Lost Judgment

amazon Lost Judgment reviews

Lost Judgment – At present, it can be said that the name RGG Studio – the game development company under SEGA – is no longer strange to the majority of gamers.

Under Mr. Toshihiro Nagoshi, RGG Studio launched the famous “Beat em Up” game series, the Yakuza brand.

In 2018, RGG Studio launched Judgment, a spin-off game set in the same universe of the Yakuza.

In this game, the player has stepped into the shoes of private detective Takayuki Yagami and joins him in investigating murders related to the Japanese underworld.

With great success in domestic and international markets, Judgment has been “green-lighted” by SEGA to make a sequel.

Released on September 24th as Lost Judgment, this is a game on a larger scale than previous games with two streets for players to travel, tons of side activities, and story DLC shortly.

Set in the last month of 2021, Yagami and his partner Kaito continue their private detective work in the Kamurocho neighborhood (built on the Kabukicho neighborhood of Tokyo).

After peacefully completing their assigned task, Yagami and Kaito were invited by their two other friends Tsukumo and Sugiura, to Isezaki Ijincho (in Yokohama) to cooperate in an investigation.

The case that Yagami, Kaito, Tsukumo, and Sugiura are hired to investigate revolves around school violence and bullying at a local high school.

That is a seemingly simple task, but it opens up other mysteries related to Japanese underground criminals, triads, and dirty cops.

Yagami and his friends will have to join forces to confront these forces and seek the truth.

A private detective is dangerous, especially when the detective is willing to take on cases involving gangsters.

Because of this, detectives in popular culture are often equipped with hand-to-hand combat skills or weapons to defend themselves. The most famous example was the famous detective Sherlock Holmes when Sir Conan Doyle emphasized that Sherlock is a good boxer.

As for our Detective Yagami, he will defend himself with the traditional martial techniques taught by his father.

If you have played through the Yakuza series of games, you will not be unfamiliar with the combat mechanism. We have important buttons that are light hit, hard hit, wrestle and dodge. Players will combine these buttons to launch beautiful consecutive hits.

But that’s not enough because the unique element that makes up the fighting mechanism of the Yakuza is the Heat energy bar (called EX in this game).

During the battle, this energy bar will gradually increase, and with it, the player can launch impressive moves, showing the pomp of a martial artist but no less brutality.

Another notable feature of Yagami is that he can switch between three different fighting styles, “Tiger,” “Crane,” and “Snake.”

“Tiger” and “Crane” are two fighting styles that have appeared since the previous game, with “Tiger” designed to deal high damage to a single target and “Crane” for attacking multiple enemies at the same time.

where can you get a Lost Judgment online

Lost Judgment – PlayStation 4: Buy it now

Lost Judgment (PS5): Buy it now

Lost Judgment (Xbox Series X): Buy it now

In Lost Judgment, “Crane” and “Tiger” also receive many new upgrades to become unique.

“Range” is a new fighting style, strongly inspired by Wing Chun and Aikido. “Snake” specializes in defense, knocking down opponents with wrestling attacks, disarming and “shuffling” the weak, making them give up.

The appearance of “Snake” in the game is also very well done; Yagami did not suddenly use this style at the beginning of the game; instead, he selected this skill set because of the necessary situation.

More specifically, in the story, there will be “people” forming factions to bully their friends, and for some reason, they go to find things with Yagami. Yagami decided to teach them on behalf of the school and family.

Of course, the bullies are still minors, so Yagami will have to “punish” them as gently as possible.

All three fighting styles have good depth and distinct upgrade systems, enough for players to choose the right style from beginning to end if they want to. The combination of all three makes the matches in Lost Judgment more interesting.

After dozens of street fights, some gamers may want to “change the wind” with other activities. That is where Lost Judgment’s other strength comes in, which is the mini-game.

With Lost Judgment, players will play darts, baseball, motorcycle racing, robot combat, choreography, boxing practice, and more.

Most of these activities are only “unlocked” if the player completes the School Stories series of side quests; it seems that RGG Studio wants players to slow down through the mini-games, don’t rush that complete the main story early.

Most of the mini-games mentioned above are not “once-and-a-leave” types. Instead, they have a distinct progression.

For example, in the boxing mini-game, Yagami will gradually improve and learn new moves if he spends time and money practicing punching; his opponents will also gradually become harder than before.

In the motorcycle racing mini-game, Yagami can also customize and exchange cars after completing the races.

Graphics have never been a writer’s priority when playing games because there was a time when writers had to “train” the game on an old laptop.

However, RGG Studio deserves praise for optimizing Dragon Engine well, making the game stable at 900p/30fps on PS4 and 1080p/30fps on PS4 Pro.

“What? 30fps in 2021 but praise, the writer is trying to find a point to say?” – There will probably be some readers who think so.

The thing is like this:

In the previous game, the frame rate on PS4 and PS4 Pro systems was up to 30 but sometimes dropped to 24fps. The graphics of these two versions are sharper than before, stable at 30fps from the beginning to the end.

If readers have PS5 or Xbox series X/S, you don’t need to worry about this part because on the Next-Gen system; the game is stable at 4K/60FPS.

Drawing experience from the previous game, detective Yagami’s investigation process has been added with new elements such as stealth, parkour, using eavesdropping tools to be more diverse.

The following quest, which was a rather cumbersome thing in the previous game, is also limited. In the main storyline, there is only one time where the player has to follow another object.

However, the inference process of the game is still not done well.

More specifically, there will be moments when Yagami needs to choose the correct evidence to convince others or choose the most logical argument to progress the case he is investigating.

However, Lost Judgment does not have a move that encourages players to think hard to choose the right evidence or argument the first time.

If you choose wrong, the player chooses again until it’s right. This action inadvertently made Yagami sometimes feel like an idiot, lucky to have won the result.

The best way to fix this is to integrate a reward/punishment mechanism when the player chooses proof/argument.

Another shortcoming related to this factor is that before choosing evidence/arguments, the game does not have a mechanism to “rewind” what the other cores have said before.

If you accidentally miss an important statement of the opposite character, you will have no clue which evidence/argument is correct; only choose.

After all, we should only consider Lost Judgment as a fighting game with detective elements, not a real detective game.