Judgment left a big impression on me with everything that it presented to me. It had a fantastic story, awesome characters, stellar gameplay, lots of side content, and a great soundtrack to add to it all. Lost Judgment improves on some of these aspects and is definitely a game that I heavily enjoyed.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The story is really well done with great characters
- Fun and enjoyable gameplay, with improved combat
- Four combat styles to utilize
- Lots of sub-cases and mini-games to play
- Fantastic soundtrack that is amazing to listen to
- Beautiful graphics that make you immersed into Yokohama
Cons
- The side-cases were not entertaining
Story
The story starts out with Saori Shirosaki and Issei Hoshino who are defending a man by the name of Akikhiro Ehara that was charged with indecently touching someone. Takayuki Yagami and Masaharu Kaito were called by Fumiya Sugiura and Makoto Tsukumo to help with Seiryo High School’s bullying problem. However, Shirosaki calls Yagami and tells him that the case with Ehara and Seiryo High, are somehow connected to each other. Yagami has to figure out what is going on and get to the bottom of this case, while the secrets of the high school bleed out from underneath.
The story for Lost Judgment may not be as good as the previous game's story but it was still an enjoyable experience overall. The characters are still likable and some of the plot twists were very well done overall. All of my favorite characters are back, and they are just as loveable as they were in the first game.
I don’t want to go too much into Lost Judgment’s story as it’s really good and is one of the game's highlights in my opinion.
Gameplay
Lost Judgment makes a huge improvement over the first game's gameplay, combat is vastly improved and feels more fluid. The Dragon Engine once again makes its return in this game and still feels very nice. Combat does feel a bit different but that’s a good thing as it feels fresh, while still having some of the old mechanics to it. Yagami does have his Crane/Tiger style available to him, but Yagami does also have two new styles for him to utilize now, that being Snake and Boxing style.
Crane Style allows Yagami to deal with groups of enemies and is perfect for taking out weaker enemies when fighting bosses. Crane Style is not really effective against bosses so it’s best to switch to Tiger Style when dealing with them.
Tiger Style has been nerfed a bit but is still my favorite style to use overall, you do have to finish enemies off with a charge attack, but it can break blocking. Tiger Style is of course perfect for taking out bosses and is very useful in that regard.
Snake Style is a new fighting style that Yagami has access to that allows him to help deal with enemies that have weapons on them. Yagami can counterattack and redirect them at foes, this style is more focused on countering than direct damage like the other two styles. When he is in EX Boost mode, instead of knocking out scared enemies he will make them faint instead. Also, Snake Style has a unique grab animation where Yagami will put his opponent in an arm lock.
This fighting style is kind of similar to Tanimura’s fighting style in Yakuza 4 but it does not require parrying to be the main feature.
Boxing Style is a DLC-based fighting style and is also a unique style in that it’s the only one that does not have a grab-based attack. Rather, he will perform a hook attack, and holding the grab button will make him do a charged hook. To get upgrades for Boxing Style you have to play to the Boxing side case to unlock them, then you can buy them for 100 SP each.
After each battle, you will be awarded Special Points (SP) which you can use on your fighting styles to get extra moves, EX attacks, health, damage, etc. You can also get SP by doing side-cases and doing objectives at the same time.
There is a lot to do in Kamurocho and Yokohama, Lost Judgment mainly takes place in Yokohama but you can freely travel in both areas at any time if you so wish. You can do side-cases, play games like batting at the batting cages, card games, or play arcade games like Sonic the Fighters.
Although despite there being a bunch of additional content in Lost Judgment, I personally did not find it interesting and worthwhile to do. I tried some of it but did not find any enjoyment as I did in the previous game. Some people did enjoy it so more power to them, there are some fun ones like teaching this dance club how to dance and such. So, they are not completely bare bones for all of them.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Lost Judgement is fantastic, every song that was shown was definitely worth listening to. My favorite one has to be Green Vibes and Hydra, Green Vibes is Snake’s Styly’s theme and Hydra really catches off an intense moment.
Graphics and Performance
The graphics for Lost Judgment are really beautiful, the world you are in feels like a natural city that you would explore with people chatting, cars moving, and more. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I did come across a few low-frame drops but I fixed them in the weirdest way possible and the game ran fine.
Final Verdict
Lost Judgement is a fantastic game that's, in my opinion, worth the full price. I recommend you get this game bundled with the first game as it comes with The Kaito Files as well. While some things in Lost Judgement were not as fantastic as in the previous one, it still holds up for a worthwhile purchase and is definitely a game worthy of praise by fans of the previous game.
If you want some more of my thoughts and other stuff related to Lost Judgment, then I recommend watching my video on both games.