The original Judgment is one of the finest games RGG has ever put out, a truly gripping mystery thriller with tons of charm, and the first game in the DE era that actually felt right at home with the new engine. Lost Judgment on the other hand, expands on the previous entry with tons of novel content, and a new and enthralling case for our (sexy) friend Yagami to solve, spanning from high school bullying all the way to the darkest parts of the state's underbelly. There's a lot that I enjoy about this game, but also a few interesting flaws to point out.
The story, as previously mentioned, is really good, though it does feel a tad detached from Yagami himself, as the first game covers the most important case/lawyer defense in his life, that leads to how he is as a person today, but here he's mostly just in it to help out one of his peers, Saori, with her own defense, and thus he doesn't get much in terms of character development. In a similar vein, Yagami's friend group is pretty well established at this point so they end up mostly playing the role of straightforward supports for him. Still, the newly introduced Kuwana, Sawa, Tesso etc. are very compelling in their own right, and it's got easily one of the coolest antagonists in the whole series of games (I shall not spoil anything in this review).
The side content is also one of the best in the series, it retains a lot from Judgment, retouching some of it, but it also adds a sizeable amount of high school club related stuff that is [i]mostly[/i] pretty fun [i](the bikers minigame is a genuine pain in the ass)[/i] and the overarching story is quite nice, and so are the characters involved. I will say, I have a pretty huge gripe though, and that is the lack of a colosseum (the original Judgment also had this issue and I expected it to be solved for the sequel). What the ♥♥♥♥ where they thinking giving us such awesome combat and limiting it to just random street fights and the main missions? They had the perfect setup with the Genbukai from the boxing substory and they didn't use it? Are they stupid? Well, ♥♥♥♥.
Speaking of... let's talk COMBAT. Yea it's pretty phenomenal. It's easily the best in the dragon engine games, and potentially the best overall, taking the previous game as a base, adding a couple new styles, rebalancing the previous ones and making the glorious juggle mechanic much more accessible and compelling. Some of the previous games like Yakuza 0 had a bit of a styles problem, where they felt a bit too generalistic and didn't flow too well into each other a lot of the time. LJ's styles on the other hand have better defined niches that sort of guide the player into using the correct one for the situation at hand, with crane's crowd control/juggling prowess, tiger's power/super armor, snake's defense/disarming capability and boxer's speed... and power... and defense... and easy juggle setup... and heat buildup... alright, honestly boxer's really damn strong lol. The main bosses also feel a lot more fun to fight than other games, courtesy of the amount of different options available for fighting, and also the removal of the annoying "mortal wounds" from Judgment, lord knows they will not be missed.
I do have a couple complaints though, firstly the new mechanics of climbing and stealth felt pretty underutilized and undercooked, especially stealth, it's bad, genuinely one of the most on-rails and unnecessary feeling stealth systems in any game I've played lmao. To be fair however, they did make tailing a lot less frequent and much quicker, and the chases are also a bit better. Secondly, a couple of the stories of the bigger side cases in the previous game were reused, and it felt a bit uninspired ngl, especially because they were made a bunch shorter and less interesing.
All in all however, Lost Judgment is a worthy sequel that manages to be in the same ballpark of quality as the first game, improving on a lot of the gameplay elements and providing a fresh and engaging experience. It's a shame that the Judgment series will probably not get another sequel but oh well, all good things must come to an end. I rate it a solid Kaito/10.
