5/5 ★ – usagichann's review of Lost Judgment.

I played judgement back when it first came to the now defunct Google Stadia streaming platform. That was my first encounter with the Yakuza series as a whole, and it was a pretty good riveting experience. Originally, my main interest was in using Judgement to play a few games now defunct in my libraries like Virtua Fighter 4 and a few other Sega Arcade games, but pretty soon all of those mini games became fodder to the much better addictive main story line. Fast forward a few years. Stadia is now defunct, and Lost Judgement has been out a few years. I saw that it was available at my local library and immediately hit the checkout button. about 5 weeks later, I rolled credit. This has been one of the more hard hitting video game stories that I ever played. Its still your typical Yakuza game, of main story, side quests, and some irreverent mini-games, but the main story is head and shoulders apart from any other Yakuza game. The heady topic this game is Bullying. Mostly about High school bullying, but also a "what do we do about people who kill bullies" perspective, and a "if your son made my son commit suicide through bullying, and I then kill your son, who is really wrong?" types of questions. Its a really hard topic to go through as a parent with 2 kids who are now in prime bullying or be bullied age, and there are no easy answers, nor do I wish any parents to ever be in either position of defending a bully or having to teach their child to confront a bully. Main story aside, this was the first Yakuza where I felt the side stories played much stronger than the Main story. The side stories in this case all revolves around the school, where Yagami is now going to be a consular for the clubs. And there are a lot of clubs. You will be counsular for the dance club (where you play a pseudo DDR game), a photography club (where you try to catch bad acts), a robotics club (kinda tetris game with shooting), and even a virtua fighter club (where they compete in esports). The best is probably the boxing club games, but honestly most of the side stories were pretty fun to play through. None of the mini games are really anything to write home about, but the stories they come attached with are! If this is Yakuza's method of getting me to play more mini-games they've certainly succeeded and then some. And frankly given how depressing the main story is, you really need the side story to come up with some much needed levity. All in all, I really had fun with Judgement and Lost Judgement, with Lost Judgement being a much better game over 40+ hours of playthrough. Once again, Ryu ga Gotoku has come through and I highly recommend anyone interested in the Yakuza games to checkout the Judgement series.