STAND BY YOUR BULLY
Also for: Playstation 4, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series
This is one review I'd rather not write, because I've rarely seen such
potential go to waste. Lost Judgment only has one real, good
quality going for it: its story. It's so good that it alone makes me put the
game in the "decent"-category by the narrowest of margins. As for the rest,
most of it is flawed, or doesn't matter, or is such a distraction that the
game would be better off without it. Not even the storytelling itself is
perfectly solid - the story is often better in terms of theme than execution.
I've been a fan of most of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's (the
creators of the amazing Yakuza-series) games so far, but this is one time I
wish they'd drop their winning open-district formula, because it ruins the
promise of the game's narrative. And as a player you cannot do much to improve it. It's
a lose-lose situation: Beelining the main story takes away most of the good
gameplay, and exposes the tedious flaws in the narrative. On the other hand, embracing the open world and all the wacky side stuff creates a tonal clash and pacing issues that wrecks the
impact of the heavy-hitting drama.
All-in-all, I'd say this is the studio's weakest game to date (of the ones I've reviewed), rivalled only
by Yakuza 4 that had some of the same problems, but not to the same
extent. Lost Judgment actually has a better story going, which makes the
drawbacks hurt even more.
The game is a sequel to the 2018 Yakuza-spinoff simply titled
Judgment. Like its predecessor, this entry centers around the
lawyer-gone-private-investigator Takayuki Yagami, and the detective agency he runs with his
ex-Yakuza friend, Kaito. The spin-off is best known for keeping up the
tradition of real-time action combat, which the mainline Yakuza
franchise abandoned for a turn-based system from part seven and on, to
the dismay of some fans (but not me).
In Lost Judgment, Yagami travels from Kamurocho to Yokohama, where he assists
a couple of buddies from the first game. They have opened a private
investigation firm of their own and need aid in cracking a case regarding high
school bullying. Little does Yagami know that their case ties into a
high-profile molestation investigation he's already wrapped up in, back in
Kamurocho, where a policeman stands accused for groping a woman on a train.
As Yagami keeps investigating, a shady group of people make it apparent that his
meddling is not welcome. The more he investigates, the more sinister the plot
becomes, and the more danger he puts himself and his friends in. Although the
story is not gracefully told, with conversations and explanations repeated to
death, the subject matter of bullying and suicide is handled with care. Some
of the most skillfully directed scenes will stay with me for a long time.
This is best represented by the anguished look on the face of a bullying
victim, as he makes a muted "hush!"-gesture towards a teacher, begging her to
stay silent and not reveal his hiding spot on the roof of a school building. She says nothing, but that doesn't help much. Soon thereafter he's found dead by his father in their home, a victim of
suicide, as he couldn't bear to live on in constant fear of his schoolmates.
This is heavy, devastating real-world stuff, and the skillful way the best
scenes are delivered I've not witnessed before in this entire medium. In fact,
it's such an unprecedented achievement that the main story deserves a fully
dedicated game of its own, without the silly open world nonsense. But sadly,
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio feels obliged to insert the usual craziness of the urban
jungle - mini-games, combat encounters, gangster opera, wacky side stories -
ripping the amazing potential to shreds. I cannot help but feel both sad and
angry about it.
What's worse, the game is too hung up on the idea that the player actually partakes in
all these distractions. To help the player remember the story threads, once they come back to it, they throw too many plot reminders and recollections into the narrative. If you stick
to the main story, you'll hear every plot point repeated a handful of
times, to excrutiating detail. And with hardly any input on the dialogue, all
the player can do is read and listen as if it was a visual novel. This isn't great storytelling. For long
stretches of time, you only walk from cutscene to cutscene and click through
endless "broken record" conversations.
The detective gameplay, hardly present in the main quest, involves boring
activities like tailing, interrogating, lockpicking, chase sequences,
and crime scene investigations. None of these are remotely challenging,
and only give the player an illusion of participating in detective work. An
interrogation will not proceed until you've checked all the important topics.
An investigation scene will not end until you've found the crucial
evidence. If you lose track of a chase subject, it's game over and you need to
retry the chase until you catch him.
The high school bullying case develops into a side game so substantial it
could've been a game of its own. Here Yagami helps the school's Mystery
Research Club investigate the epidemic of delinquent tendencies in some
of the extracurricular activities. Here's where the game finally
demonstrates some real gameplay inventiveness. You get to partake undercover
as an advisor in dancing competitions, drone fighting, boxing, skateboarding
and more - all with their own simplistic mini-game mechanics. Some of the
stories are also kind of entertaining.
The problem is that all of them are totally isolated from the main quest. If
you pursue these, the main quest is put completely on hold. They each have
their own progress indicator, requiring you to grind the mechanics until you
increase it one notch. Then it can progress, until you finally beat it to meagre rewards. With ten such activities it's such a drawn-out process, with
innate tonal inconsistencies, that the drama of the main quest suffers a
mortal blow.
But wait, there's more. Outside of school, you still have two cities to consider. Apart from all the usual entertainment district distractions, like the
SEGA arcades, golf, gambling, shogi, batting and mahjong, Lost Judgment
features Flying Drone Races and a weird Virtual Reality board game that I only
got to try once, and it peppered me with money. Back in your office, you also
have a SEGA Master System, for which you can collect a few cartridges to play
whenever you need a break. A few smaller, optional side cases serve as a
source of income, and they're neither memorable nor particularly rewarding,
and the same can be said about the dating sim.
To add insult to injury, Yagami is a boring, uncharismatic protagonist, too
mired up in justice and social commentary to belong in such an unfocused
gameplay experience. He's yet another reason it's no fun to partake in any of
the mini-games. The goofier side quests don't fit his personality at all. He
feels miscast, and could only have been a good fit in a drama wholeheartedly
dedicated to the gravitas of the main storyline.
Also, in a story with so many shades of grey, I found it annoying to see
Yagami navigate with such unflinching self-assuredness all the way through.
His moral compass never falters, he never expresses any doubts in his beliefs
and is never mistaken. Everything he does, he succeeds at like a boss. He's
like one of those "Mary Sue"-characters the Internet loves to scorn, but he
gets away with it because he is male.
Luckily, he's surrounded by a good cast of side characters. In particular,
one of the villains belongs to the pantheon of best-written video game
characters I've seen, with motivations I could almost get behind myself, or
at least understand. Many of the acquaintances from the first game return,
and it's obvious the designers struggle to fit them into the story, but that
doesn't make them any less entertaining.
To provide us with even more variation, the designers throw some combat into
the mix every once in a while. Yagami maintains his "tiger" and "crane"
fighting styles from before, and has developed a new, more nimble
"viper"-technique. This efficient style can be used to scare people into
fainting, which is very politically correct when you're fighting schoolboy
delinquents and don't want to hurt them more than necessary.
The action combat engine is among the best we've yet seen. It's responsive and
expressive, but that fact doesn't help the game to improve. Whatever style you
stick to, Yagami makes short work of every random enemy and boss encounter.
The possibility to stack up on endless healing items makes sure you're in no
danger, and charging up the heat gauge gives you so many devastating combat
options that no opponent stands a chance.
Some of the story-driven fights are also really poorly motivated, and it's a
trope that has quite recently started to annoy me, even in movies (it
happened in an otherwise good movie like Blade Runner 2049). It usually
goes something like this:
The hero arrives at a location, finding some guy he's desperately been looking
for. He approaches the guy and says: "Great that I've finally found you! I've
an important message from Steve."
The guy respons: "I don't wanna hear anything Steve has to say!" and turns
around to leave.
"But this is super-important! You really wanna hear this."
"Fuck off!"
"Well, then I'll make you listen!"
And instead of just shouting out the message, the hero attacks the poor sod,
punching the living daylights outta him until he lies defeated on the ground.
Then he can deliver his message. This neverending contrivance annoys the hell
out of me, and seems inserted just to spice things up when the director is
starting to fear he's losing his grip of the audience.
Ryu ga Gotoku studio seems so hell-bent on following the law, it's afraid to
step outside its own boundaries of game design. How would the core audience
respond to a game of theirs that doesn't follow the mold; that isn't open
world, that doesn't contain all the side stuff or any combat for that matter?
The studio's fears may be justified, but that doesn't help this game a lot.
Lost Judgment seems to propose the idea that we all should stick to our bully of
choice and stand by them no matter what. Be it the judicial system, the
police, the vigilantes or the sports jocks - let the bastards lead their flock into the fray and try to manipulate them into becoming the best bully they can be. The only
losers in society are the lonesome doves. They will always lose and have their feathers
plucked by the brutes, no matter whether the law protects them or not.
I'm not comfortable with the idea, but maybe there's something to it. At least
Lost Judgment is a game that got me thinking about real world issues, which is
an accomplishment few video game titles share. That fact alone makes me almost
want to recommend it. The ending is very strong, even if it takes many
obnoxious detours to get there.
But then again, loads of bad design ideas sabotage what good there is, and the
game is too long because of it. Is it worth it? Can you not watch a 90-120
minute movie on the same subject matter (try the 1986 movie Lucas, for
instance) instead of playing this game for 50 hours or more? I'll leave the
answer to you, but this is me telling one of my favorite game designers this:
You had great potential here and you squandered it, but you haven't lost
me yet. Now go back and to the drawing board and improve. Be the best bully
you can be.
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