Like a Dragon x Judgment is a Crossover between Like a Dragon and its spin-off subseries Judgment, released due to fan demand for the two to officially cross over.
Private investigator Takayuki Yagami is back on the case, as he is made to investigate a mysterious series of murders and mutilations. Along the way, he occasionally bumps into one Ichiban Kasuga, who had gone to seek out rumors of a mysterious young man with a bandaged face. Unknown to them, their respective investigations are leading them towards the same goal point, and Yagami is challenged once more by a threat he had thought gone...
The game features the Beat 'em Up Sandbox gameplay that the mainline games up to Yakuza 6 and the Judgment games are known for, with Ichiban making his debut in this style. However, for fans of the turn-based gameplay of Yakuza: Like a Dragon onwards, it returns in the form of an expansive minigame.
Later on, a Downloadable Content story was released by the name of Deadman's Requiem (Shinin no Requiem in Japan), following a certain new character after the events of the main game.
Like a Dragon x Judgment includes examples of:
- '90s Anti-Hero: Mun is basically this, while also being definitively an antagonist. Brief and succinct name, edgy design (what with his bandage-covered eye), does not mind guns at all and is motivated primarily by revenge.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Kaito becomes playable for a segment in the Millenium Tower, complete with his Bruiser and Tank styles from The Kaito Files.
- And Then What?: Yagami asks this of Dier Gui, wondering what she'd do after killing Majima. It's ultimately revealed that she doesn't know, with her ending up quitting the splinter cell and her life as an assassin before (futilely) attempting to kill Vincent Low to tie up any loose ends.
- Artistic License – Biology: Antibodies can't usually repair their respective illnesses at a critical level, let alone let the subject make use of any potential benefits at will. Can likely be chalked up to "Like a Dragon logic".
- Bandaged Face: Mun has a downplayed variant going on, with the bandages specifically being meant to cover his left eye and his forehead is only wrapped to keep them on. He takes the bandages off prior to the first phase of his Final Boss fight, revealing a bloodshot, glowing, purple eye with Tainted Veins spreading off of it. It is replaced by a medical eyepatch during the events of Deadman's Requiem.
- Battle Aura: These make a return, as per usual. Yagami and Kasuga both have theirs depend on their current style. Upon his transformation into a living zombie atop the Millenium Tower, Thomas gains a black-and-purple aura. His in particular explodes off of him, to the point where it can be seen from the streets below. Meanwhile, his standard aura in Deadman's Requiem is a never-before-seen black-and-white, though the white goes back to purple whenever he transforms. Kawano's aura is red-and-gold, almost resembling fire.
- Battle Strip: Still used as a challenge proposal by yakuza and ex-yakuza. Thanatos Thomas performs a somewhat twisted variation of it, ripping off just his undershirt and leaving his white jacket on.
- Best Served Cold:
- Mun's primary motivation throughout the game. He was a primary subject in the experiments mixing AD-9 and Thanatos to try and perfect the former by having its innate toxins and the latter mutually destroy each other. He went through intense pain all throughout, is currently constantly on the verge of zombification if not for regularly taking suppressive drugs, and wishes to exact his vengeance upon every single individual working in the project. Sadly, his crusade results in a good bit of collateral damage, so Yagami is forced to try and stop him.
- Dier Gui's original motivation for joining the Omi Alliance, and later its splinter cell, was to find and kill the Mad Dog of Shimano (that is to say, Goro Majima) as revenge for killing her father, Lao Gui.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Mun is the primary active antagonist, but there is also a splinter cell of the Omi Alliance, unsatisfied with its dismantlement at the end of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and still acting as a crime syndicate, led by Vincent Low. There is also the leader of the AD-9 revival project, though he is a Non-Action Big Bad and technical Man Behind the Man for Mun's vengeful crusade.
- Bittersweet Ending: The AD-9 revival project is shut down completely with most, if not all members dead, the Omi Alliance splinter cell has been dismantled, Thomas' crusade for revenge is over, and the antibodies developed within him reverse his transformation into a Thanatos zombie, even allowing him to control it. On the other hand, his crusade still left a lot of collateral damage behind, and he believes himself to still be something fundamentally inhuman, so while he comes out of it much better off mentally than he started, he's still far from being entirely well-off.
- Call-Back:
- The entire game's plot is a massive one for the plots of Judgment and, of all things, Yakuza: Dead Souls.
- On the topic of the latter, while Mun has his own unique boss theme in the form of "Musing Avenger", the final batte against him is instead backed by a remix of "Return to Nothingness". Appropriate enough, given his transformation into a Nikaido-esque superpowered zombie.
- The leader of the Omi splinter cell is Vincent Low, who had previously only shown up in Ryu Ga Gotoku Online.
- All three members of the Amon Clan are references to past Amon fights. Shin continues using a variation of his Judgment moveset, Juzo still makes use of the side-series' DLC power-ups, and Senna wields the sword of the ancient clan member Genjosai from Like a Dragon: Ishin!.
- Cross Counter: Kasuga and Joon-Gi Han partake in one as part of their dynamic intro.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: As always in this overall franchise, guns are subjected to this, even though the definitely-lethal cutscene version is more realistic and thus makes for a rather unusual example of this trope.
- Distaff Counterpart: Dier Gui is this to Lao Gui from Yakuza 0, as a Chinese assassin proficient in wielding throwing needles that are also sometimes used as impromptu Wolverine Claws. Even her "name" translates to "second ghost", in reference to Lao Gui's "old ghost". Though this makes sense, given that she is also a Legacy Character and Lao Gui's daughter.
- Final Boss: Mun (albeit now going by his true name of Thomas), first as his normal self, and then as the superhuman zombie Thanatos Thomas. Deadman's Requiem instead has Shinji Kawano as its Final Boss.
- Meaningful Name:
- The name "Mun" comes from online roleplay circles, with a mun referring to the real person playing a character (typically referred to as a muse). He is essentially playing the muse of a ruthless avenger after the AD-9 revival project caused his humanity to be clinging to him by a thread. It also qualifies as a Meaningful Rename: his original name (which he goes back to by the end) is actually Thomas. After the Final Boss, he is shown to be much happier overall, or in other words, having ditched his avenger muse and letting himself be... well, himself.
- While not her true name, Dier Gui means "second ghost" in Chinese, in reference to her being Lao Gui's ("old ghost") successor and daughter.
- Mr. Imagination: As always, Kasuga is this, with his overactive imagination being the cause behind some of the fancy flourishes he has in Hero style and the flashier special moves in EX Heat Mode. So just imagine his reaction to Thomas' transformation into a superhuman living zombie having been 100% real.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Shinji Kawano is a relatively scrawny guy compared to some of the beefcakes shown off in the franchise, and yet he's capable of trading blows with Thomas after he had been powered up by his original transformation. And even when he transforms during their fight, Kawano doesn't really slip up too often.
- New Skill as Reward: Beating the game unlocks the redeemed Mun/Thomas as a Poundmate in the turn-based minigame, with his attack of "Deadman's Rampage" consisting of him turning into his Thanatos form and performing a vicious rush of attacks at Doppelgänger Spin levels of speed. The attack is both capable of making the target bleed and has a high critical hit rate, at the cost of him being one of the... well, costlier Poundmates in the game.
- Optional Boss:
- The Amon Clan once again appears to challenge the protagonists in the postgame. Shin Amon comes back to fight Yagami, while Juzo Amon from Lost Judgment tries his hand at Kasuga. In Deadman's Requiem, Mun/Thomas gets to fight against newcomer Senna Amon.
- Going through a specific substory also lets you fight Jin Kuwana (once again going by Yu Kitakata), who Took a Level in Idealism since he was last seen in Lost Judgment. He also Took a Level in Badass, incorporating the Boxing Style from Lost Judgment's DLC into his moveset, being able to use his own EX Actions and Mortal Reversals, and getting a major AI improvement that lets him emulate how a player would use his 4 styles.
- Painful Transformation: Putting aside all the borderline torture he had gone through in the AD-9 revival project, Thomas' sheer rage and hatred combined with the constant mutual destruction of Thanatos and AD-9 inside of him caused the typical euphoric feeling that comes from becoming a Thanatos zombie to become a non-factor. While this did make him not want to spread the infection like others of his ilk, it also made his transformation extraordinarily painful.
- Purple Is Powerful: As a combination of AD-9's blue and Thanatos' red, those injected with their mixture develop glowing purple eyes. Mun typically only has one purple eye, though he does gain a second one in full zombie mode.
- Stance System: Both Yagami and Kasuga have their own separate combat styles they can swap between at will, atleast in the main action gameplay.
- Yagami still has the single-target raw power-focused Tiger Style, the mobile crowd control-based Crane Style, and the grappling- and counter-heavy Snake Style.
- Meanwhile, Kasuga's styles include the hand-to-hand focused Freelancer and bat-swinging Hero, reworked into a Brawler/Rush hybrid and a flashier Slugger respectively.
- Super Mode:
- Extreme Heat Mode (now simply going by Heat Mode) and EX-Boost from their respective series make a return for Kasuga and Yagami respectively. However, on top of that, at any time where the two are fighting together, they can join forces to enter EX Heat Mode, which increases their abilities even further and adds flashier visuals to their Heat/EX Actions courtesy of Kasuga's imagination.
- Thomas' zombie transformation is this after he gains control via antibodies, which is confirmed in Deadman's Requiem, as he has the usual aura-at-high-Heat going on and his Thanatos form is his equivalent of the above power-ups.
- Took a Level in Badass: Yu Kitakata (formerly Jin Kuwana) from Lost Judgment returns as an optional boss here, but now he can use EX Actions and Mortal Reversals of his own and has adopted the Boxing Style from his home game's DLC starting from his second phase before mixing it with his previous styles in the final phase, with the addition of his AI being improved to fight like a human player, making him even tougher than the final time he was fought in canon as Yagami only has access to his initial 3 styles instead of Kitakata’s 4. This also serves as Character Rerailment, as he has indeed Took a Level in Idealism as Yagami believed, now having nothing to hide from the truth after getting justice for Yoko Sawa's death, no longer having to bear Reiko Kusumoto's burden and earning Yagami’s mutual respect, with a remix of Dig In Your Heels to top it off. Downplayed in story, however, as they are both still in equal ground even after pulling out all the stops.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Thomas tears off his shirt to challenge Kasuga when in full Thanatos zombie mode, and he remains shirtless even after his transformation is reversed. Somewhat notable due to the use of a normal jacket variant of No Shirt, Long Jacket.
- Weak, but Skilled: Relative to the Like a Dragon side of the crossover, Mun is very much just a normal person as opposed to the supermen that are Kiryu, Majima, or Saejima, made up for by use of judo techniques, some more self-taught fighting skills, and sheer ruthlessness. Thankfully, he's fighting the significantly-less-overpowered Kasuga and fellow Weak, but Skilled rep Yagami, so it's not too much of a problem. Becomes Strong and Skilled in his Thanatos zombie form.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The victims of Mun's murder spree turn out to be members of a project to perfect AD-9 by use of less conventional means than what Shono and Kuroiwa were dealing in. They eventually come across Thanatos from Yakuza: Dead Souls (although DD's project with it did not end up as bombastic as it was in that game), attempting to mix them together to subject Thanatos and AD-9's innate toxins to mutual destruction and thus create the perfect cure for Alzheimer's that it was always intended to be. While it did result in their gradual mutual annihilation and prevented the conventional death caused by AD-9, it also gradually zombified the subjects if not for specialized suppression drugs that were only developed after several failures. Even with the whole Thomas situation, the project's leader still believed that, had they gotten atleast a little more time, they could've perfected it. Whether or not he was delusional about it is unknown, as he got multiple bullets in the chest from Thomas and very much did not survive.
