Lost Judgment - Review

Man...

 Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer/publisher: Sega
Platform: PS4/5/PC.
Official Site: N/A

Release date: 24-9-2021.

 

I wasn't really sure what to play but then I just wanted to see Yagami,Kaito and Sugiura again

instead of Kiryu-chan so we're doing another generation gap to try & do some more

detective work in Kamurocho! Since the judgment games are best played blind

i'll try my best to not talk too much about the general plot... except for some things

I felt like I had to mention however I won't be discussing the general plot as a whole.

Pro's

- Decent enough plot.

- Substories were generaly better than in judgment, finding squirrels was fun.

- A whole new district to explore besides ye olde kamurocho.

Grey area:

- Game deals with some pretty heavy themes involving suicide/harassment and bullying.

Con's

- Awful pacing, goes on too much about the same thing for too long.

- The keyword thingy and/or using a variety of tools can feel like busywork.

- Most investigation parts were not interesting and were pretty forced, the biggest offender

being at the end of the final chapter, like come on that killed the flow.

The story this time... is like some random season of some detective drama and

honestly after finishing it really felt like it could have been a tv show too.

Right of the bat we're on the case of a guy that tried scamming a girl out of her money.

It was all a ruse from the get go like the guy was one of those typical con artist setting a girl up

with a debt to they have to pay it off in some establishment by selling themselves.

Luckily for the girl she found the right detective agency for the job to get to the bottom of it.

Then we go to an all new district the (ga)ijin-cho which leads us to a case about highschool bullies

and it did not get much better from there since there is a gang active in the ijincho district too.

Ah yes because afterall the judgment games are a yakuza game in disguise! with political twists.

Honestly this was one of the few moments I laughed the other one was Sawa scolding

Yagami for picking fights in the gym and him reverting to a highschool boy.

This game had rather hefty material right in the opening hours from the above to a case

about bullies, I had to keep taking breaks during that cuz it was almost too much.

I'll admit it was fairly interesting but it had some pacing problems

like one moment you're doing a substory to further the mainstory.

I think they should have branched it better but I guess it couldn't be helped

and oh well for the sake of the case I go pass your test I guess.

Atleast in this game they actually used the markers properly so I wasn't getting lost.

    I got a little de-motivated at that part and just closed the game for the day... in the middle of it.

They like also loved to switch chapters in the middle of a cutscene the worst offender

was from ch2 to ch3 I was like really? you really gonna switch chapters like that...

Love how this game tells me to go do something but 5 steps later this happens & I cause a traffic jam.

 

This game really isn't much longer than the average RGG game though its somewhere

between 20-25 hours depending if you get distracted by side content.

Most chapters are fairly short but chapter 10 was quite long compared to most other chapters

I wouldn't be surprised if that is where people drop this game cuz that is also the point

where the game throws in its mental gymnastics and wtf is even real justice?

Honestly I start to wonder why I didn't just drop it but yea if I am in like ch10

which is almost at the end then i'm gonna see it through cuz I got hooked by the story.

Maybe I need to change... but I am the type to see things through if I am far enough anyways.

 

Gang's all here!

That aside I was happy to see Yagami, Kaito and Sugiura again as well as Tsukumo

which I sorta forgot about but he had a real glow up or so to speak.

The character interactions were pretty great and the first subquest was actually funny.

I still remember how the subquests in the original judgment didn't really grab me

but it seems they learned and made them more fun! Yagami's inner dialogue

was also pretty funny this time but it seems like he was complaining a lot actually.

Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy having to find most subquest in this installment

cuz it was all such a busywork so I only focused on a handful that caught my eye.

 

Graphics wise it looked great but I think thhe lightning at times may have needed work

when like the sun was setting it tended to look significantly worse.

The above screenshot isn't really good at describing it I just thought it was funny.

They may also need to work on the water textures... I was not impressed.

Music was generally pretty good, OP was not my style but I will say

it fit the theme of the game and Kuwana's character very well.

 

Nottu dissu shittu againu...

You know I think the story may be fine though but yea it just didn't really grab me

as much as the first game so that's that maybe it was because of the material being heavy

but if I had to be honest it wasn't that but the overall pacing just felt off and in the end

it felt like it was all over the place with the forced substory introducing a new mechanic

and substories being a pain this time to find too. By ch4 I got a general picture

but they kept revealing more layers of the onion and I was like uh sure now what.

I failed to understand why we frequently needed to kill time or do literally anything else...

their is a major bug in ch6 where it could softlock your game if you triggered

a specific school substory with the robotics club, it is fine anywhere else.

TFW: Get told to do literally anything else but also can permanently glitch yourself.

Accidentally roasted Hoshino-kun...😂

In terms of substories I remember really enjoying running into them in Y0 or Yk1 but they were

hard to find here in lost judgment, since they are locked behind some keyword BS which

ultimately turned me off from them which is such a shame cuz the handful I found were funny.

I did like how we had a whole new district ijin-cho which I jokingly keep calling gaijin-cho

because I was kind of getting tired of just kamuro-cho, it was also bigger than the osaka? district

Majima was placed at in Y0 so there was plenty of new sights to see.

Too bad the substories were a pain to unlock this time... there can be so much fuzz

unlocking keywords or special tools to find stuff it all can be a hassle.

Battle wise it was a lot better and the health bar no longer can get broken Yagami's moves

felt cooler this time around as well but other than that it was more or less the same.

Final Thoughts?!

No better image to describe how I feel about this game in general.

 

TBH I think the story was pretty good but at the same time can be a complete

mental torture due to the story elements about bullying and harassment.

There were times I wanted to give up the only reason I tried to finish the story was to get

to the bottom of it but it wasn't really a fun ride. Like at all. The story also tried to pull some

mental gymnastics near the end and I was like I'm so tired during the court scene in the final chapter.

Also I knew Kuwana was full of *** the moment he started vaping like a hippie.

Its okay though I still love him and he is single handedly my favorite character in this game

or more like Kuwana carried this game really hard, I mean it when I say this.

Of course I liked seeing the characters again and some substories were fun but I just

wasn't enjoying myself. I disliked the constant need to interrupt the mainplot

to introduce a new mechanic and actual substories being buried behind keywords

and you can't even randomly trigger them anymore (only some).

The characters kind of did feel one note and never really did anything surprising

its like they had a role and that was it, which is why the only one I really liked was Kuwana.

Yagami could have a bunch of things to say but the only word that comes out is Sawa.

Due to some of the above it felt like the mainplot was dragging on

plus it in general feeling like a can of worms and then you eat it too (ew).

I had to force myself to finish this game, I did not really have this problem with the original.

I believe there were some serious pacing issues as well as most of the investigation scenes

not being really interesting, they didn't make me feel like I learned much most of the time.

The worst offender was the one in the final chapter which was action packed

but then it had you... have to figure out a route and select random objects which

completely killed the flow of it all. That actually made me frustrated. 

I also missed finding random cats during investigation segments and this time

they made them harder for some reason or like they want you to look really hard

for some reason or examine something twice over. Meanwhile this dragged it on for no reason

since there isn't even a proper checklist of what to look for, you just click random things

or examine something twice over or else you can't proceed. I didn't feel smart looking

around cuz there was barely anything to find either. >_>;

I will add to this that I did really enjoy finding some of the squirrells when I got into that

and I feel like it filled the hole of not being able to find cats like in the previous game.

Just a kiss and make up already moment except not really.

 It makes me wonder how many people actually dropped this game around

ch9/10 and never finished. Like I remember I enjoyed pulling of the layers of the mystery

onion in the first game but with lost judgment I had to force myself to do it.  The character

interactions also weren't that fun & there were only a handful of moments I laughed including

Yagami getting scolded by Sawa or not being able to look Kuwana in the eye that one time.

As is with most RGG games the story was too heavy for there to be any fun which was reserved

for substories. I mostly ended up playing this game when I would watch a tv-show before bed

so I only played it when I had nothing better to do or watch which is why it took me a while to finish.

7.5/10

I guess that is one whole point less than what I gave the original huh?

Who are you, you are not Yagami. Yagami wouldn't let this happen /s.

 

So all in all this game was a drag for me despite the battle system being an improvement

and no more mortal wounds (yay). The story was as interesting but it

had some pacing issues and I nearly lost my patience at times.

Basically for me Judgment has a better story and Lost judgment has better gameplay.

This game made me want to curl up in bed instead of actually playing it... does this say enough?

The story at its core wasn't even half bad... but idk the way it was presented made it such a drag

and wasn't enjoying it that much. I also stopped doing substories during the main story

since I felt I would lose the excitement and the flow of it if I lingered too long to do random stuff.

I will say that the ending of this game was much better than the last game I played and it was

actually satisfying in rounding everything up. Also while I could be wrong about this

but I am pretty sure the theme song of this game was about a certain character

being fed up and taking matters into his own hands. My takeaway is that this game

wasn't about Yagami it was about Kuwana. That's why its called ''Lost Judgment''.

I kinda do wanna play the Kaito files someday cuz he's a bro but i'm not sure when...

Would probably only recommend Lost Judgment if you don't have anything else to do

and want to see Yagami and the gang again. Or perhaps want to play every RGG game out there

but be advised this game carries some heavy themes and may be a tough pill to swallow

especially if you have dealt with similar things. What's next? not much but I am kinda

in the mood for an otome game so its either waiting for Matsurika no Kei or Granblue Fantasy relink.