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The legend of the Yagami Detective Agency unfolds.

"You still wanna sue? Y'know, you won't know what hit you..."
Takayuki Yagami

Judgment, originally released in Japan as JUDGE EYES: 死神の遺言 (Shinigami no Yuigon, lit. Wills of Death) is a "courtroom thriller" Action-Adventure game by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the same studio behind the critically acclaimed Like a Dragon series. It released on the PlayStation 4 in Japan and for the Asia-Pacific region in December 13, 2018, with a Western release to follow on June 25th, 2019. While Japanese sales for the game stopped in March 2019 due to Pierre Taki's arrest, Sega announced in May 2019 that a new version of the game will be released on July 18, 2019, with the new character model and Japanese voice actor for Kyohei Hamura.note  It is a Gaiden Game to the main Like a Dragon games, ignoring almost all of that series' plot elements in favor of telling its own detective story set in the fictional Tokyo district of Kamurocho.

Judgment places players in the role of Private Detective Takayuki Yagami (portrayed by SMAP alumnus Takuya Kimura). Once a promising defense attorney, his reputation would be permanently tainted after one of his old clients, acquitted of a previous criminal charge, was caught by police for murdering his girlfriend. As such, he's forced to work as a PI in order to make ends meet and take on odd jobs from time to time. When an everyday case leads to a link between his past and a serial killer, Yagami is thrust into the murky world of the yakuza in order to find out the truth of who set him up.

To get to the bottom of this deadly mystery, Yagami will need to use every tool and skill as a PI at his disposal; tailing suspects and chasing them down if the need arises, taking incriminating photos with his phone and remote-controlled drones, cornering persons of interest with damning evidence, and fighting his way to the truth — through brute force, if necessary.

Judgment is the first major release of the Yakuza series after Yakuza 6, which concluded the story of the series' main protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, and represents a sharp contrast in narrative: while previous games focused on characters who lived outside of the law, Judgment has players in the role of a private detective attempting to solve crimes. This carries over into the gameplay, as well; in addition to investigating crimes and pursuing criminals, players must also take care to stay within the bounds of the law — even if it means running from the authorities.

Beyond the new characters and story, the core of the Yakuza series is ever-present in Judgment as players delve into a hard-hitting criminal drama story, while fighting off ruffians on the regular with both martial arts and environmental objects. Players can also pursue more light-hearted sidequests and engage in numerous mini-games, from arcade games to drone racing.

The official website is here.

The sequel, Lost Judgment, was released worldwide on September 24th, 2021, a franchise first for a Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio game, across the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. This time around, Yagami travels to Ijincho to solve a brand-new case.


The game provides examples of:

  • Actor Allusion:
    • During a chase, Yagami will shout "Cho, matte yo!" Translation  which is one of Kimura's famous Catch-Phrases from his 1997 drama Love Generation.
    • This wouldn't be the first time Yuko Kaida voiced a lawyer (or rather former prosecutor turned public defender in Sae's case.)
      • Amusingly, Cherami Leigh (Makoto's English VA) voices Mafuyu, who is a prosecutor just like Sae.
  • Alcohol Hic: The hostess Madoka lets out one in your first Friendship event with her at Apple Pie, despite being non talkative otherwise.
  • All for Nothing: The AD-9 conspiracy. Not only does the conspiracy end up getting busted wide open, but it's revealed that AD-9 was fundamentally flawed and that Shono's research was a dead end, so nothing would have come of it anyway.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Downplayed. Certain sections have you in the role of someone other than Yagami. Most of them are in the role of Saori, and are obviously investigations rather than a full-on combat sequence.
  • And the Adventure Continues: After the case is solved and Okubo is proven to be innocent once and for all, Yagami decides to remain as a detective instead of going back to being a lawyer. The epilogue shows him and Kaito taking up a case to find a missing cat.
  • Anti-Climax: One side case has Yagami hunt down a trio of perverts. One of them was an ass groper whom Yagami had to chase after having groped someone. After beating him down, the pervert then recovers and emits a battle aura as if going into a second form while proclaiming how groping a woman's ass gives him power. Yagami then breaks it to the guy that the last person he groped was actually a man. The pervert gets so horrified at this fact he undergoes a breakdown, then gets caught by the police.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: The first Quick Time Event prompt in the story has no punishment for failure and repeats until the player gets it right. Amusingly enough, it is Yagami telling a goon to look behind him over and over.
  • Battle Strip: It happens far less than in the mainline Yakuza series, but still shows up on occasion:
    • Ass Catchem rips off his shirt to reveal his muscular physique before the fight with him.
    • The Mad Bomber takes off his shirt before his fight to reveal his suicide bomb vest.
  • Ascended Extra: On top of being the only returning characters, most of the shopkeepers now have their own side missions, called "Friend Events".
  • Bait-and-Switch: Our first glimpse of present day is of Yagami looking like a bum, making it look like he had a fall from grace like Akiyama's. Only for him to put his hand up to his earpiece and reveal he's simply in disguise for the job instead.
  • Bittersweet Ending: More sweet than bitter. Shono and Kuroiwa are dead with their crimes revealed. The Medical Institute (and by extension the ADDC) will be shut down with every member of The Conspiracy on their way to jail, and Kajihira will soon be on trial for his scam. Many innocent (and not so innocent) people like Emi died (sometimes very painful deaths) for a drug that was never going to be anything more than poison. Okubo was proven innocent, but that doesn't change the fact that he spent 3 years on death row. Ayabe and Hamura had their crimes brought up to the world, meaning they'll probably go on trial for those crimes and will be found guilty. The Matsugane Family and Kyorei Clan have been gutted of their leaders and potential successors, leaving it dubious those families will ever fully recover. Kaito will never be a Yakuza again, and Yagami feels like if he goes back to being a lawyer, what happened to Okubo will happen all over again if he stops looking for the truth. But the duo stay best friends and continue being detectives. Doesn't take away that every criminal act was All for Nothing, but at least life goes on.
  • Bland-Name Product: The crowdfunding app "Quickstarter".
  • Body Horror: Anyone injected with AD-9 experiences severe pain in the head, tremors, and has their eyes become extremely bloodshot while their irises are stained a haunting purple color. This is why the Mole/Kuroiwa's victims had their eyes gouged out; Shono was too full of himself to let it slip that AD-9 was a failure. It's only when he injects himself with the drug that he realizes his failure.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory:
    • You can purchase additional Play Passes with real money, letting you take a few more runs at the profitable Paradise VR minigame.
    • The Ultimate Battle Pack gives you a bunch of reusable extracts that grant powerful effects like giving you a powerful One-Hit Kill attack and making you unkillable for a period of time.
    • The Play Spot Fun Pack not only comes with Play Passes, but also gives you drone frames with a high cost capacity, letting you put high-cost parts on your drone early on.
  • Chase Scene: Scattered in many places in the game, both chasing for and away from someone.
  • Casting Couch: The “Amidst A Dream” sidequest has Sana Mihama tell Yagami that she would have to “entertain” the CEO of the record label after dinner.
  • Casting Gag: Takuya Kimura is no stranger to legal or crime dramas. He was a public prosecutor in the 2001 TV drama HERO, another public prosecutor in the 2018 film Killing for the Prosecution, and then he starred as a homicide detective in the film Masquerade Hotel a month after the game was released in Japan.
  • Cash Gate: In Chapter 3, Ayabe charges Yagami 100,000 yen for some precious information that's required to advance the plot. Fortunately, the money isn't too hard to come by if you work through some of the Side Cases, which award anywhere between 50 to 80,000 yen.
  • The Cameo: Nikaido from Dead Souls is the final boss of the Kamuro Of The Dead minigame.
  • Central Theme: Truth and Justice. How far are you willing to go to know the truth and do the right thing? Are you trying hard enough to know the truth and are you really doing the right thing, or just doing something good for your own ego?
  • Combination Attack: Yagami and Kaito have two EX Actions depending on whether there is one or two enemies.
  • The Conspiracy: The main villains of the game are revealed to be part of one, centered around a drug that is meant to cure Alzheimer's. While a relatively noble goal, issues arise when the drug is discovered to be fatal in humans. With billions in government yen riding on the drug's success, its lead developer resorts to hiring professional criminals to kidnap terminally ill patients and yakuza thugs for off-the-record human experimentation in order to further "perfect" the drug, as well as using these same professionals to assassinate anyone who gets too close to the truth.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: While Shono testing AD-9 on Waku was extremely illegal and unethical, it was his belief that repeat testing of the fatal drug that gets to Yagami, because as he points out, if he really cared about curing Alzheimer's, he should've had no problem letting someone else take over his research before even thinking of murdering dozens of people to keep testing it. Of course, Shono reveals he was a raving narcissist who rejected his own results.
  • Cure for Cancer: What the game ultimately centers around. AD-9 was intended as a full-on cure to Alzheimer's, but while it was, indeed, fantastic on mice, it was incredibly lethal to humans, painfully so. As such, Yoji Shono, the drug's creator, sought to perfect it. Unfortunately, the toxins that comprised it couldn't be removed. Dozens died in Shono's desperate, unsanctioned tests, forcing him to dispose of the victims.
  • Custody Battle: Subverted. In Chapter 4, Ryuzo Genda tasks Takayuki Yagami to guard a mother and child, Azusa Otaki and her daughter Karin. Azusa wants a divorce with her former yakuza member husband Jin, wanting to take Karin as custody. Karin however has doesn't want her family to split, but has trouble saying so. It then gets muddier when Oikawa, another lawyer involved in the case, provides evidence that Azusa has been cheating on Jin, which is the cornerstone for Jin gaining custody. Yagami investigates things further, only to find that the claims and evidence were falsified, though he's unable to prove it due to some interference from Oikawa. Without much choice, Azusa resignedly signs the custody papers, but Yagami and Genda encourage Karin to speak up about how she doesn't want her parents to split. Both parents recognize they were acting rashly and didn't consider their daughter's feelings on the matter at all. While Oikawa tries to continue and state that he's got a case, Yagami is provided a copy of the dirty evidence, proving that Oikawa lied about Azusa's adultery. He then scurries out of Genda's office, with the family tearing up the signed paperwork that Oikawa left behind. It's a little ambiguous afterwards if the family fully reconciled or if they decided on custody out-of-court, but Genda states they should discuss things over first, with his office being open if they decide to go through with it. The resolution is on the brighter side at least, the whole case being thrown out before it began.
  • Darker and Edgier: Compared to Yakuza games the main story has a more serious and gritty vibe to it, Serial Killer takes the eyes out of their victims, guns are being pushed in the streets of Kamurocho by street gangs and the yakuza are not lionized like Kiryu and Daigo. The only active Yakuza shown to be somewhat decent is Matsugane, and he became a figurehead because of it since he didn't want to see what his underlings need to do to bring in money. Even the side story has adultery and terror portrayed more seriously than when Kiryu has to handle it.
  • Diegetic Interface: A Downplayed example. The minimap of previous games now appears to be represented by a navigation app á la Google Maps and the pause menu (which is an amalgamation of Android and iOS) is represented by Yagami's smartphone home screen (not unlike Yakuza 6 where Kiryu's smartphone served the same purpose). Also: whenever Yagami gets a call from a main character, they're now shown through a video feed as opposed to being relegated to Character Portraits like in previous games.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Should Yagami take too long to end random encounters and fail to escape from the police, there is a chance a female cop will attempt to stop him physically. The look on his face when his arm is placed into a hold and touching her chest shows he enjoys it. The option to mash out of the hold is given to the player, but if that's not fulfilled then Yagami will be flipped over and is taken into custody with a smile as the female cop holds his head quite close to her chest.
  • "Eureka!" Moment: Kaito finds the theory of the murders being the result of human experiments for the AD-9 to be absurd and mockingly suggests they might've as well experimented on Koichi Waku too. There is a long pause as Yagami and Co. realize Shono is Waku's true killer and the head of the conspiracy.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Both Shono and Morita are motivated to perfect AD-9 because Alzheimer's took their parents.
  • Eye Scream: The Mole's M.O. is to kill yakuza and gouge their eyes out. Turns out, it was actually Shono who did the gouging and there is a major reason why it had to happen: one of AD-9's symptoms is that the eyes go blue and bloodshot due to toxins in the formula. Removing the victims' eyes was a deliberate move to hide the evidence of Shono's experimentation, as the Mole found out in his last moments.
  • Fictional Counterpart: The crowdfunding app Quickstarter - which is Kickstarter with the serial numbers filed off.
  • Foreshadowing: During a flashback to Okubo's murder trial, in which he was accused of killing the person whose corpse he disposed of, one of the incorrect responses that the player can give while Yagami is questioning the prosecution's witness is to accuse said witness of having committed said crime. This turns out to be correct later on, though the player would have no way of knowing that at this point in the game.
    • Five-Second Foreshadowing: During the final chapter, we see a group of goons ambush Kuroiwa followed by Yagami and co. heading to the scene after the fact. As they do, we can hear a news report on the event playing in the background, and astute listeners will notice that the incident is described as a shooting despite Kuroiwa's attackers wielding melee weapons, providing an early clue that the Mole turned the tables on them.
  • Funny Background Event: After you win a Grand Prix in the Drone League, Yagami's drone will fly around as he's celebrating his victory, at one point even giving an unsuspecting high schooler a Marilyn Maneuver. Cue a Dirty Old Man trying to look up the girl's skirt only to get bitch-slapped for his troubles, all in the background as Yagami is celebrating his very well-earned victory. Both the minigame and this particular event also carry over into the sequel as well.
  • Gaiden Game: To the mainline Like a Dragon series. While several elements are shared with regards to gameplay and even lore, Judgment by and large remains independent from it, and can be played without having ever played a single Like a Dragon or Yakuza game.
  • Game Within a Game: As is now a tradition, the Club SEGA arcades contain several SEGA titles. Newly added to this game is 1995's Fighting Vipers, 1997's futuristic racer Motor Raid, and a tribute to both Yakuza: Dead Souls and House of the Dead in the form of a Rail Shooter titled "Kamuro of the Dead".
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: In Chapter 5, you get to play Yagami in a flashback when he was still a lawyer, and the sequence includes a fight. During said fight, you play as if everything in Yagami's arsenal is not yet unlocked. This also applies during the investigations in that chapter, if Yagami has those skills unlocked, they will not be available to him, making it sort of a No-Gear Level.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • The story and a couple of EX Actions emphasize Yagami trying his best to not actually kill anyone, but you can still throw people off buildings and stuff them in microwaves all you want as usual. They won't really die.
    • Parts of the story emphasize that Yagami is poor, at one point being 3 months behind in rent. While in gameplay, it's likely you'll have a million yen (if not more).
    • Nanami, one of the girls that Yagami can date, is staunchly against cheating due to past experience. However, there are no consequences for Yagami if you decide to date another girl or give yourself a harem while dating her.
  • The Goomba: The doctors fought in Chapter 9 are possibly the weakest enemies in the entire series.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: None of the victims' empty eyesockets are seen on camera. When the victims are found, all are wearing dark sunglassees. The fact that Shintani sometimes wears sunglasses, even indoors, could be considered Foreshadowing for his own demise at the hands of the Mole.
  • Gratuitous English: Invoked with Kaede Sanada at Quadra Garden, who's trying to learn English. Yagami, being a former lawyer, knows better English and can help her out. As her friendship goes along, her English gets better to the point where she not only greets him in English, but now has an American boyfriend.
  • Guide Dang It!: There's a hidden backroom dealer at Lullaby Mahjong, but the game doesn't tell you about it unless you go through some steps. After dealing with the Panty Professor, you start up a chain of friendship missions involving Yosuke and his friend Madoka at Apple Pie. Once her friendship is raised enough, you can talk to her coworkers enough until they give you the key to the backroom to Lullaby Mahjong for the high rollers.
  • Guilt-Based Gaming: Once you unlock the threat meter, Yagami will occasionally be notified of Keihin gang members terrorizing the city that he needs to take out. If you choose to ignore them, he'll get several messages telling him about the destruction they caused and how he could've prevented it.
  • Honey Trap:
    • One of the sidequests is named this trope. A comedian named Hyuga's career is ruined when a girl he dated said she was underage and asks Yagami to find the truth. It turns out to be a plot by his jealous costar Higurashi to tarnish his career and that she truly is legal age.
    • In Chapter 12, Saori gets to be this by posing as a reporter and seducing Kido. The team then uses footage of the incident as blackmail to lure him to Kamurocho.
  • Hope Spot: While looking for Shintani, things start to look increasingly grim as no one knows where he is and it starts to look like he may have been killed. Towards the end of Chapter 4, Yagami calls Shintani's phone... and a cellphone starts vibrating inside the office's closet. Just as Yagami opens it, Shintani seemingly answers his phone, and there's a split second of relief that lasts long enough to make both Yagami and the player think that Shintani's alive... right before his dead body comes tumbling out of the closet, and it's revealed that what you actually heard was Shintani's voicemail.
  • Ink-Suit Actor: In the same vein as the Like a Dragon games, multiple major characters are modeled after their Japanese voice actors.
  • Inspired by…: Interviews with the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios personnel mention that development of the game was inspired by legal dramas, movies and video games, including the Ace Attorney franchise.
  • Interface Screw:
    • Drinking alcohol until Yagami reaches his limit affects how he walks. Instead of waking in a straight line, he'll veer off in random directions and start tripping over objects he'd normally walk over.
    • If you get grabbed during the fight against Shin Amon, he will steal Yagami's phone. Which means you don't get to pause the game anymore.
  • Kevlard: Sakakiba, one of the lieutenants of the Keihin Gang, has this power in cutscenes. At their first meeting Yagami cannot hurt him and has to wait until Sakakiba gets hungry and quits the fight.
  • Lockpicking Minigame: Scattered in many places in the game, not just the infiltration missions. For example, in the VR board game, the player was required to open a safe within a time limit. This also means that Yagami would have to open different kinds of locks throughout the game, each with their own unique mini-game.
  • Luck-Based Mission: One of the friends you make, Yuriko Tachibana, gives you mahjong based challenges that depending on your hands can turn into these, as mahjong is a competitive tile-drawing game with a fair amount of luck involved. Completing her Friendship is a relatively simple matter, but she'll continue issuing challenges with more difficult to get hands, the last of which being an exceedingly rare Nine Gates hand. Fortunately, this particular goal is a subversion in that you can purchase a cheat item from another location that will give Yagami Nine Gates immediately. Each time you complete a challenge you get a cheat item to help you in different gambling games.
  • Market-Based Title: Outside Asia (which uses the name JUDGE EYES: Shinigami no Yuigon), the game's known as Judgment.
  • Maximum HP Reduction: Getting hit by bullets or bosses' Deadly Attacks will take a chunk out of Yagami's maximum health. The only way to restore it is to visit the underground doctor below Children's Park or use a Med Kit.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: During the endgame, an injured Yagami starts seeing ghostly images of the past ending with a conversation he had with Emi about Okubo's defense. Emi suddenly turns to the present day Yagami and asks him to look after Okubo and her little brother. The hallucinations then end and Yagami is suddenly unaffected by his previous injuries. While this appears to be a mere hallucination, Sugiura, who was not injured, tells Yagami that he also heard Emi's voice, raising the possibility that Yagami really did interact with her ghost.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Chapter 1's title, "Three Blind Mice". Yagami and Kaito investigate the case of three dead yakuza wakashus with their eyes taken out.
    • Chapter 4's title, "Skeletons in the Closet". Many secrets are revealed, yes, but the real kicker is Yagami finding Shintani's corpse stuffed in his office closet.
    • Similarly, the final chapter's title is "Down Came The Rain". Much of the game's final moments take place during a storm, most notably the final battle against Kuroiwa.
      • The title is also a thematic and direct reference to the nursery rhyme "Itsy Bitsy Spider", with its simple allegory for picking yourself up and pushing onward to victory when all seems lost. ("Down came the rain and washed the spider out...")
  • Meaningful Rename: With the change of protagonist there are modifications in terminology for some systems. Heat moves are EX Actions and Substories are Side Cases.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The dresses Saori can wear during Chapter 7 shout out to several hostesses in Yakuza history. In particular, you can pick any of the dresses worn by the hostesses in Yakuza Kiwami 2, and even a dress based off Yuki's, with the description saying that it was once worn by a legendary Osaka hostess.
    • If Yagami wanders around Kamurocho, you can see that parts of the Little Asia district are cordoned off from the public due to reconstruction projects.
    • Yagami can also end up involved in a case revolving around Ono Michio, or more specifically his new actor, who feels he's inadequate compared to Kiryu's portrayal of the mascot.
    • An optional conversation reveals that the mainline series protagonist's propensity for finding lost locker keys scattered throughout the various cities used to open coin lockers containing all sorts of contraband was actually the work of a smuggling ring that the city only recently cracked down on.
  • New Game Plus: Once you clear the game, you can restart the game in this mode, though friendships and side cases are reset back to square one.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: A major theme of this game is that no amount of good that comes out of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist justifies the horrible crimes they do, and that they only self-righteously think of themselves as heroes.
    • Morita turned a blind eye to the Mole's crimes over his Freudian Excuse, which earns him a scathing strip-down by Yagami and an immediate dismissal from the legal system once his actions are revealed.
    • Hamura was simply looking for money to aid the Matsugane Family's finances, which ended up with him strong-arming the patriarch into effectively giving him control of the family.
    • Kido is being blackmailed with the threat of his reputation and what AD-9 could do to it, both good and bad. The instant it's made clear that AD-9 has no hope of success, he decides it's no longer worth it and testifies.
    • Ichinose couldn't care less if AD-9 saves the world as long as the ADDC continues to operate, granting him a good buck and the reputation to go along with it.
    • And Kuroiwa killed left and right as the Mole just so that he'd go down in history as a hero.
    • As for Shono, he's the worst one out of all of them, given that he could've avoided most of the mess he made if he wasn't such a Narcissist and let someone else look into AD-9. By the end of the game, it becomes clear that he's fully convinced that AD-9 could still be fixed even after three years of fruitless work, going so far as to inject himself with a dose to prove his point.
    • Even the Side Cases tie into the theme. A series of Side Cases has Yagami attempt to catch a Mad Bomber who claims to want to show the people of Kamurocho how fragile their security is. However, the whole reason he's doing this in the first place is because he got fired from a security firm three months prior, after he proposed a complete revamp of the city's security that got rejected for being too expensive. As such, it's obvious to both Yagami and the player that the only thing he really cares about is Revenge and proving that he's right.
  • Old Save Bonus: You can get a special gift of 50000 yen if you have a save from any Yakuza game.
  • Permanently Missable Content: The "Oh Look A Cat" trophy requires you to find all the cats during each first-person search in the main story. The issue is that missing one means you'd have to restart the whole game from scratch or reload an old save since it doesn't keep track of each one you've looked at.
  • The Power of Friendship: Yagami can befriend 50 people in Kamurocho by helping them out in side cases or performing specific tasks. In "The Golden Mouse" side case which involves the Keihin Gang attempting to turn the city against Yagami, all of his friends express concern and can support him by giving items, becoming distractions for him to escape, and fighting alongside him against the Keihin Four.
  • Press X to Not Die: Most boss fights have input prompts between phases as they perform what amounts to their own EX Actions on Yagami. Miss and you'll take a sizeable amount of damage.
  • Rescue Romance: Yagami rescues all of his potential girlfriends in the side cases that lead up to his being able to date them:
    • He rescues Tsukino from the Twisted Trio, a gang of perverts who keep sexually harassing her.
    • He rescues Sana from being raped by a crooked music producer.
    • He rescues Amane from a man who tried to murder her over her predictions of calamity disrupting his life.
    • He rescues Nanami from a stalker.
  • Rewatch Bonus:
    • The identity of the Mole makes sense to the entire game's plot once you know who he is.
    • Also learning about Sugiura's real ties to Emi Terasawa will make some of the foreshadowing with him, Emi, and Okubo have more sense.
  • Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Street Bosses and even Story Bosses are chock-full of attacks that can take massive chunks off of Yagami's health bar in one fell swoop. Likewise, Yagami has access to some extremely potent EX-Actions that can deplete an entire health bar or more with a single attack.
  • Secret Test of Character: The Mystery Writer chain of side quests is one for Takumi Katagiri giving it out. In each one, he puts the manuscript to his latest detective novel in a safe requiring a puzzle to solve. After completing all three, the author reveals that the novels were intended to be a trilogy and says if anyone ever published any of the other two beforehand, he would terminate both of the previous book deals and retire from the public eye. Since the client figured it out and waited for part three, he has now decided to work with his company for life. He did this because he felt like that nobody actually cared about what he was writing anymore regardless of how much or how little effort he put into it and that the publishers didn't even bother reading his books, mindlessly publishing them regardless of their content: by making the books into a trilogy without mentioning it to anyone else, he made sure that any potential publishers would give his books the respect they're due by refusing to publish an incomplete trilogy before knowing for sure that they can acquire the rights for the rest of them as well.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Surveillance Drone: Yagami has a drone named "Pigeon" that he can use as a remote camera to gather evidence, to shoot down trespassers as well as participate in drone races.
  • Super Mode: Extreme Heat Mode from 6 and Kiwami 2 make a return under the new name of EX-Boost.
  • Supervillain Lair: Shono's lab looks like a set out of a Torture Porn movie. While it makes sense to leave the place decrepit, having hobos and thugs as guards is taking things a bit far.
  • Tagline:
    • A weapon named justice. Japanese  (Japan)
    • Justice is blind. (Western regions)
  • Tattooed Crook: During Amane romance route she tells you to beware a cow calamity. It turns out to be a yakuza patriarch who sports an ox on his back. However we don't see it and there is no tattoo reveal like in previous games.
  • Terrible Trio: Yagami deals with a perverted version of this trope in sidequests called the Twisted Trio.
  • That Came Out Wrong: During the finale, while the heroes are surrounded by enemies Kaito states that they're "Comin' all over us", only to realize what he said and earn the disgust of both Sugiura and Higashi.
  • Timed Mission:
    • If Yagami takes too long in a random encounter against some mooks, the disturbance will be disrupted by the cops arriving and forcing Yagami to make a run for it.
    • Also, certain boss fights and search missions have a time limit for different reasons, and failing them will result in a game over.
  • Uncertain Doom: One variation of "EX Traffic Safety" involves a mook trying to punch Yagami and missing. The momentum carries him into the side of a nearby car, which said mook starts vandalizing. The car's occupants (revealed to be Yakuza goons) pull him into the car and drive off with the poor sap still inside. What happens is never shown, but judging by Yagami's reaction it probably isn't good.
    Yagami: 'Kay. That just happened.
  • What You Are in the Dark: When Morita says he is doing what he does for the greater good after being coerced, Yagami fires back he made the decision himself over empty promise of greater good for sacrifices and would likely have done it again.
    Yagami: Fire tempers iron and temptation steels the just.
  • Wham Shot: In the Finale, Shono's eyes turn into Creepy Blue Eyes as AD-9's side effects take their course, revealing why the Mole's victim's eyes were removed in the first place.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: Par for the course with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, this game has an urban sandbox to explore, with a variety of side activities to engage in.
  • Worthless Treasure Twist: AD-9, the supposed miracle Alzheimer's cure that was supposed to save ADDC from closure, for which dozens of innocent and not-so-innocent were sacrificed for, and dozens of people willingly gave up their careers and prestige in order to protect, considered more valuable than a hundred billion yen redevelopment project... turns out to be pure poison for humans, and there's no way to remove the toxins.

Alternative Title(s): Project Judge

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