my time with it, and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves the Yakuza series. It's just that the few flaws with the game are pretty large, so they warrant a lot of discussion. On one hand, the combat is still top notch in spite of a few uninspired new gameplay segments, and the side activities are as engaging as they've always been. Plus, the story is pretty great, the characters are solid, there's less to complain about in the sexism department, and the racing minigame doesn't suck! However, the game does bear significant problems. It's just lazily put together, and while they try to make the moment-to-moment gameplay more dynamic with the Keihin gang's presence, they fail miserably. As I said in the beginning, Yakuza 6 wasn't quite as good as Yakuza 0, and Judgment isn't quite as good as Yakuza 6, but it's still a fine Yakuza experience that you won't want to miss.

Let us review:
Kim's Keihin-Kicking Katastrophe - 1.0
Technical laziness and hiccups - 0.8

The final score for Judgment is...




8.2/10 - Good

Good work, Sega, good work