Judgment / YMMV - TV Tropes

Aluminum Christmas Trees: Believe it or not, Drone Racing is indeed a thing.
Anvilicious: Saori's playable segment is extremely blunt about the fact of just how uncomfortable and upsetting it is to be ogled and catcalled in a public place just for happening to exist within one, by giving the player the chance to experience it in first person.
Awesome Music: See here.
Best Boss Ever: The Final Boss has received plenty of praise from fans as one of the best in the series. Kuroiwa is fast, powerful, and utterly relentless, and he's the only opponent in the game who can match plenty of Yagami's attacks. The two fighters are perfectly matched, with the ensuing acrobatic battle shattering the room's windows and letting the storm blow in as Yagami nearly falls to his death. And just when the battle seems to have ended with Kuroiwa getting blown out of the window, with his health bar depleted and the normal "end of battle" signifiers appearing... he suddenly climbs right back up, at full health, and thrusts you back into gameplay for the second round.
Breather Boss: Hamura, during his second encounter. Coming after a pretty rough Long Battle and the tedious slog that is the Cane Man (mentioned below), Hamura is relatively straightforward in comparison, utilizing very slow and telegraphed attacks that makes timing a Tiger Drop easy on top of having plenty of space to avoid his attacks and down him with a Wall Strike before he can use his Deadly Attack. "Rake Your Inside" being one of the catchiest and most fun tracks in the game certainly helps in this regard, too.
Broken Base: There's a lot of discourse online about whether or not the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S Remasters actually look good. Half of the opposition says the remaster is unnecessary (for the PS5 at least) and that it ruined and spits on the game's stylistic and unique noir look with its washed-out and dull color pallet, while the other half prefers the new color palette. PC players, on the other hand, have mods that can just restore said filter, so this is a non-issue for them, at least.
Catharsis Factor:
- Going with Breather Boss above, after everything Hamura's done throughout the game with his smug, hostile attitude and deplorable actions, having an easier boss fight with a decent amount of health to wail on him like a living punching bag on top of having a catchy battle theme has made for a very satisfying fight despite its simplicity.
- Flux Fissure is this as a gameplay mechanic. If you can manage to land it in an actual fight (especially against a Boss like, say, Kuroiwa or Koga), then you're not only rewarded with the glorious sight of knocking even the largest enemies (e.g., Honda) flat on their ass, but you're also rewarded with a sizeable chunk of EX Meter and either straight up annihilating any unfortunate mook that you land this on in a single blow, or utterly decimating a Boss' very lengthy health bar.
Complete Monster:
- Mitsuru Kuroiwa is an assassin masquerading as a Serial Killer who leaves his victims with their eyes gouged out. Initially a police informant for the Yakuza, Kuroiwa was eventually hired by Kaoru Ichinose to serve as the chief enforcer for AD-9, a drug development project intended to cure Alzheimer's disease. Alongside his Yakuza partner Kyohei Hamura, Kuroiwa would procure unwilling test subjects to be lethally experimented on before gouging out their eyes to hide any possible evidence of experimentation, performing a similar process on an attorney before planting his body in Takayuki Yagami's office to frame him and his allies when they got closer to the truth. Kuroiwa later tries to assassinate Hamura in the likelihood that he would snitch, beats Yagami's allies within an inch of their lives, and tries to kill Yagami himself by attempting to gouge out his eyes. Once exposed, Kuroiwa abducts AD-9's lead researcher in hopes of continuing the project, vowing to procure as many subjects as it takes under the delusion that the world would hail him as a hero for holding the cure to Alzheimer's.
- Kaoru Ichinose is the Vice-Minister of Health, and the founder of the Advanced Drug Development Center. In an attempt to keep the ADDC funded so that he can maintain political power, Ichinose covers up the crimes of the lead researcher behind AD-9, and helps him kidnap and experiment on countless test subjects, leading them to suffer agonizing deaths. When the Vice-Director attempts to sabotage development behind AD-9, Ichinose hires Kuroiwa to murder him, later having Kuroiwa kidnap and deliver Yakuza to test the drug and make it look like they died in a turf war. Ichinose later orders the death of an attorney for digging too deep into AD-9 and has a detective framed for it. When it looks like his crimes will be exposed in court, Ichinose orders Kuroiwa to be killed to prevent himself from being connected to the killings.
Crosses the Line Twice:
- The entire Twisted Trio is basically this. To iterate:
  - The Panty Professor. A man who steals used panties from innocent and unsuspecting women to... feed his fetish? Kinda creepy. Said man uses drones to steal those panties and Turns Red when he sniffs them? Now it's hilarious.
  - Ass Catchem. In case the name wasn't an obvious enough Pokémon reference (or possibly a King of Fighters reference since another "affectionate" nickname for Ash Crimson from the KOF community is 'Ass Crimson'), there's the fact that he's a track star that, like the Panty Professor mentioned above, gets off on groping women and becomes more powerful in doing so. Take your pick on what's funnier - the fact that Yagami has to chase after him or the fact that he ends up mistaking one of your clients' twin brother for a woman.
  - And finally Judge Creep 'n Peep. Essentially a voyeuristic Spider-Man that clings to the sides of buildings to watch people go at it, pull out a drone and shoot at him then he'll start skittering around like a spider the more you do so. Enough said.
- EX Traffic Safety involving an unlucky mook being kidnapped and taken away by a couple of yakuza wouldn't be nearly as hilarious if it weren't for both said mook's and Yagami's reactions. Especially if it just so happens to be a Keihin Gang boss. It can get even funnier because the Yakuza are randomized, so you can essentially get a mook being kidnapped by himself.
- Speaking of which, while the Keihin Four all have the standard (and annoying) Deadly Attack, Sakakiba's takes the cake for being so hilarious and over the top (as in - he downs a bag of chips, belly flops into, and then dry humps Yagami) that you'll be too busy laughing your ass off to care that he just took off a huge chunk of your health!
- EX Electromagnetic Torture, returning from Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 has Yagami, like Kiryu, toss a mook head-first into a microwave before asking the cashier to turn it on, burning his head in the process!
Creepy Awesome: Kuroiwa has quickly become one of the more popular villains in the series thanks in part to them being a human Terminator and a fairly nightmarish psychopath. It does help that their two boss fights are considered some of the best in the game.
Designated Hero:
- Despite Shintani being incredibly antagonistic towards Yagami in all his appearances and being fairly ambivalent towards Hamura's blatantly unsavory nature, he's still presented in a positive light in the story. It becomes worse when it's revealed that the only reason he got killed was because he was tired of being in Yagami's shadow and made the boneheaded decision to make a call to the ADDC.
- Yagami himself during the girlfriend events, especially in Nanami's storyline. While a bit of a smartass and not above some legally grey means in his investigations, Yagami is generally portrayed as Nice Guy who is arguably just as noble as Kiryu and other protagonists from the main series. The girlfriend events however have the potential to portray him as rather scummy. Along with the obvious option of juggling up to four chicks, one of the girls is just barely out of being a minor at 19 years old^note, and when he does reject a girl, the both of them break things off completely, with there not even being an avenue for them to remain friends. This is however especially prominent in Nanami's storyline, where he teams up with her Best Friend Yukko to emotionally manipulate her into going out with him despite the fact that she's still unable to move on from when her previous boyfriend cheated on her. It doesn't help that the way Yagami pursues her beforehand is uncharacteristically obsessive, if not outright stalker-ish. Lastly, there is the way her confession scene is set up, with her expressing a willingness to forgive Yagami for tricking her and give him a second chance, can make Yagami look like a massive Jerkass in the event that he turns her down. And you are fully capable of having him say yes even if he's dating another girl, potentially putting her through getting cheated on again. The sequel doesn't help matters by removing the option to reject confessions entirely, pretty much forcing you to play Yagami as an adulterer.
- Speaking of Nanami's storyline, her Best Friend Yukko falls under this category as well. Not only was she the one who came up with the plan to trick Nanami into going out with Yagami, but she also pressures Yagami to be more physically intimate with Nanami under the pretence of being Undercover as Lovers. And yet the game portrays her actions as necessary in helping Nanami overcome her past experiences, despite it being not so different from what her ex-boyfriend did.
Demonic Spiders:
- The Elite Mooks of the Keihin Gang, which on top of having larger than average health bars, are annoying as all hell to deal with due to the Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs that can make properly timing a Tiger Drop against them difficult, are immune to any kind of wall attacks, and are almost never fought alone.
- Koga's crew are very athletic and use guns, which can cause Mortal Wounds, meaning that they need to be healed with a Medical Kit (or a trip to the doctor) to remove them.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Most of the supporting cast, really.
- Higashi has a lot of fans because of his leitmotif, Flower of Chivalry and for having a lot of Character Development that eventually leads to him joining Yagami, Kaito and Sugiura in battles, including the final battle. It likely played a factor in his inclusion in the sequel. This is especially prominent in the Japanese fandom, where Higashi famously came out first in the game's 2021 popularity poll, beating out Yagami himself by a decent margin.
- Sugiura/Jester is also winding up to be another fan-favorite. Between the homage to Persona 5's Joker, his handsome looks, having one of the most fun action sequences in the game, and his altruistic personality that lines up well with Yagami's beliefs, it's not difficult to see why he's well-liked in his own right. By Lost Judgment, him and Tsukumo (mentioned below) have even decided to Follow the Leader and start their own detective agency in Ijincho, Yokohama 99, and with that both of them have reached basically main character status.
- Saori. Whether it's her good looks, her no-nonsense personality and friendship with Mafuyu, the Call-Back to Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2 in the form of being able to customize her looks for yourself like the Platinum Hostesses, as well as being the closest we'll get to a playable hostess, it's safe to say that she's definitely going to be a mainstay in the series for the foreseeable future.
- In terms of the many Friends that Yagami can make throughout Kamurocho, there's his Hikkikomori Hacker friend, Tsukumo. In fact, Tsukumo was especially popular enough that he is Promoted to Opening Titles in Lost Judgment, leading Yokohama 99 (a startup detective agency) alongside the above-mentioned Sugiura.
- Of the four girlfriends that Yagami can date in this game, Tsukino proved to be the most popular. To the point, she returns in the sequel (as DLC, but still) and is all but confirmed to be the canon choice based on their interactions and dialogue. Being voiced by Julie Nathanson (in the English dub) of Call of Duty: Zombies fame and having the voice of Prishe from Final Fantasy XI certainly helps.
Escapist Character: Yagami. Let's see now — good looks? Check. Can kick plenty of ass? Check. Damn good at his job as a detective? Check. (He's also formidable as an attorney, too.) Manages to become The Dreaded amongst the yakuza underworld despite only being a civilian? Check. Can date multiple women at once without ever facing any consequences for it (unlike Joker or Ichiban)? Check. Seems like Akiyama's got some competition.
Evil Is Cool: Mitsuru Kuroiwa. Psychopathic and deadly to boot, he is praised as one of the best villains in the franchise.
Fan Nickname: Kimutaku ga Gotoku ^TranslationLike Kimutaku by Japanese gamers as a play on the title Ryu ga Gotoku.
Game-Breaker:
- Completing five courses in the batting cage allows you to buy the golden bat. It’s not only part of getting a new friend, it also makes getting homeruns ridiculously easy, especially since no matter the course, once you map out which spots the balls go, you can not only finish the batting cage challenges but get Yoshida as a friend and a new EX action.
- Flux Fissure is basically Perfect Channeling from Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. While initially weak and difficult to pull off, once it's fully upgraded, as well as upgrades to Attack Damage, the EX Gauge, and the Tiger Stance, it is able to take a significant chunk out of a boss' health bar alongside the Tiger Drop. Like Perfect Channelling, while it doesn't require the enemy to be stunned, having them stunned will create a better opening, as they will likely block the attack, which will negate it.
- The Tiger Drop returns from the previous Yakuza entries and this time around, it's arguably at its easiest to unlock - all you have to do is head on over to the area in the Champion District south of Earth Angel, pull out your drone, and find the QR Code. All that's left is to scrape by 2,000 SP (which comes pretty quickly if you either progress through the story normally or through the KamuroGo challenges) and you're pretty much set for the rest of the game.
- Blackjack doesn't randomize the seeds related to card shuffling until after a set amount of plays. This allows you to win thousands of chips using the same sequence of blackjack plays in an hour if you're willing to do some save reloading for the right opening hand. This was so broken that it was removed in the Remaster.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: According to Daisuke Sato, the game sold very well in the Americas and Europe.
Goddamned Bats: The Keihin Gang in general. More often than not, they'll ambush you at every turn, sometimes have Elite Mooks that are a chore to deal with unless you've got plenty of extract and items to fill up the EX gauge in a bind (or have upgraded Flux Fissure to both deal with them quickly and build meter in the process), and - rather appropriately since nobody else in Kamurocho likes them, either - are just a pain in the ass whenever you're simply minding your own business.
Harsher in Hindsight: The entire Twisted Trio's actions (Ass Catchem especially) where they all constantly harass Tsukino might not seem all that funny in light of the sequel, where sexual assault is a major theme in the story and is taken completely seriously. Not helping matters is that they return in the sequel and, alongside Giant Impact, kidnap Tsukino. Granted, Ehara and Mamiya faked the groping under Kuwana's orders, but it doesn't exactly make this look any better.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Gamers compare the game's story to Ace Attorney. One of the actions Yagami can do in the law firm when talking to his ex-colleagues includes Phoenix Wright's signature finger-pointing "OBJECTION!" pose.
- One of the action sequences earlier in the game involves Yagami escaping the Matsugane Family by borrowing a skateboard from a passerby. Come Lost Judgment and now Yagami can do this for himself to get around Yokohama!
- One of Yagami's first lines in the game prior to his title card is, "I'm no Saint". Cut to 2022 and he (or rather Greg Chun) is, in fact, a (3rd Street) Saint.
Iron Woobie: Sugiura. Like Okubo, it's hard not to feel for him when his sister died for what is essentially a "Shaggy Dog" Story in AD-9 and he turned to a life of crime as a result of losing the only positive influence that he had on his life. Nevermind that he was a shut-in for much of his life not unlike Tsukumo, either. All the more touching when he ultimately forgives Okubo and even invites him to visit his sister's grave when he's released.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Shintani is hated for his Green-Eyed Monster tendencies and thug-like attitude, but his worst crime is being an Amoral Attorney willing to get a clearly shady Yakuza like Hamura off and generally being a Jerkass. Compare that to the much more popular Mole, Mitsuru Kuroiwa, who's an active mass murderer who kills one of Yagami's father figures and goes on a killing spree before the Final Boss fight against him.
Love to Hate: The Mole is considered to be one of the best villains of the Yakuza franchise due to how disturbingly despicable and psychopathic they really are. And unlike Tsuneo Iwami, the battle against Kuroiwa shows that he more than lives up to the threat that he's built up to be, adding a layer of Evil Is Cool to the factor.
Memetic Mutation: Here.
Moral Event Horizon: Shono crossed it big time when he murdered Emi in cold blood just to frame her boyfriend.
More Popular Spin-Off: The Judgment games are widely considered by fans to be the best spin-offs in the Yakuza series and critics prove it too, with both titles genuinely in contention for the best in franchise history, all thanks to a combination of various factors, like a more grounded and mature storyline which still allows for the more absurd off-the-wall humor Yakuza is known for in its side stories, possessing a dub which ranks very highly among localized Japanese games to the point mainline games started getting dubs from Like A Dragon onwards, and an overall refinement of the Dragon Engine combat seen from Yakuza 6 by re-implementing the Stance System mechanic seen from fellow fan-favorite Yakuza 0 to great effect in order to create possibly the best active combat system within Yakuza as a whole.
Narm:
- While Yakuza is known for its ridiculous violence, Yagami can nearly decapitate Kaito during their friendly match by performing an EX Action of pushing his head to the street.
- Genda and Yagami reminiscing over Shintani after his death was supposed to be a tearjerking moment until it got ruined by the infamous sad substory music
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Gamers rushed to buy the game after Sega halted Japanese sales when Pierre Taki (the original model and voice actor for Kyohei Hamura) was arrested. This resulted in 97% of its worldwide stock being sold, and the first edition becoming a collector's item after Sega decided to remove Taki's likeness and voice from later editions of the game. The PC port has a mod that restores Taki's character model and voice lines for Hamura if you want him back in it without having to buy the original PS4 version.
Paranoia Fuel:
- Koga's gang can fight you at ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.
- The Mole is revealed to be Mitsuru Kuroiwa, a well-known and respected detective who moonlights as a Psycho for Hire, and is heavily Implied to have always been a murderous Sociopath.
Polished Port: Judgment: Remastered, an Updated Re-release for Ninth Generation Consoles, can run at 60 fps, scales up to 4K, fast loading times, and all of the downloadable content is packaged in for a budget price compared to the original release. This makes it far more playable and overall better value for the price point over the previous generation's version while tackling some of the worst framerate issues altogether. The only possible caveat is the change in how the game treats its lighting, which is a matter of personal taste. The game's anti-aliasing on consoles is also not that great, with backgrounds and characters' hair having dithering artifacts when in movement, mainly the cinematic cutscenes.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The Keihin Gang. While on paper it's a decent attempt at replicating the Mr. Shakedown and Majima Everywhere system from previous games, it sadly happens very frequently to the point of being annoying and whenever your hear yourself get a message, you'll likely be dreading that it's from Kim-san. The way of ending it is also long and tedious; you have find the members of the Keihin Four you've met up to that point and beat them in a fight (including Koga, who's a major pain in the ass to deal with) and even then it won't end, with all it accomplishing being decreasing the Threat Rate a bit more than beating Mooks and making sure you don't get a What the Hell, Hero? from Kim when he texts to say they're gone. Although, if you don't mind that, as you don't get punished for it, waiting for them all to go away after they show up isn't actually that bad, it just takes a bit for the percentage to go down all the way.
- Mortal Wounds. While it does start off as being a fairly interesting mechanic that can add a bit of challenge to the boss fights and establishes that while Yagami is a excellent fighter he's not the tank that Kiryu is, it starts getting progressively less fun when Mooks start getting their hands on guns, especially Koga's gang who you likely won't realise have one until you hear the click. It doesn't help that Surgery and Medkits, literally the only things that can remove them, are quite pricey, especially early-game.
- The tailing missions in which you have to follow targets without them noticing you too much but also without losing sight of the target which means so you can't just run away and break eye contact with the target to escape their attention for too long either. While there's a lot of attempts to make them easier to contend with such as mid-checkpoints for the longer ones, making continuing from losses less painful or upgrades to give you a bigger time window to avoid being spotted or losing track of the target, these missions are still considered long, unnecessarily drawn out pace-breakers that are rather dull and tedious at best and painfully annoying and finicky at worst. Being so heavily prominent in both the main story and Side Cases has resulted in these portions of the game being disliked by several players.
- Upgrading your Combo Speed. While it wasn't as bad for Kiryu in Yakuza 6 and especially Kiwami 2 where experience points were easier to come by and he was able to store and equip weapons to use at any time, Yagami's Rush Combos start out painfully slow and you have to spend a solid chunk of SP to get them up to snuff, making the early game a tedious slog at best as enemies dance circles around you, constantly interrupting your attacks, and only exacerbating the Sequel Difficulty Spike of this game even further. Fortunately, RGG Studio took notes on this as Yagami's combo speed is finally fully maxed out by default in the sequel as opposed to having to upgrade it again.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: It doesn't seem like this at first, but the later stages of the game are much harder than those of previous games in the series:
- The Mortal Wound mechanic makes firearms a legitimate threat, as they limit how much maximum health Yagami has if they connect, and to make matters worse, bosses, once they gain a HEAT aura, become capable of performing Deadly Attacks that are also capable of inflicting Mortal Wounds. Their damage output also raises substantially in general, with street bosses capable of destroying your health in practically one fell swoop with certain attacks and counters, and even story bosses have similarly absurd damage outputs. This is amplified by the lack of equipable weapons in the game, which prevents Yagami from taking cheap shots using something like a gun.
- The EX Gauge fills up painfully slow at first, limiting your access to EX Actions, and you can't unlock the ability to increase the charge rate until you're about halfway through the game.
- The game lacks the Pharmacy like in the rest of the Yakuza games, so Yagami cannot access the much more potent consumable items sold there, leaving you with only basic healing and heat restoration items. You also have a much more limited inventory, only able to carry a maximum of 6 each Toughness Z, Tauriner, and Staminan X after inventory upgrades. Other, more potent healing items like Staminan Royale or Toughness Infinity are also unavailable as a result, too.
- The experience system of Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 has also been streamlined in favor of having only one sole unit of XP in the form of Skill Points, making upgrades much simpler and easier to comprehend. Unfortunately, however, it also comes at the expense of SP being very difficult to come by since in the early game, you're only rewarded chump change for every encounter while early game story missions only rewarded you with around 100-200 SP depending on the objective. Thus, your only main source of early game income are the Side Cases (which take a fair bit to open up fully) and the KamuroGo challenges, which also doubles as the game's 100% Completion tracker.
Signature Scene:
- The action sequence involving Yagami escaping from the Matsugane Family with the help of Jester, showcasing his Le Parkour skills as well as being surprisingly adept with a skateboard!
- Pretty much the entire final boss fight with The Mole. Little wonder why they're a Best Boss Ever contender for the entire series.
- Following almost immediately after the above, Shono's horrific death when he injects himself with AD-9, as well as the bone-chilling Wham Shot of his eyes being turned blue due to the toxins of his own deterrent to Alzheimer's. If the earlier scene of Yagami seeing hallucinations of the deceased Emi after having lost a lot of blood wasn't the moment the series went Darker and Edgier than the mainline Yakuza series, then this is it.
That One Boss:
- The final two fights against the Cane Man. For the semi-final one, he'll be wielding a shotgun for the entire fight. Because guns in this game are far more dangerous here than they ever were previously, thanks to Mortal Wounds, every attack of his results in a chunk of Yagami's health bar being permanently removed (unless you're carrying medical kits). This results in an exercise in patience as you try to whittle down his health little by little without him taking a massive chunk of your own. His final phase (just before reaching Hamura), while he no longer has the gun, can still be infuriating since it starts out in the dark (Yagami can't run in the dark and he's slowed to a crawl, ergo he can't use his Wall Strikes or Leapfrog techniques) and he'll go for a Deadly Attack immediately after the fight begins. The game also doesn't bother telling you to hit the light switch on the floor before starting the fight, which makes the task of avoiding his strikes much easier. Good luck trying not to pull your hair out against this guy, in case you didn't already with the Man in Black.
- Koga, all the way. While he's a Moveset Clone of Andre Richardson from Yakuza 3, what would be an otherwise annoying fight at best is made downright infuriating with the aforementioned Mortal Wound mechanic, which can be inflicted by guns (which in themselves also stun you like in previous games) on top the usual Deadly Attack whenever he Turns Red. That's not even getting into the fact that he can shoot you while on the floor, meaning you have to be on your absolute guard if you don't want your health to be reduced to zero in less than five seconds. Better put EX Boost to good use here, because it's the only way you can prevent Mortal Wounds from reducing your maximum health.
That One Level:
- Tailing Higashi and his lackeys In Chapter 10, due to how many guys can spot you. Fortunately, this one is more merciful than most examples since you do at least get checkpoints for every mook that leaves his presence.
- Tailing Ishimatsu in Chapter 12, due to the strange route he takes.
That One Sidequest: Getting "Sakura" painting in order to fully befriend the Ebisu Pawn clerk will make you want to tear your hair out. The requirements for getting this one are completely luck based because you have to finish the middle course in Dice & Cube with five or more dice left. This means that getting said painting can take either a few tries or dozens more. And if you run out of game passes? Have fun finding more of those because they are few and far between.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- To some, Mafuyu can be seen as suffering from this. Throughout the game, we see the Ship Tease between her and Yagami and are told that they had something going before Yagami lost his badge, but aside from that, she doesn't appear all that often aside from a few Side Cases and as an occasional Damsel in Distress, and we never really learn the exact details of their relationship prior to the game's events. This is compounded further by the fact that Yagami has the option to go out with up to four different girls, with her not even being one of them despite the aforementioned Ship Tease. Doesn't help that she ends up being Out of Focus in Lost Judgment and the implications that Yagami dated one of the aforementioned girlfriends despite things evidently being unresolved between them.
- While Kuroiwa has been acclaimed by players for being a genuinely terrifying and effective antagonist, he's been criticised for being relatively one-dimensional. One major grievance that some have is that he doesn't show up all that much prior to The Reveal that he is the Mole, not to mention the fact that we don't know much of his backstory other than that he was a Bastard Understudy to a Dirty Cop.
Underused Game Mechanic:
- Early on in the game, you're introduced to a photo mechanic that requires you to snap a photo to use as decisive evidence in cases. That one-off case is literally the only time that the mechanic is used in the main story, and it's only used a small handful of times in Side Cases. You could 100% the game and count the total number of times you use this mechanic on one hand.
- Oddly enough, getting arrested by the police. What should be a Scrappy Mechanic on paper is basically rendered redundant in practice by the fact that, as Yagami gets progressively stronger through skills and increases his overall damage output and combo speed, he'll be able to dispatch the Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders mentioned above very quickly (especially if you make liberal use of Flux Fissure), ergo fights won't take long enough to draw police attention (even if you stall the fights on purpose, it takes the police a decent amount of time to show up either way). In fact, it's very possible to go through the entire game without ever once encountering the police unless you actively go out of your way to do so.
  - And in the event that the police actually show up, it is painfully easy to escape since all you have to do is just run less than a few feet away from the police and they'll stop chasing you. And if you get caught, you just have a simple Quick Time Event to escape being arrested. That's not even getting into the Artificial Stupidity of the police where they won't pay you any mind if you're in their immediate vicinity until you're practically invading their personal space, either.
- Courtroom sections. You get to experience one relatively early in the game which might lead you to thinking it will be a regular thing, but all in all you only get direct input in two of them, and one of those is a flashback sequence. Anyone expecting them to work similarly to Ace Attorney might also be in for a disappointment, there are no fail states and they're essentially just there to see how much you've been paying attention to the story, only asking you very simple multiple choice questions.
Visual Effects of Awesome: This is far and away one of RGG Studio's prettiest games in the series, with them finally getting the hang of the Dragon Engine that they introduced back in Yakuza 6 and it shows. From the amazing particle effects of Yagami's red and blue auras, to the more noir-esque lighting in Kamurocho, to the level of detail in the little things like Yagami's phone or office, everything in this game is as close as you can get to visiting the real-life Kabukicho that Kamurocho is based on.
- The PS4 version of the game was already one of the prettiest games on the eighth generation of consoles yet and with it being remastered on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, not only do you have the added benefits of near-instantaneous loading times and improved visuals, but you can now enjoy the game at a buttery smooth 60 FPS in 4K HDR!
The Woobie: It's impossible not to feel bad for Okubo after he gets framed for two murders, including his girlfriend's. Or the fact that he was facing the death penalty for two crimes that he didn't commit.
Woolseyism: The names for the game's Stance System styles are an invention of the localisation. In Japanese, they were named "Flash" and "Waltz", which have cultural connotations that are difficult to succinctly translate. In English they became "Tiger" and "Crane", which are instantly recognisable as examples of Kung Fu-style Animal Themed Fighting Styles, and they even get unique HUD icons to match (in Japan, Flash and Waltz were simply represented by their kanji characters).

YMMV / Judgment

Alternative Title(s): Project Judge

YMMV / Judgment

Edit Locked

Alternative Title(s): Project Judge