Funny / Judgment

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. Tread carefully.

While this might be one of the darkest entries in the Like a Dragon series yet, this is technically still an RGG Studio production... therefore there's still plenty of laughs to be had!

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Story

• How does Yagami fix the interior A/C Unit at KJ Art? The same way he broke the one outside - Percussive Maintenance!
  • Just the fact that he pulls a Look Behind You on a Kyorei grunt (even further still is that you can't fail this QTE whatsoever, it'll keep looping itself until you get it right) while he's fixing said A/C unit is priceless!
• On another visit to KJ Art later down the line, Yagami accidentally bumps into a thug carrying a box full of weapons and other improvised equipment. When the thug trips the alarm and prepares to square off with Yagami, all that he can muster is an "Oh, for fuck's sake" look on his face!
• Yagami's introduction to the Keihin Gang, particularly after he beats Kasai for the first time.
  Kasai: (running away from Yagami) And don't come back!
  Yagami: That's what you say when you win, dumbass.
  Kasai: Nobody asked you!
• The case where you have to find out who ate Saori's cake, with a lot of Ham-to-Ham Combat between Yagami and Mafuyu, plus an Ace Attorney reference. ...And then it turns out that nobody actually ate the cake; Genda had thrown it away because it had spoiled following a power outage. Then, using Saori's own words, Genda asks, "Don't you even consider the people who have to take the trash out?" The look on Saori's face is priceless, to say the least.
• Murase's shit-eating grin when Yagami and Kaito get caught by Shioya and his goons while trying to scope out KJ Art. It has to be seen to be believed.
• After the Kyorei clan tries to kidnap Mafuyu, Yagami and the gang burst into Honmaruen all-guns-blazing for some retribution... when they stumble upon a line of thugs enthusiastically practicing the can-can.
  Yagami: What the...?
  Conductor: Hey, you're outta step, dumbass! You're never gonna get any laughs with moves like that! Gimme some fire, chuckleheads! Now... Un! Deux! Trois! Un! Deux! Trois!
  Kaito: What the shit is this?
  Sugiura: Whatever it is, it's killing the mood...
  • And when you finally get to Shioya, he's...well, rehearsing a show with a bunch of hostesses dressed like high-school girls. What is it with the Kyorei Clan and dances?
• Yagami and Kaito need to wiretap the Matsugane office to find Hamura, so they beat up a Matsugane guy called Tashiro for his clothes to infiltrate the place. The resulting disguise is so ridiculously over-the-top that Sugiura can't keep a straight face when talking to him. Also, Tashiro's voiced by SungWon Cho^*(in the English Dub of course), of all people!
• After the fight with the Cane Man, when Yagami and Hoshino decide to meet with Kaito over their next move, the two head to KJ Art... the very place where the Kyorei tried to kill them not too long ago. Now, because of Yagami's earlier interaction with Kajihira after Mafuyu's attempted kidnapping, the Kyorei are now on good terms with Yagami and co. So when Yagami finally gets to Kaito, what does he find? Murase giving him a massage! The kicker to all of this is that Kaito straight up asked for the massage and Murase, without hesitation, actually complied!
• Another visit to the ADDC has Yagami and Sugiura escorted out of the lobby by an entourage of security guards... or rather, more than what's necessary for two men. As you'd expect, the head security guard was under orders from Ichinose to make sure that Yagami never returns to the ADDC. Again, as you'd expect, Yagami doesn't go down without a fight. And being that Yagami and Sugiura needed a way back in to talk to Shono, what better way to do so than straight-up stealing Mashiko's uniform?
  • Even funnier is that Yagami and Sugiura straight up leave the bodies in plain sight!! And then they just up and abandon the uniforms and chase after Shono later anyway!
• The AD-9 Research Team tries to protect Shono from Yagami and Sugiura... for about five seconds as by the time you face them, you'll have already upgraded Yagami's skills to such a degree that they go down in one hit! Considering that this comes not too long after the rather difficult fight against the Cane Man, it's such a jarring (yet refreshing) change of pace that you can't help but find hilarious all the same!
• The entire second part of Chapter 10 is essentially an exercise in Refuge in Audacity, as Yagami is essentially just causing trouble for the Matsugane Family. This ranges from just walking around Kamurocho, to getting shit-faced drunk (though Yagami can actually hold his liquor in this instance, as your Alcohol Level is only at its lowest here), to just plain beating on any Matsugane goons that he can come across. And every time he does beat a group of Hamura's boys, Yagami straight-up tells them to tell Hamura about it!
  Yagami: Listen up!
  Matsugane Goon: Eep...!
  Yagami: Go tell your precious Captain Hamura that Yagami was here. Got that?
• During a section of the final battle, we get this exchange during an otherwise serious section where Yagami and his friends are pounding skulls in on a beeline towards Theater Square.
  Kaito: Damn it, these guys won't stop comin' on us!
  A long pause follows, as Kaito processes what he just said
  Kaito: Uh... Wait, I meant for us!
  Sugiura: Was that really necessary? ^{English Dub}Dude, that’s gross!
  Higashi: Aniki...
  Kaito: C'mon, that ain't what I meant!
• The end of the game combines funny with a nice heartwarming moment when Yagami and Kaito continue their detective work hunting down a cat. The credits show the inside of Yagami's office while the two hunt for the missing feline, only for the cat to independently wander into the office on its own. Yagami and Kaito come back on a break, and it takes them a minute to notice the cat in the office, after which it promptly leaves and they run off to chase it down.

Side Content

• Visiting certain smoking spots will allow Yagami to overhear some local gossip. One such conversation is a pair of construction workers musing about a burly yakuza wearing a flashy shirt having the time of his life flying a drone who the local kids have started calling the "Drone Gorilla." It becomes especially Hilarious in Hindsight given the amount of gorilla comparisons that are made to Kaito in the sequel and its DLC.
• Ryan fucking Acosta, an American who came to Japan to hone his ninja techniques who's basically a walking parody of Naruto and its fans, or as Yagami puts it, "ninja anime bullshit."
  • You'll likely first be made aware of his presence through the ambient dialogue of Kamurocho's civilians mentioning a man in a ninja suit being in town, doing among other things, helping people cross the road.
  • Your first meeting with him can be had near KJ Art where he can be found clinging to a wall for no particular reason. Knocking him down with your drone will cause him to remark upon how Yagami could have seen through his camouflage, despite the fact he's practically brick red/white on a predominantly white building.
  • Playing a game of darts at the Club SEGA in Theatre Square will prompt him to appear and compliment your darts- ahem, shuriken skills and promptly challenge you to a game. He's awful.
  • After winning you can immediately walk outside and be accosted by the local bump-n'-scam artists, and after trouncing them Ryan will once again announce his presence and challenge you to a fight. While he's certainly a lot better at throwing actual knives than darts and can pull off some impressive acrobatics he's still no match for Yagami in a brawl. Upon defeat he ponders whether he should have used his Dark Doppelganger Delusion or his Substitution Clones and claims he's out of chakra leaving him no other choice... beg Yagami to become his ninja master.
  Ryan: I'll call you "Master" till the day I perish from this world!
  Yagami: That... would be disturbing.
  • Amusingly, Ryan proves to be quite the Bunny-Ears Lawyer as Yagami's ally during street fights, appearing from the shadows to assist in street fights, throwing daggers and improvised flashbangs (with friendly fire protection, somehow).
• As usual, the side cases (taking the place of the substories of games past) will provide plenty of laughs for any player.
  • The four side cases in which a pair of twin siblings (Yosuke and Tsukino) ask for your help in dealing with perverts in Kamurocho deserve special mention. There are three dedicated to the "Twisted Trio", and one that deals with a standalone pervert.
    • First up is a side case that has you dealing with "Professor Panty", a man who uses a drone to steal women's underwear while they're drying on laundry hooks. Yagami baits him out by buying his own pair of panties, and when Professor Panty steals them, Yagami tracks him down to a roof, where he's sniffing them like a madman. After a quick fight, Yagami reveals the panties belong to him, and the Professor immediately loses all will to fight any longer.
    • Then, you have the groping former track star, "Ass Catchem". Upon receiving this side case, Yagami wonders how to track down the man. His first idea is to have Yosuke dress up as his sister Tsukino, since they look so alike. Yosuke, of course, objects to this, but Tsukino supports the idea. After eventually settling on a stakeout, Ass Catchem mistakes Yosuke for Tsukino anyway, and gropes him. After a chase scene, Yagami and Catchem fight. Once Catchem is beaten, he begins powering up for a second phase to the fight... Until Yagami tells him that he actually groped Yosuke, not Tsukino. Catchem's flaming aura immediately dissipates, and he laments that "male asses do nothing for him" as he's arrested.
    • The final member of the Twisted Trio is "Judge Creep n' Peep", a man who watches couples have sex, and judges whether they are "innocent or guilty" based on what he sees. When Yagami finds him in the hotel district, he is clung to the wall of a building, watching a couple as he usually does. Yagami takes out his drone and begins firing on him, and Judge Creep n' Peep responds by skittering across the building like an insect, running from Yagami's shots. He gets faster the more damage you do to him, until eventually he's crawling around at top speed like a spider.
    • The last case from Yosuke and Tsukino has Yagami deal with a man who calls himself "Giant Impact", whose M.O. is walking around until he finds a girl, and then removing all his clothes to show off his genitals. When Yagami catches and defeats him, G.I. shares why he does what he does; he's still a virgin, and thought that letting his "massive meat" go to waste was a shame. Keep in mind, he's also 78 years old.
  • There are a series of side cases where you have to help a popular idol chase down his wig as it flies away in the breeze. All of them involve serious chase sections where you run after the wig in question, but special mention goes to the last one in the series, where a bald yakuza gets his hands on the wig accidentally. After Yagami finishes chasing and beating down the yakuza in question and explaining that the wig he has on does not belong to him, the yakuza comes to a realization... The wig must belong to Yagami, who's secretly bald! Reassuring the confused detective that there's no shame in being bald, he returns the wig and walks off. The idol then comes to thank Yagami for getting the wig back, only to reveal he no longer needs it. Why? Because his hair is growing back! And by growing back, he means he has a single strand of hair sticking directly out of the top of his bald head. Yagami is nonplussed, to say the least.
  • One side case requires Yagami to act as a decoy for a scandal-plagued celebrity. This celebrity plays a vampire and is always in costume and in character when in public, so Yagami has to don a ridiculous looking vampire costume and ham it up in front of the media. The kicker? Yagami gets to keep the vampire costume as a disguise and can use it whenever a case requires him to disguise himself to look inconspicuous.
  • Another side case has Yagami investigating a politician suspected of taking bribes. When Yagami spies in on the guy's meeting with a business partner, it turns out the business partner took the politician's request asking for "the sweet stuff" literally and got the guy cookies instead of cash. The politician, who is also an ex-wrestler, is not too happy with this and promptly lifts the guy over his head for his stupidity.
• Whenever you win a Grand Prix in the Drone League, you're treated to a Funny Background Event of a drone flying past a random girl's skirt, causing it to blow upwards because of the draft. An older man tries to look up the girl's skirt but ends up getting bitch slapped for his troubles instead.
• In good old Yakuza fashion, the 100% Completion reward is a fight with one of the Amon clan. Unfortunately, Shin Amon doesn't quite have a firm grasp on the fact that "dueling" is against the law, which Yagami is quick to point out. Shin lashes back by lampshading the hypocrisy of Yagami hiding behind the law, considering what he's been doing for the rest of the game. The game marks the case as "failed"... then gets picked straight back up again when Shin latches onto the fact that Yagami mentioned "self-defense", which prompts him to just outright threaten to attack Yagami as a "legal" basis for his duel.
  • The location that this battle takes place in is a cage that doesn't appear to be anywhere in Kamurocho at all. This place is reached through... a fade to white.
    Yagami: What!? Wh-What just happened!?
    Shin: Let's not worry about the details.
    Yagami: Fine, this was weird to begin with.
  • Just the fact that the Amon Clan are willing to go through absurd extremes to beat the protagonists that they literally tank your framerate (at least on the PS4 version, the PS5 version doesn't have this problem, thankfully) is admittedly hilarious in and of itself, in case Jo's Fourth Wall Break back in Yakuza Kiwami wasn't enough.
    YouTube comment: Amon is so powerful, he's able to hack into your PS4 and cause it to melt.
  • After winning, Shin makes a Failed Attempt at Drama when he angrily prompts Yagami to ask why he picked a fight with him. Yagami humors him, in which Shin goes on about the Amon Clan’s quest to be the most powerful fighters in the world, all the while Yagami was wondering if he can just go now.

Gameplay

• If you take too long on street enemy encounters, policemen will appear to break up the fight and attempt to catch Yagami. Failing the button prompts results in Yagami being arrested, yelled at in the police station, and fined. Rarely, it is a policewoman who will arrive to grapple Yagami, and failing the prompts here has him actually enjoying the situation.
• One of the new EX Actions in this game is having an enemy stumble into a moving car. The victim gets pissed at the driver and starts banging at the door, yelling at the passengers inside. To their surprise, the window rolls down and the victim gets kidnapped by yakuza, with one of the yakuza passengers putting his arm across the now-scared-shitless victim's back while Yagami contemplates what just happened.
  Yagami: Okay, that's just happened.
• While it overlaps into being badass as usual, there's something oddly hilarious about the face Yagami makes whenever he performs the EX Drunken Fist, where he chugs some booze before channeling his inner Jackie Chan and going ham on the unlucky mook(s).
  • The fact that you have to be shit-faced drunk to even activate said EX Action is also admittedly hilarious since a drunkness rating of 6 or more leads to skewed controls for the most part.
  • What makes it even funnier is Yagami chugging down a drink at the start of the EX Action, complete with a hilariously goofy smirk on his face.
    Yagami: [slurred] The mooore I drink, the stronger I geeet…
• EX Electromagnetic Torture, returning from its debut in Yakuza 6 (as well as being reused in Kiwami 2 and in Like a Dragon), where Yagami, like Kiryu before him and Ichiban after him, casually tosses a mook headfirst into a microwave and then casually asks the cashier to warm up the mook's head! The icing on the cake is that, unlike Kiryu, Yagami can continue shopping after having likely destroyed the entire store just to toss a helpless mook into the microwave!
• With this game running on the Dragon Engine (which is prone to some wonky physics here and there), expect there to be moments like these that can turn what is either a fun (or annoying) fight into a cacophony of hysterical laughter!
• Once you get your first potential girlfriend, you get a short tutorial (as with most new mechanics). On the subject of dates, it notes that even if you decline a date invitation, you can go on a date with the girl later, unlike in real life.
• If you don't have any money on you and a thug attempts to mug Yagami during a fight, the attempted thief will comfort Yagami in pity for him being so broke and leave him to fall to his knees in despair as if he took an actual blow.

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