#LOST JUDGMENT GENRES SERIES#

Plus, it never gets old to see the special EX finishing moves. You’ll never get tired of combat segments, especially owing to how stylish they look and how great it feels to execute attacks. There’s a separate skill tree for each combat stance, as well as separate ones for stat increases (health, damage, etc.) and miscellaneous stuff like increasing your alcohol tolerance (yes, really) and more. You’ll need a lot of SP for the game’s expansive skill tree. The more creative you are in fights, the more SP (the game’s version of experience points) is rewarded, which gives the player incentive to keep switching up combat stances during battles. Even though the Snake Stance is arguably the slowest in terms of speed, it’s great for playing defensively like grappling attacks and even disarming enemies of their weapons. I personally like the Snake Stance, especially against stronger single enemies or bosses. The Crane Stance utilizes wide AoE kicks for crowd control, while the Tiger Stance is great for dishing out damage via a flurry of punches. Protagonist Takayuki Yagami has access to three combat stances which can be switched at any time during combat, including the Crane Stance, the Tiger Stance and the new Snake Stance.Įach combat stance has its own advantages and quirks. It’s great then, that the combat sections are worth looking forward to and awesome to actually play. After hours of dialogue and tedious detective work, you’ll get rewarded with fights here and there. The highlight of the game is definitely the combat. A lot of the actual detective work also feels more tedious than anything and only serves the pad out the game even further by throwing a bunch of new gadgets and mechanics every now and then. I know that’s the RGG Studio style but it’s a slog to go through hours of dialogue and cutscenes at a time just for a few minutes of combat to break the monotony. The biggest issue I have with Lost Judgment is that the game consists of almost 80 to 90 percent of dialogue and cutscenes, with only the remaining 20 to 10 percent featuring the various minigames and actual combat. It can make for a bit of dissonance if you’re not used to the RRG Studio style.

Some moments will feel more grounded, while others will feel silly and even corny, like mentoring the dance club or catching a panty thief. Still, the game’s tone tends to veer from one extreme end of the spectrum to another. The plot in Lost Judgment mainly touches on heavy and controversial themes such as bullying and suicide amongst the youth in Japan, which is why the school setting is required in the first place. It even feels sort of Persona-like, in a way, except you’re now a grown man instead of being a fellow student. Oh, and trust me, the school setting is a major part of the game, and there’s no avoiding it. You’ll spend time at high school clubs and even loitering around the school solving side quests called School Stories. That’s right, players will have to assume the role of the very much adult Takayuki Yagami creepily stalking students and even beating up delinquent high school kids the same way he beats up Yakuza gang members. To continue this investigation, protagonist Takayuki Yagami and his team of detectives will have to infiltrate and go undercover at the most unlikely of places… The plot in Lost Judgment begins with a very grisly discovery of a murder victim and its supposed connection to an ongoing court case involving a potential suspect who’s already being acquitted for groping a woman on a train. Like I previously mentioned, the story in an RGG Studio can be very unconventional and varied in tone, to say the least. Toffee), but I had no problems whatsoever with Lost Judgment since the beginning of the game gives a decent intro and tutorial for newbies. I never played Judgment (you can still check out our review here from KKP’s own Mr. What’s good about Lost Judgment is that despite being a sequel, you can pretty much just jump right into this game without having played its predecessor. If you’ve ever played a Yakuza game before, you’d probably know what to expect from the narrative and characters of an RGG Studio game. The protagonist is now not a former member of the Yakuza like Kazuma Kiryu, but instead, a former lawyer named Takayuki Yagami who is now private investigator or licensed detective. This game essentially still has a lot of the Yakuza stuff you’d expect from an RGG Studio game, but with a twist. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s long-running Yakuza franchise recently released its seventh entry and now even its own 2018 spinoff, Judgment, has received a sequel in the form of Lost Judgment. Genre:Â Action-Adventure, Beat-Em-Up, Detective, High School Setting

#LOST JUDGMENT GENRES SERIES#

Platform(s): PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Lost judgment genres