Judgement is one of those spin-off games from the Yakuza series that takes the city of Kamirocho (however it's spelt) and puts a new theme on it. With Dead Souls it was Yakuza fighting Zombies, and with Judgement it's a detective investigating various Yakuza-related crimes. Like most of the Yakzua games before it, Judgement manages to use the same city that these games have been using for decades and STILL make it fun an exciting and NEW.
I honestly don't know how they keep doing this, but every version of Kamirocho has countless new people to meet, activities (though some return), restaurants to eat at (though theses are always the same too, and side quests. Every game is more of less the same shit, yet somehow always makes that same shit exciting and fun to do over and over again. This would be the 6th Yakuza game I've played over the last year and I'm not bored of it yet.
You are Tagami, an incredible lawyer who became famous for getting a serial killer off the hook. Only to find himself disgraced as that very same guy commits murder like immediately afterwards. Tagami decides he doesn't want to be a part of that directly and quits being a lawyer. Instead he opts to be a detective, this way if someone is innocent he will have first hand proof. It suits him better anyway because lawyers can't punch people, but freelance detectives can.
Tagami is just as brutal when he "teaches punks a lesson" as Kiryu, so there is no shortage of that same hilariously over the top brutality from the Yakuza games. The biggest difference between Judgement and your typical Yakuza games is the way the main gameplay goes down and the side missions.
Let's talk main gameplay first. You are detective so missions are presented as "cases" that you'll have to investigate in various ways. This might mean stealthing behind a suspect to follow them until they do something nasty, using a drone to location suspects or victims in various hard to reach places, investigation locations or photos of crimes scenes to sleuth out details, or interrogate witnesses. Of course, ultimately these investigations will get you into fights and that stays mostly the same as the Yakuza games. Though in Judgement enemies with deadly weapons can Dark Souls your health if you aren't careful. This is called Deadly Wounds, and when an enemy hits you with a bullet or a knife the game will lock out portions of your overall health bar until you go to a doctor and get healed from the deadly wound. Interesting idea, fucking useless in the course of gameplay. It isn't that big of a deal to get this fixed, and if you fuck up that badly you'll just die and reload at the beginning of the fight or dungeon anyway.
So that's the main portion of the game. Side missions are a little different. The vast majority of all the mini missions (side stories in the mainline games) are actually just people you can befriend. Tagami can become friends with people around the city and as he does so he builds up a good rep throughout the game. Doing these befriendings is usually pretty easy, and will often either reward you with points to invest in your skill tree or provide you with brand new skills to learn. These friendships aren't as well written as what we normally see in full Yakuza games, but they are so short that it doesn't matter either.
Like mainline games, Judgement has a shitload of random things to do if you are a 100%er but like the Yakuza games, this list is fucking insane and even my best attempt at one of these games only saw me to 84% after 160 hours. So good luck on that shit.
As for Ps5 things, haptic feedback and resistance helps flying the drone around. The load times are always nice. And a stable 60fps is just standard for the system at this point. Nothing special just overall nice things to have. The Ps4 version is fine as far as i can tell from looking online, so get the ps4 version if you haven't played this one yet.
I honestly don't know how they keep doing this, but every version of Kamirocho has countless new people to meet, activities (though some return), restaurants to eat at (though theses are always the same too, and side quests. Every game is more of less the same shit, yet somehow always makes that same shit exciting and fun to do over and over again. This would be the 6th Yakuza game I've played over the last year and I'm not bored of it yet.
You are Tagami, an incredible lawyer who became famous for getting a serial killer off the hook. Only to find himself disgraced as that very same guy commits murder like immediately afterwards. Tagami decides he doesn't want to be a part of that directly and quits being a lawyer. Instead he opts to be a detective, this way if someone is innocent he will have first hand proof. It suits him better anyway because lawyers can't punch people, but freelance detectives can.
Tagami is just as brutal when he "teaches punks a lesson" as Kiryu, so there is no shortage of that same hilariously over the top brutality from the Yakuza games. The biggest difference between Judgement and your typical Yakuza games is the way the main gameplay goes down and the side missions.
Let's talk main gameplay first. You are detective so missions are presented as "cases" that you'll have to investigate in various ways. This might mean stealthing behind a suspect to follow them until they do something nasty, using a drone to location suspects or victims in various hard to reach places, investigation locations or photos of crimes scenes to sleuth out details, or interrogate witnesses. Of course, ultimately these investigations will get you into fights and that stays mostly the same as the Yakuza games. Though in Judgement enemies with deadly weapons can Dark Souls your health if you aren't careful. This is called Deadly Wounds, and when an enemy hits you with a bullet or a knife the game will lock out portions of your overall health bar until you go to a doctor and get healed from the deadly wound. Interesting idea, fucking useless in the course of gameplay. It isn't that big of a deal to get this fixed, and if you fuck up that badly you'll just die and reload at the beginning of the fight or dungeon anyway.
So that's the main portion of the game. Side missions are a little different. The vast majority of all the mini missions (side stories in the mainline games) are actually just people you can befriend. Tagami can become friends with people around the city and as he does so he builds up a good rep throughout the game. Doing these befriendings is usually pretty easy, and will often either reward you with points to invest in your skill tree or provide you with brand new skills to learn. These friendships aren't as well written as what we normally see in full Yakuza games, but they are so short that it doesn't matter either.
Like mainline games, Judgement has a shitload of random things to do if you are a 100%er but like the Yakuza games, this list is fucking insane and even my best attempt at one of these games only saw me to 84% after 160 hours. So good luck on that shit.
As for Ps5 things, haptic feedback and resistance helps flying the drone around. The load times are always nice. And a stable 60fps is just standard for the system at this point. Nothing special just overall nice things to have. The Ps4 version is fine as far as i can tell from looking online, so get the ps4 version if you haven't played this one yet.