This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I am a very recent convert to the Yakuza series, but once I converted I was all in. It’s probably not an unlikely story at this point, but I started with Yakuza 0 and it rocketed up my best games of all time list. Then I went and played Kiwami 1 and 2 and everything I have played from that team I have enjoyed. It is the right combination of silly and serious, the right mix of open world and linear experience, that it is a no brainer for me to purchase all the games that the team creates, because even though they haven’t all lived up to 0’s lofty goal, I have still enjoyed each one. More surprisingly was that my wife also fell in love with watching these games. She would enjoy seeing the wacky stuff that Kiryu would get up to in the side stories, or the high soap-opera drama of the main story, and of course she poured hours into the hostess club on her own. These games became a rare series where we could sit and play and both be fairly locked into the game.

Judgment is the first offshoot I have played by the team (I haven’t played Like a Dragon, yet.. or the zombie one) and I was very intrigued how the team making it would handle a new leading character, who has a very different skill set than Kiryu did in the Yakuza games. So, after a false start (we started it initially not long after it came out, but dropped it due to kids and other games), both me and my wife were dialed in to playing and finishing this game once and for all.

Lets start at the top. Judgment is at it’s core an action-RPG-Beat em’ up. You play as private investigator Tak (Takayuki Yagami) who, through circumstances, gets involved into looking into a murder of a Yakuza member who ends up dead with their eyeballs cut out. That is the start of the whole story and eventually leads to Tak researching drug companies, city council members, other Yakuza families, etc. Much like previous Yakuza games, the plot and everything that it entails is told over multiple chapters that have far reaching effects. But we can dive into the plot more later and trust me there is a lot to get to there.

However your moment to moment in this game is not just watching cutscenes, you walk Tak through a very familiar Kamurocho (if you have played early Yakuza games) getting into street fights with local thugs and other street ruffians as you make your way to different objectives whether they are side quests or main quest lines. Like in other Yakuza games, you can stop at restaurants, bars, arcades, and other spots along the way if you want to explore everything the city has to offer. Whether this is your first game or your 7 game visiting Kamurocho, it is always exciting to just exist in a world that seems to be living and breathing. Pedestrians walk through the city streets, cars drive by, barkers stand outside shops trying to get people to come inside. Restaurants and bars have their own patrons having dinner or grabbing drinks, arcades have the sounds of machines in the background going off, and it is all just a spectacle to behold. Fights start right in the street and people gather around to watch, people react to you running into them, standing on top of a car will have people stop, stare, and record you on their phones. You can sometimes see their thoughts or hear their conversations on the street, and it’s nothing really groundbreaking, but it again just makes it feel more alive. These pedestrians don’t impact the gameplay at all, but its just a nice addition to making the game feel like its own world.

Fights are a huge part of this world and for the most part the fighting system hasn’t changed too much from previous games. There are two styles to change Tak between which are supposed to be for fighting in groups vs fighting individual characters, but I will be honest, I barely touched this and don’t even remember which one I stayed on for 90% of the fights. Heat actions exist in this game, and for those unfamiliar these are more powerful moves that can be cashed in once you have enough power that are usually more violent than your normal repertoire. Heat actions have existed in all previous Yakuza games I have played, but they are severely toned down in this game in comparison to other games. For example, Tak refuses to take weapons with him or from fight to fight, so there are just a lot of missing heat actions dealing with weapons. Daggers and swords essentially break once an enemy drops them, and while there are some gruesome actions that still involve smashing heads into walls, knees, or baseball bats, a lot of the other ones are missing. There are no bladed weapons or guns that Tak wields, so you don’t see him stab or shoot anyone like Kiryu did, and we can argue that Tak is just a different kind of person compared to Kiryu, but something that brought a lot of variety to Yakuza 0 has been removed which makes fights become a little more monotonous quicker than in previous games. The best two heat actions are clearly jokes but that is nothing new, and something very familiar to people playing Like a Dragon, but you have unique heat actions when you are by swingsets or in the middle of the road that are great, but if anything it makes you wish there were more unique ones in the game. This is a huge game and you will get in a lot of fights across multiple different locales, and while those locales are a welcome addition to just fighting on the street every five minutes, but the moments always seemed to underperform based on expectations I had for this team. In Yakuza 0 – 2 there are moments in each of the games where Kiryu essentially has to fight through a gauntlet of enemies in quick succession for some story based reason. In all of those moments, the story, the fights, the impact of the moment would almost literally get me to stand up as I play through it, pumping me up to a point where I would say something akin to “this is some cool shit.” In Judgment you go through a couple of those gauntlets as well, but that same feeling of excitement is gone. Tak’s fighting style, the lack of weapons, the lack of heat actions, the sense of a lacked aggression don’t raise these moments above the common street fights you get into. Most of the fights don’t even feel connected but individual fights in a big building, I want the Tak who uses a finisher on one enemy to put him through a door, that then leads to a fight with more enemies. I want the Tak to jump kick a man out a two story window, or have some sense of emotion, but this game never gets there.

However we do need to talk about a sad note to Judgment (and a reoccurring one), and that is for such a seemingly big world it has so much less to do than the Yakuza games. I have heard speculation that it is because they used a real actor, who has his own handlers and they denied some of the more outrageous extra activities so as to not be associated with it. That might not be true, but a lot of side activities are missing in this game seemingly with no reason. Karaoke, dancing, bowling, hostess club, golf, fishing, slot-car racing, and more are all gone as possible fun activities to do in the city and they have been replaced with VR (just more fighting, really) and drone racing. I understand that not every game has every mini-game, but Judgment seems barren for activities outside of the main questline. I like playing darts just fine, and drone racing is fun for a little bit, but variety is the spice of life, and that variety can’t just involve going to different restaurants to try and eat all the food. Yes, you can go on dates which is a welcome change… but all your dates want to go to one of three locations and while each girl is different, there is almost always a darts option and a casino option. I ended up just picking darts at every opportunity because it was the mini-game that was the quickest to beat and still score a ‘successful’ date. While this isn’t an exact comparison, I probably spent 10-15 hours in other Yakuza games doing side activities that weren’t tied to a quest-line compared to like 5 hours in Judgment. Maybe some of that novelty wore off by playing multiple games of the same ilk, but outside of spending a session just doing drone racing and VR (thinking I was going to get the unlimited play passes), I never ventured to do those activities again outside of dates.

Before we get into the main story, Tak is a private detective, and gets to take jobs centered around his career as he tries to make a living. There are a couple different places that Tak can go to take up a side quest, but they all (usually) require Tak to use his detective skills to get to the bottom of a case. Most of these are what you would expect a private investigator to handle. Seeing if someone is cheating on their spouse, or looking into the disappearance of an item or a person. Of course, there are some weird cases here and there, including looking for a collection of perverts who keep harassing the same girl, or trying to help a publisher land a book deal with an author. Almost all of these cases involve tailing someone and taking their picture, or tailing them and then fighting them, or even tailing them and then tailing them some more. There is so much of this game that is just Tak following people from a distance trying not to be noticed that it becomes a real problem. The game makes a big show of this early on that Tak has disguises, a drone, and a partner for cases, but in reality you rarely get to use any of that. Perhaps I’m not the right person to ask, but does everyone who is off to do something fishy, constantly stop in the middle of the road to spin around and look for someone tailing them at all times? These are people that A) don’t know what Tak looks like, or B) shouldn’t expect to be followed, so why is everyone as skittish as a cat. Being a private eye certainly isn’t a glamorous job, but where are the other actions for you to do. Make me have to dig through trash, or investigate a building without being caught or something. Make me use the lockpicking skill, or the cigarette smoking skill (smoking in random break rooms) for any use at all. How is tailing the one thing that everyone is ok with being 70% of this game.

I digress (tailing is one of the worst parts about this game, and I never actually failed one), the side quests in Judgment are some of the laziest and weakest side quests I would associate with this team. They re-use bits constantly for side quests that don’t need a drawn out series. There are 3 side quests just dedicated to helping a publisher secure a book deal, and all 3 side quests have you in the same room solving a puzzle for the same characters. There are 3 more side quests where you just play hide and seek with a little kid by trying to find him in the town from a single photo. There are about 3 or 4 quests where you chase a wig on the breeze. This whole game has about 50 total side quests and its not that so many are bad, its that so many are uninspired. In Yakuza 0 nearly every side quest ended in a fight, but even though it always ended up in a fight, most of the quests still felt unique. In Judgment, I remember feeling so let-down that when I finally unlocked a new side case by progressing in the story, or because I made enough friends in the world, only to see that it was hide and seek for the 3^rd time or another publisher quest. That’s not to say that there weren’t some good side quests, but the hit rate in this game is much lower than it as for either of the other 3 Yakuza games I played.

Ok, lets get on to the main plot. There will be spoilers ahead, but I don’t want to just block out this whole section so this is your warning that I am going to spoil something with this game’s story. So, I covered some of this earlier, but this game is mainly about a series of murders around Kamurocho. A bunch of dead bodies are appearing in the city with their eyes gouged out, but a relatively clean crime scene. While the cops are certainly investigating, the people that are being found dead (yakuza’s, homeless, etc.) are not really a collection of people that are making this a super high priority. Tak is a former lawyer, now a private eye that gets hired by the yakuza to get one of their generals off who is being charged for the string of murders. You eventually get him acquitted because he has an alibi, but this piques your interest and you make it your mission to catch the killer. That is the setup for the first few chapters, but then the story seems to fall off the rails a little bit. Tak’s focus shifts from investigating the murder spree to diving back and investigating a robbery his friend was involved in which seemingly has no relation to the murder case. From there Tak starts reviewing a case that was the reason he quit being a lawyer, about a man twice convicted of murder who is now serving a sentence and on death row. Eventually the story pivots to focusing on a potential new dementia drug being developed that could solve a lot of the country’s problem with dementia patients. Much like other Yakuza games, these stories all eventually come together in a Rube Goldberg kind of way. With Tak and crew deciding where to go with their investigation based on no real evidence and a potentially dangerous accusation. Of course it ends up being right, and then Tak and co. get to be a hero and take down a huge group of corrupt people in the process. It is soap-opera in its extreme-ness and an enjoyable story if, and I say this lightly, a little predictable.

I enjoyed the story and all, but this is a big ole ranking list, so I have to rank it against other games. The judgment story doesn’t hold up when compared to Yakuza 0 or even Kiwami 1. What I thought could have been a really good detective story about stopping a serial killer gets derailed by its own story multiple times that even our main characters don’t seem to find it important. Why did we drop everything to re-litigate a robbery that happened 5 years ago, no one really asked us to look into it? It seems for multiple chapters of the main game, we seem less interested in catching a killer and just putz around instead. Of course, because this is a video game, it all comes out in the end that everything was related to some degree, but it asks that the player make these wild jumps in logic with the characters without really offering a good reason to do so. I remember sitting with my wife after finishing up a chapter and discussing with her if we both missed something, because there seemed to be a big missing connector piece that tied everything together. *Spoiler* I am of course referencing that seemingly out of nowhere, Tak and crew associate the new dementia drug with being tested on human subjects, and those are the people who are found dead… and while that ends up being the case, at the moment they make that suggestion there is no reason for them to believe that to be the case. *Spoiler*

Which can we talk about Tak for a second here? He has this troubled history where he got someone off for murder, and that person seemingly commits another murder which haunts him to this day. It gives Tak a persona, it gives him some convictions, because of this past screw-up. However, and I hate when games or movies do this, they take all that away in the end. Turns out that Tak was right all along and that the rest of the world got it wrong! He didn’t accidentally defend a real murderer and get them acquitted, no there was a huge elaborate plot that went out of its way to re-convict this same guy and he was innocent the whole time. Do we need a main character who is perfect and just? I would much rather our hero have this blight on his resume as a reason why he now strives to do his best, it gave him a driving force. Tak can now be righteous without having to wash away his failings. One of the many reasons that make Kiryu a better character than Tak, is that you knew that Kiryu rose through the ranks of the Yakuza before we play as him. That means that he probably put the squeeze on business for protection money, hell in 0 he gets in trouble because someone he roughed up for loan money ends up dead. Kiryu may be a big softie that is constantly trying to do what’s right, but you know that he isn’t perfect. In comparison Tak is just a boring character that doesn’t make mistakes (unless you count all the times he is real creepy to women). The best character in all of Judgment is Tak’s associate Kaito, who is (shocking) a former Yakuza. The best detective stories are almost always because the detective has some bad history that haunts them. Tak starts with that, but by the time the game ends, Tak has an untouchable record and is Joe Perfect. Our heroes are more interesting when they have failings, taking away the only failing Tak had, immediately makes Tak a much less interesting character.

There are other things I forgot to mention that we will cover in one or two sentences each below:

Friendship meters – Meet and befriend people around town and they might show up in a fight or toss you an item when you need one. You need to make friends to unlock side quests, its like the Sims.

Leveling up – Leveling up is a chore as it is based on a currency that is much harder to come by. I was not even close to be maxed out.

Drone flying – a lot is initially made of your drone, but unless you plan on racing with it, it only exists for like 3 quests.

Quikstarter – An obvious play on kick starter where you can thrown money at some unlockables. Money is less plentiful in this game than other Yakuza games, and the things you can fund are only there if you want to spend more time with drone racing or more time in VR.

There are probably other things I am forgetting, but that is Judgment in a nut shell. I won’t shy away from it, it will be the lowest ranked game from these creators who I think have struck gold with their other series. There are a lot of reasons why, but this game just feels and plays like a side story compared to the Yakuza proper series. Less side activities, less heat moves, less fighting styles, and a much less interesting main character all make this a much lesser experience. I have “Lost Judgment” and I have seen that they put a few more activities in that game, but any momentum for me to roll right into that game is gone. Now to be clear, this game isn’t bad in that I think this is falling in at the bottom of the list, but rather it is bad if I compare it to other similar games all made by the same studio. I still think people can have fun with this game for the $10-15 its being sold at now, but if I am trying to win people over to this type of game.. I am not putting this high on the list to show people first.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: Sorry, no

Where does it rank: Judgment had a fairly negative write-up but I am being harder on it because I care. It needed more variety in its cases, more variety in its side activities, and more variety in fighting. Kiwami games got a pass, because they were remakes of games that came out will before 0, and they can claim they are playing it close to the original. Judgment doesn't get that pass, this game should have had plenty of time to incorporate even just the side activities or heat actions into Judgment, and it opted to not do that. I have it ranked as the 51st Greatest Video Game Of All Time. It sits between #50 Super Mario Party and #52 Rune Factory 4. This is currently out of 158 games, so it is still in the top 3rd of games available, so not at all a big loss, but nothing compared to the 2nd greatest game of all time (Yakuza 0) and the 37th greatest game (Kiwami 2)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Layton's Mystery Journey (Switch) 2) Rain on your Parade 3) Guac-a-Melee