Well, its time for a new review with new content for a change and this one will be a review of a game I just recently finished playing and the game in question is the action video game, Lost Judgment, which is the sequel to Judgment (which is kind of spin-off of the Yakuza games) and centers around a private detective called Yagami.
So, how does the sequel of Judgment fair??? Well, let's take a look and find out...
And as the story has a rather elaborate plot I will give a warning below...
SPOILERS ARE AHEAD (BUT NOT TOO MANY!!)
STORY
So, I've quoted a bit of the plot summary from Wikipedia.
"Private detective Takayuki Yagami and his partner Masaharu Kaito are invited by their friends Fumiya Sugiura and Makoto Tsukumo to assist their fledgling detective business located in the Ijincho district of Yokohama to solve a bullying case. Chairman Yuzo Okuda of the prestigious Seiryo High School, explains he wants to hire the detectives to covertly investigate the school to determine if any bullying has been taking place among the students, especially since the school had gotten involved in a bullying scandal in 2017 when a student, Toshiro Ehara, committed suicide and a student teacher, Hiro Mikoshiba, had gone missing two months prior.
Yagami covertly discourages Koda's bullies from targeting her by convincing the rest of her class to stand up to them. Yagami receives a call from his friend Saori Shirosaki at the Genda Law Office. Shirosaki explains that one of her clients, Akihiro Ehara, Toshiro's father, was arrested and convicted for sexual battery, but during his court testimony he revealed he knew about the death of Mikoshiba, who he holds responsible for Toshiro's suicide. However, the discovery of Mikoshiba's body and identification of his corpse only occurred after Ehara's statement, leading Shirosaki to believe Ehara was involved in Mikoshiba's death and deliberately got himself caught for sexual battery to provide himself an alibi for his murder.
So, from here, Yagami begins to investigate the connection between Ehara's sexual battery case and the murder of Mikoshiba..."
THOUGHTS
As a sequel to Judgment, Lost Judgment is an excellent follow-up that has a very entertaining and engrossing story that follows Yagami once again as he takes on a challenging case in order to find the link between a sexual harrassment and a murder case. And the game's characters are all very engaging once again with Yagami and Kaito making a likeable duo as the detectives working on the case. This also includes the return of Yagami's associates from Genda Law, Ryuzo Genda, Shirosaki, and Hoshiro and this time round Yagami has some competition as Siguira (the masked man from the first game) has set up his own agency along with IT expert, Tsukumo. The game also takes place between two towns now with Kamurocho and Yokohama with Yagami visiting Yokohama to work along side with Suguira and Tsukomo, which adds a nice change of scenery from being just in the one town.
The story is also very elaborate as it is spread over 13 chapters just like the first game, there is plenty of detail to go over with a tonne of dialogue options as well as side characters, side jobs and other activities to try out in both towns. So, this is definitely a fun sequel but at the same it also tells a very dramatic story with the steaks getting higher as it goes on.
GAMEPLAY
As for the gameplay, I will do the usual and split it into sub sections, which I will cover below in more detail.
COMBAT
Starting with the combat, Yagami once again can pull off a number of combo attacks as he takes on multiple enemies at once with a mixture of punches, kicks, throws and even parkour is thrown into the mix here! And this time round Yagami has an additional fighting style known as Snake, where Yagami can counterattack and disarm enemies along with his other styles, the Crane for crowd control and Tiger for fighting one on one. Yagami can also perform special action attacks where he grab certain items and bash enemies with them such as bikes or traffic cones.
Yagami can also upgrade his attack power as well as learn new moves for each of his three styles and these moves combined can also lead to unlocking extra health for Yagami also, which will be invaluable as the game becomes more challenging.
STEALTH AND TAILING
Yagami can also perform stealth actions in the game at certain points when he trise to move from one area to another without getting detected and these sections are generally straight forward enough. Yagami in his stealth moments can also throw coins to distract enemies, so he can move past them or even perform a choke hold attack to put them down.
As for tailing tasks, Yagami will follow targets at a distance to gather information for clients or himself but you have to careful that Yagami doesn't get spotted or you need to start the tail action all over again. Yagami however can also pretend that he isn't tailing if his suspect is suspicious as he will check his phone or take a selfie. Yagami can also use his phone to take pictures if necessary of his targets to gather info.
SIDE MISSIONS
Throughout the game, Yagami can also perform a number of side missions that aren't related to the main story and some of these are for characters that appear in the main story also. As an example, Yagami ends up working at the school where he investigates for evidence of bullying and works with a tenacious young girl who is the leader of the Mystery Research Club, who works on cases of her own and after a flaky start begins to trust Yagami.
MINI GAMES
Yagami can also play a number of mini games in his office that are old Sega classics such as Super Hang-on, Fantasy Zone, Sonic the Fighters, Motor Raid and Virtua Fighter 5 to name a few. I actually had a go at one of them briefly, which I think was Super Hang-on, which was kind of fun but also quite tricky as the old Sega games were no doubt quite difficult!
HEALING & BUFFING ITEMS
Yagami will also have access to different items that can heal his health that he can purchase in food stores or chemists (I think they are chemists at least!). Yagami can also regain some health from purchasing meals such as sandwiches, or specific Japanese cuisine or even just dining for a meal or in other cases, resting on his couch will also replenish his HP.
As for buffable items, Yagami can use different items that boost his attack power and re-fill EX guage, which gives him the ability to perform powerful attacks for a short period of time, a bit like the devil trigger system in Devil May Cry.
GRAPHICS
As for the game's graphics, Lost Judgment looks simply superb with the game's environments all rich and detailed from the streets of Kamurocho to inner settings of nightclubs, bars to also the streets of Yokohama. But what's even more impressive are the character models, who all look terrific with the regular players character models a bit more enhanced than before and the new characters also look terrific. In fact I was convinced that one of the characters, Ehara, looked life-like in the game and that the super-imposed a real life actor's image into the game! So, overall I was very impressed with the visuals of the game and it certainly looks great on the Xbox Series X that I played it on.
VOICE ACTING
As for the game's voice acting, the cast are all on excellent form as before although I did only play the game with the English voiced actors and not the Japanese ones but the dialogue is well synced for the American accents that feature here. So, I will mention the English voiced voice actors for the cast below.
Starting with Greg Chun, who reprises his role as the former lawyer turned private detective, Yagami who works on a challenging case along with his parter Kaito and lawyer, Saori as well Suguira and Tsukomo. Chun delivers another excellent performance as Yagami and shows the character's charm, decency, bravery and stubborness all at once (well not really all the same time but you get the idea).
Crispin Freeman is also great once again in his role as Kaito, Yagami's partner at the agency, who is also a former Yakuza member, who was disgraced and left his clan. Freeman provides some great moments in the game and also some comic relief particularly as early on, Kaito has the hots for one of the teachers at the school him and Yagami are working.
As for the new cast members, Todd Haberkorn does a fine a job as the Jin Kuwana, who is a mysterious handyman that helps out Yagami but also has some hcraadark secrets that we learn about later on in the game. Kuwana's character is really interesting as there are times you don't know which side of the fencing he is sitting on.
Matt Yang King is also excellent in his role as the main villain, Soma, who is the leader of a criminal underworld group known as RK (stands for Red Knife) but I won't say too much more about him than that here to avoid too much spoilers!
Stephanie Shieh also is very good in her role as Saori, the lawyer who works on the case of Ehara, who is found guilty of sexual battery but may also be linked to a murder. Shieh herself did not voice Saori in the first game but she does a fine job and in fact I have to say I was convinced that it was the same voice actress!
And last of all Mark Whitten is also very good in his reprised role of Sugiura, who was a former thief but now after helping Yagami in the events of the first game, has started his own detective agency in the town of Yokohama.
MUSIC
As for the music, the score was written by several composers but the primary one was Hidenori Shoji and its a very good score overall and is similar to the first game with some new tracks added in also. Its a good mix of dramatic and playful and at times even poignant pieces that fit the tone of the game perfectly well throughout.
FLAWS
As for flaws, yes Lost Judgment does have some.
For starters, I would have to say that the game similar to the first one, does have some tedious moments in it such as some of the side missions, which feel a bit tacked on and pointless such as the detective dog that can solve cases. This one was a bit silly to say the least that you had a dog that could be Sherlock Holmes! I mean I have heard of sniffer dogs obviously but a dog that is that inquisitive seems a bit much.
Another issue is to do with again, the endless amounts of fighting that goes on in the game as Yagami tries to run from A to B throughout as he runs on the streets and bumps into gang after gang and he is forced to fight them, it does get a bit tiresome. To be fair, they had scaled back the amount of fighting you had to do a bit this time round on the streets and isn't quite annoying but it still does happen quite alot.
There are also some annoying issues with moments in the game where Yagami looks for clues at a crime scene or in other situations and you find yourself scanning the scene and there might be just one or two clues you are missing that aren't even obvious to the eye! And there were quite a few times where I had to look up Youtube videos to discover what clues I was missing in certain moments, which made it quite annoying.
And I won't say anything about the actual ending of the game but what I will say is that towards the end of the game there is LOAD OF FIGHTING! I mean its just overkill the amount of guys you have to takedown as you progress near the end! And the game advises before the finale starts, you should stock up on healing items but that in itself is an understatement given the amount of guys you need to fight here! However by the time I got to the final boss, I had completely ran out of healing items and got killed almost immediately and had to restart the fight! So, yeah the fighting get's just a bit repetitive at times here.
This brings me onto another issue which is to do with the fact that you can only hold three of each healing item and no more, which is a bit annoying as it would be better if you could have at least say 5 of each but I guess that make things a bit too easy. You can use food for healing during fights but it doesn't restore much of your HP which is not too great overall if you run out of healing items.
The game arguably is also a bit too long as the story mode lasts over 20 hours with 13 chapters, it is pretty long winded and the story while engrossing for the most part, it does drag a little bit at times also. So, it wouldn't have been a bad thing if they had trimmed the story just a bit to make it a bit tighter although it is still a good bit shorter than the first game.
And last of all, I think from a plot standpoint, its amazing that Yagami doesn't face some serious criminal prosecutions in this game himself as there are various times where he beats the crap of school kids! I mean to be fair, the kids are bullies and they provoke Yagami in these situations leaving him little choice but to fight but they could easily turn on him and have him prosecutred for assaulting them! The same can also be said for a cop in the game too that Yagama fights at one stage and beats the crap out of him too, yet he won't face any prosecution after either! Ah well, its only a game.
So, that's it for the flaws.
SUM UP
So, in summing up, Lost Judgment is an excellent sequel and features a gripping story, engaging characters and some excellent voice acting as well as some fun combat and other side activities. The game does drag on maybe a bit too long though at times and it has to be said even though the combat is fun, it can get VERY repetitive after a while just like in the first game.
However, if you can forgive it all that, then Lost Judgment is still well worth having a look at and a very enjoyable game.
So, I will rate Lost Judgment:
8.5 out of 10
So, that's it for ow and I will be back with another review of some kind soon.
Till then its bye for now!
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