WARNING: Unmarked spoilers ahead due to Late Arrival Spoilers on both ends.
Judgment x hololive ERROR: The Kuroiwa Files is a collaboration between Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and Cover Corporation, and specifically, a crossover between Judgment (yes, specifically the first game) and hololive ERROR. Yes, you heard that right. No, this is not a joke.
Mitsuru Kuroiwa, the Mole, is dead. Or at least, that's what Takayuki Yagami was led to believe. However, Kuroiwa was actually shot with rubber bullets, leaving him in a coma as the police carried him off to prison. After a few years of service, he is given a special mission: go back to his mask as a cop, and take care of some business in the somewhat isolated town of Aogami. Get through it all without killing, and he gets to be free again. However, little does he know that his contractors have other plans, and the many rumors surrounding the seemingly-idyllic town may not all be false...
The game features classic Like a Dragon Beat 'em Up Sandbox gameplay, a unique Animesque visual style, and (partly due to the aforementioned visual style shift, partly due to the setting) all new assets, akin to Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise.
Tropes include:
- Art Shift:
- Unlike most other games in the Like a Dragon franchise, the entire game is rendered in an Animesque style that takes more after the hololive side of things.
- For something more relative to this game itself, some cutscenes are depicted in a style akin to the hololive ERROR motion manga rather than staying in-engine.
- Battle Aura: As expected. Kuroiwa's is blue in the Enforcer style and his classic purple in the Assassin style, while most mooks tend to have red auras. More supernatural beings (minus Sakura) have a more glitch-like aura to contrast with the more traditional flame-like ones of the normal cast.
- Bittersweet Ending: A good bit more "bitter" than "sweet", given the hololive ERROR influences. The Blood Painter Gang has been shut down, Aogami has found a general drop in criminal activity, Kuroiwa successfully returns and, despite having entirely succeeded in his mission, chooses to remain behind bars after all the basically-Mind Rape that he went through. However, Kuroiwa's actions have only reduced the amount of mundane problems in Aogami, with all of the supernatural events still being just as at-large as before. This includes Shiki Natsume still very much being around, meaning that it's likely she and her cursed painting will continue claiming more victims.
- Boss Subtitles: Identical to those in the Judgment games, but blue instead of gold. Sequences dealing with blatantly supernatural nonsense have a variation that is black on the inside and momentarily shows an Ominous Visual Glitch, along with some select bosses having unique flourishes, like blood splatters for Shiki Natsume or cherry blossom petals for Sakura Shinomiya.
- Call-Back: The reason why this game can even happen is a big one towards Yakuza 4. Two words: rubber bullets.
- Cute and Psycho: Shiki Natsume is a relatively sweet young girl, but she commonly hangs out around the Blood Painter Gang and is not at all disturbed by the sight of someone getting bled dry. Then it turns out she's actually the extremely violent ghost of an artist girl who tried painting their masterpiece with her own blood and still sees it as unfinished to this day, leading her to bleeding others out.
- Deal with the Devil: It turns out that the Blood Painter Gang was created entirely out of desperation. Its leader, Jiro Furukawa, and all of his lackeys once invaded Aogami High, coming across the cursed blood painting and thus drawing the attention of Shiki Natsume. In order to keep themselves alive, they swore to give her a constant supply of paint (read: blood), hence the murderous gang activity.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Until you get to upgrading the Enforcer style, Kuroiwa is... rather difficult to handle. Not only is it the only style you have access to for a while, but it is essentially his version of the Snake style, bearing a heavy focus on counters, parries, and non-lethal takedowns, making it unsuited for massive burst damage or long combos. This is rather approriate, as Kuroiwa's inability to kill as per the rules handed to him actively hinders his combat ability. Similarly, the far simpler-to-handle Assassin style reflects how Kuroiwa can finally let loose after realizing that the biggest threat in the town is spirits that are technically already dead, so going all-out against them doesn't break the rules.
- Hallucinations: After entering Aogami and beginning to deal with the Blood Painter Gang, Kuroiwa begins to hallucinate the bloodshot blue eyes caused by AD-9 even on living people, let alone the gang's victims. It turns out that this is the town itself, or the spirits within it, playing with a sense of guilt (no matter how small) he had over the AD-9 experiments after realizing just how painful the deaths caused by it are.
- Heel Realization:
- Kuroiwa tries to invoke this trope by talking Jiro down from all his murder gang nonsense multiple times throughout the story. After their final battle at Aogami High, he reveals that he has gone through it long before Kuroiwa showed up. He hates having to keep killing people, but he simply doesn't want to die and leave Nanase by herself.
- A gradual version occurs to Kuroiwa himself throughout the game, as he is forced to come to terms with all the lives he's taken, the suffering caused by AD-9, and how delusional he was to believe that it could've ever worked. It comes to the point where, after completing his mission and returning from Aogami, he chooses to remain in prison despite his sentence technically being lifted as per the rules.
- Interface Spoiler: The fact that Kuroiwa's fighting style has a distinct name immediately tells you he'll have another one after some point. Just not after how long, or what it is.
- In-Universe Soundtrack: The final fight against Jiro Furukawa happens in Aogami High during a school concert, as Kana Tokiwa is singing her actress' original song, "Raimei". Though it quickly receives a Diegetic Switch once it goes on for long enough, that is merely a bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation.
- Leitmotif: "Penumbra" acts as this whenever Kuroiwa's past as a Serial Killer is brought up. Him letting the Mole back out upon realizing that going all out against undead spirits won't break the rules given to him is accompanied by "Penumbra - Reawakening", a version with added Ominous Latin Chanting and a One-Woman Wail. Afterwards, the theme for the Assassin style, "Take Out the Trash", also holds several key patterns from "Penumbra".
- Maximum HP Reduction: Likely to fit hololive ERROR's whole horror thing, Mortal Wounds are back from the original Judgment. Considering most of the Blood Painter Gang members wield knives, combined with how cumbersome the Enforcer style is at first... Yeah.
- Paradox Person: It is somewhat implied that like the 20XX cast, Shiki Natsume was created by the Perfect World itself to stand in as the victim (and later continuous perpetrator) of the art prep room rumor. However, such a person was actually real, as shown with Mari Akagane, meaning that after Shino found out the truth about Mari, Shiki should've technically ceased to exist... and yet she just didn't. And it's suggested (though not confirmed) that she knows this.Shiki: After some time being here, I started feeling like I just... don't belong. And then I found them.
- Psycho Knife Nut: While several Blood Painter Gang members wield knives, likely to easily draw lots of blood, Shiki Natsume in particular wields a palette knife, which should immediately give away her identity and/or madness.
- Sheathe Your Sword: Defeating Shino Misora traditionally is impossible, as she will teleport away from or simply ignore any attacks you throw at her. The real way to beat the fight is to break all Like A Dragon convention by not fighting back, as she won't try to attack Kuroiwa either and, once he stops futilely trying to attack her, will actually try to help him escape the chaos of the town.
- Stance System: Though you only get to use it as such until later on.
- First there is the Enforcer style. It focuses on countering, parrying, and taking people down in ways that are definitively non-lethal, similar to Yagami's Snake style. It's also got a case of Some Dexterity Required.
- Then there's the much simpler Assassin style, which allows for the usual combination of combos and burst damage that is typical to Judgment and classic Like A Dragon gameplay. Thematically, it's Kuroiwa unleashing his full combat capabilities as the Mole.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: As always, the occasionally-appearing Shino Misora counts.
- There is also Shiki Natsume, who turns out to be alternate version of the art prep room ghost that appears in the hololive ERROR game. Unlike Shino above, Shiki is an active threat due to, well... being from the far more violent version of the art room ghost story, as well as essentially creating the Blood Painter Gang.
- Suicide Mission: What the mission as a whole turns out to be. Knowing of the rumors surrounding Aogami, the higher-ups sent Kuroiwa out while fully expecting him to not come back. And then he does, surprising literally everyone involved.
- Theme Music Power-Up: Well... less power-up and more not pulling your punches anymore. Once Kuroiwa figures out that he's dealing with undead spirits rather than living people, three things happen. One: he stops holding back. Two: you gain access to the Assassin style. Three: a remix of "Penumbra" starts playing in the background as you start kicking Shiki Natsume's ass, appropriately titled "Penumbra - Reawakening".
