Status Volt2742 Aug 5, 2025
I'm going to be all over the place with this writeup. First, I thought the story was really good, honestly maybe top 2 with Yakuza 0.
I'm going to be all over the place with this writeup. First, I thought the story was really good, honestly maybe top 2 with Yakuza 0.
The gameplay I feel like is on the stronger tier of Yakuza games, the wall moves were really satisfying and cool, and the running heat moves were also cool. I will say it felt a little bit more spammy and just light light then triple finisher than in most games, but idk, it's Yakuza combat in the end, and I enjoyed it for the most part which is about as much as I could want. I think the sidequests were pretty good, excepet for the now worst part of the game, THE FUCKING TRAILING MISSIONS. Whoever came up with these should be fired, they are way too common (mainly in sidequests) and they are just boring as sin. The chase parts are also not super engaging but they are infinitely more exciting than the trailing.
Lastly, I will say that the game suffered something that I felt like Like a Dragon also suffered in, and that's that the cutscenes weren't always up to par, and too many important scences used in game rendered instead of the full on cutscene rendered, sometimes it really took me out of it. I might just be nostalgia remembering Yakuza 0, but I feel like 0 had the perfect mix and balance, and neither Judgement or Like a Dragon had it. One other thing I didn't like but also didn't hate is the whole friendship system, it felt like an annoying thing to grind to be able to get more sidequests, but sometimes the friend stuff was basically a fun sidequest in in itself, so it wasn't too bad.
Overall, in my top tier of RGG Yakuza games, and I would say a solid 8/10. Story is one of the best of these games, the combat for a Yakuza game was decent, the sidequest stuff I interacted with was fun. The only downsides are the terrible trailing missions and some weird cutscene stuff.
