Awesome / Judgment

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

It wouldn't be an RGG Studio title without the sheer amount of awesomeness that you'd expect behind the developers of the Like a Dragon series.

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• In the last 10-12 minutes of Chapter Two: Beneath the Surface. The entertaining gameplay and intensely exciting action sequence squarely puts Yagami as a worthy successor of the Dragon of Dojima. At least, in his own way.
  • To elaborate: after helping gather evidence to get Hamura cleared of murder in the first chapter, the unanswered questions drive Yagami to find the real killer. Predictably, Hamura is... to put it mildly, annoyed by the continued investigation of The Mole. Hamura's Dragon-in-Chief status as Captain of the Matsugane Family is put in full display when he ambushes Yagami and subjects to a series of painful beatdowns by his henchmen. Because Hamura works for his Parental Substitute, Yagami lets the first couple of ambush attacks slide. Though, after the last beating and Hamura psyching gouging his eyes out with an ice pick, Yagami ultimately has enough.
    Yagami: This is bullshit. You guys had your turn. It's my turn now!
  • Immediately after these beatings, Yagami sprints halfway across town, swipes a skateboard, and hitches a ride with a car. He then proceeds to do several absurd tricks on the board - one including a jumping kick to somebody in a moving vehicle - before making a clean getaway from Hamura's thugs.
• While the above is one of Yagami's cooler moments, his presence in the hospital during Chapter 9 is nothing short of amazing. He and Sugiura break into the ADDC, run straight through two waves of guards in broad daylight and then proceed to interrogate Shono. Yagami proceeds to line up every piece of evidence he has, solving almost the entire mystery except for who the Mole is and why they kill.
  • As an aside, Shono is confronted by two very determined men simultaneously, both of whom are threatening him and explaining how much of the mystery they've uncovered. Shono doesn't break, and in fact barely says a single word throughout the entire sequence.
• The climax of Chapter 8. Yagami and Kaito track Hamura down to an underground gambling den, wipe the floor with the man and his bodyguard detail and then interrogate a key piece of the puzzle out of him. The Matsugane have to resort to improvised flamethrowers and a hand grenade to get their captain back, starting a fire that is apparently still burning the next day and the chapter ends on a shot of the unharmed Yagami and Kaito looking over the utter devastation they caused. Yagami sums it up...

  Yagami: Holy shit.

• The entire final trial of the game, in which Yagami, with the help of Hamura, Kido, Mafuyu, and Izumida, proves once and for all that the ADDC is full of corrupt individuals who keep performing human experimentation with a drug they know is lethal, and have an assassin kill anyone who gets too close to the truth. Even if it's a bit undermined by Ichinose suddenly giving an order to his subordinate that causes Yagami to have to leave and chase after him, it returns in full form when Hoshino takes over, finding his confidence after Genda and Saori silently cheer him on.
  • For that matter, seeing Yagami and Izumida working together to corner Ichinose with questions during the trial counts as a moment of awesome. Despite being on opposing sides in a court of law, it's quite impressive how they're united in the face of a common enemy.
  • The moment when Hamura appeared in court to testify against Ichinose also counts. Not only does he follow through on his promise to avenge Matsugane, but he does so even when knowing that it would result in prison time for him. And if that weren't enough, the look on Ichinose's face at the appearance of Hamura was absolutely priceless.
• Albeit a small one, the way how Hamura reveals the Mole's identity in Chapter 11 is quite awesome. For the entirety of his interrogation beforehand, he's been completely quiet on saying the Mole's real name, but after Matsugane protects Hamura from the Mole's bullets and dies, Hamura just drops Kuroiwa's name on Yagami.
  Hamura: The Mole is Kuroiwa.
  (beat)
  Hamura: Now you know the truth. Kuroiwa's the one you want!
  • A villainous version, Kuroiwa to date is one of the deadliest killers with the way he ruthlessly takes out four of Hamura's men easily without even getting a blow landed on him.
• As standard for the series, most of the heat actions. With a couple exceptions, all of Yagami's heat actions are original and distinct from Kiryu's old repertoire of violence. Yagami has a more agile and acrobatic kung-fu-based fighting style, which leads to attacks where you jump off walls and smash your fist down as you leap over enemies, leapfrog over foes and flip them into a piledriver in the process, balance on your hands and do spin kicks to entire groups of foes like Sanji, and deliver cinematic gut punches that make a foe spit up blood in slow-motion right before being sent flying across the room.
• Yagami's first fight with Kuroiwa, which see the two very evenly matched. While the QTE shows it to be clearly one of Yagami's toughest fights, this is also the only time other than the final battle where The Mole isn't simply delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to his opposition. Yagami standing his ground and getting a few good hits in personally humiliates Kuroiwa so much his smug disposition fades and he angrily tries to simply gun Yagami down.
• Yagami's final battle with Kuroiwa is considered by many to be one of the best in the series and for good reason. The fight choreography at the beginning and during the transition to the second phase is incredibly fluid and frantic, with both fighters of equal skill attempting to block and counter the other's attack, while pulling off some awe-inspiring acrobatics. And then when you think it's over, Kuroiwa comes back, powers himself up, and completely refills his health for one last phase.
  • In addition, after hearing Kuroiwa's entire motivation for the murders, Yagami sums everything up into two words. No sympathy, no wrathful yells, just two little words.
    Yagami: You're insane.

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