For 15 years, the streets of Kamurocho and beyond have carried many different systems and stories. If last year’s new and dizzying turn-based RPG direction for Dragons proved anything, it’s the flexibility of the series, and the drastic changes that can give it all new purpose.
After the first entry at times struggled to find its own space in the series, the Trial spinoff returns, this time with a greater sense of purpose. With the mainline series now seemingly stuck on its turn-based RPG path, Lost Judgment carries the action torch on its own, its backbone provided by exhausting real-time combat complemented by a bewildering array of options, An ever-expanding sideline event.
Over the life of the series, it’s really been a big thing. If you’re judging an open-world game by distraction, this is easily Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s best work, and it’s full of things to do for a challenge to Kamurocho and Isezaki Ijincho. Like Yakuza: Like the one-stop before it, with the hustle and bustle of the Yokohama area as the main backdrop, it’s once again unparalleled digital tourism – which now feels more necessary than ever.
It’s possible to hang out in the city all night, grab a drink or two at a late-night bar, then run down the street for a drink or two with the criminals who patrol the area, then walk into Yoshinoya for a quick beef bowl. Before you Before heading home, why not walk through the sliding doors of the local arcade, where you’ll find the convincing yellowed candy cabinet stocked with Model 2 classics like Fighting Vipers, curios like Sonic the Fighters or Such an overlooked gem as Motor Raid. There’s even the all-new Hama of the Dead, a clunky shooter that’s sturdy and sleek enough to sit alongside existing entries in Sega’s beloved light gun line. Back home, there’s a main system, titled Alex Kidd, or you can opt for a satisfying action-puzzle game like Penguin Land.
Or you might just want to play Lost Judgment itself. Takayuki Iori returns to star, again as Takuya Kimura, and as a private investigator, dancing on the edge of law, order and enforcement. Perhaps most relevant to the player, his fists are very handy, like in previous Yakuza games, which can be a good brawler, Kimura is equipped this time with a third fighting style, which makes for exaggerated fights More flexible, its counters and throws.
There’s even a fourth fighting style — sort of — via the boxing mini-game, which offers its own upgrade path, just another way to kill half a dozen hours or so. It’s one of several new, profound, and engaging diversions offered in School Stories, a new side case at the Seyiro School at the heart of Kimura’s investigation. They’re rich and generous side quests, though it’s at that school — and in the central investigation of the Lost Trial — that things start to unfold.
While extracurriculars and real-time combat are familiar to old gangsters, Kimura’s career as a private investigator once again defines much of the heart of the Lost Trial, and it’s not always better. Stealth and stalking missions return, and while they’re less common and have had vignettes here and there, they’re ultimately still completely bland, and isolated detective scenes are nothing more than silly object hunting. Some additions work better than others – there’s a cute Shiba Inu to take you to the crate, and to bring the Yokohama sprawl together, now Kimura can pull a skateboard out of his back pocket, poppin style – but in In a game where many elements are familiar from past entries, it’s disappointing that what’s new isn’t all.
It’s another unique element of The Lost Judgment — the darker theme that is the cornerstone of the spinoff’s identity — and it may be its biggest failure. This is a story of sexual assault, suicide, and bullying that revolves around the school where you do most of your research. In fact, if you’ve been dying to remake The Bully, it’s here – only this time from the perspective of a 40-year-old man sniffing at the school gate.
This awkward combination is sometimes used to tease down to the darker moments involving suicide and sexual assault — often through lingering looping shots that seem a bit revelled in the horror of it all, which can all be Makes it all look nothing more than horrible window dressing. Video games can and should solve serious problems – I’m just not sure if a video game of Skate Detective getting drunk, arcade games and tracking down underwear thieves in their spare time is a mix of suicide, bullying and sexual assault. Given the swing from wild comedy to melodrama and the fumbling that followed, I’m pretty sure Lost Judgment isn’t that kind of game.
Kind of a shame, as Lost Judgment is usually a good, generous, and extremely entertaining game. Maybe that’s the reason for the friction – I struggled to get over the thrill of skateboarding around town, rubbing the railings, just stopping to surround a group of drunks, and throwing a few hundred yen at Sonic the Fighters with gravity suggested elsewhere, It’s absurd if a game doesn’t need a gloomy, brooding story to drag it down.
Far from blunt melodrama, The Lost Judgment still has that special spark – with nerdy tales about the used game market, missing game directors, combined with bouncy combat and skateboarding, and a soundtrack that lets you know RGG is sorely missed Jet Set Radio is like anyone. It’s still an intriguing series, as close to the golden age of the movie studios that video games have entered – the same scenes being played by different actors, different characters and directors, different mechanics, genres, and all the other silly little details modified. Make a video game. Like its predecessors, The Lost Judgment offers a sense of place and an intoxicating vibe—plus an often-hateful story.
