I t’s great when a longrunning series finally gets the recognition it deserves; but for the new converts, catching up can be a daunting prospect. That’s the issue for Sega’s Yakuza, which won loads of fans with its 2017 prequel… only for things to zip forward to its sixth entry a year later. It’d be like watching the first season of Game of Thrones then skipping straight to the finale.
Judgment solves this problem by bringing in new characters and even changing the genre – from gangster drama to legal procedural thriller. You play as Takayuki Yagami, a disgraced lawyer now living on scraps as a private detective, who gets roped into investigating a serial killer mystery that soon becomes a towering conspiracy.
The plot grows convoluted to the point a judge might well throw the book at it. This has arguably always been a staple of Yakuza games; but the difference here is that, instead of being an ex-gangster who mostly resorts to beating the crap out of his problems, Yagami needs to use his brains to investigate and interrogate.