Judgment Review: When The Eyes of a P.I. Are Upon You

By ZD


    Judgment is a spin-off game of the Yakuza series by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. Aside both series taking place in fictional Tokyo suburb of Kamurocho in the same universe, this game and the mainline series are separated by several degrees. There are no appearances by anyone from the mainline series in Judgment as cameos, the closest thing is a vague reference to Kiryu in one of the descriptions of one of the moves that the protagonist learns.

    You play as former lawyer gone private investigator, Takayuki Yagami, who gave up his life as lawyer after wrongfully convicting someone to death row. For redemption he takes up cases of varying degrees around Kamurocho and brings those criminals to justice; his way of enforcing the law on the other side of the stand.

    The game plays very similarly to the other Yakuza games, you explore the very open (and familiar to those who have played previous games in the series) city of Kamurocho and sometimes encounter members of the Yakuza or other thugs who engage in combat with you, during this combat mode you can pick up temporary weapons to use or switch between fighting stances (like Kiyru and Majima do) to win these fights. There is a good amount of side quests that progress and increase as you get further through the game, these include various sub-plot story lines with people you meet along the way and there is even a friendship and dating system that exists as well. You can visit actual Sega arcades and play classic Sega games there or you can do several other activities spread throughout the town such as karaoke, drone racing, and much more.

    Aside fighting during the missions there are various other mission types like tailing, examining a crime scene as Yagami or with your drone, and escort missions. Thankfully the aforementioned tailing and escort missions aren't as awful as they are in some other games, just time consuming at most. The main narrative is very serious and full of emotional moments so in order to counter this a lot of the side quests are more light hearted and even funny a majority of the time.

    Despite borrowing a lot from the main series it spins off from, Judgment and their set of likeable characters, a deep narrative, and their own take of what else is going on in the streets of Kamurocho opposite of Kiryu/Majima/Akiyama gives this series more than enough legs to stand on its own as an independent series, this was further proven by no need to excessive reference to already established characters and events from the Yakuza series. Judgment is a great game in its own right and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun game with a deep and rich narrative and loveable characters.


Reviewed on PS4.

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