Lost Judgment

I absolutely love and adore this game.
Its gameplay, its beautiful graphics, its story—all of it makes it the pinnacle of the Like a Dragon series prior to the release Gaiden. There's a ton of stuff, and I'm not just talking about the typical Like a Dragon series minigames—there are tons of new things to do, ways to interact with the world. For example, you can take part in the life of the school and its clubs, one of which is a dance club that is a karaoke replacement where you can dance as in the rhythm game. You can also participate in drone racing, and there's even a Kurohyou-style fight club. These are little things that you can really miss or overlook while just focusing on the main story, but I think they're an integral part of the game, and where it really shines.
I won't spoil the plot, but I can definitely say it's heartbreaking and deeply profound. It touches on real issues in the modern world, such as human nature, ignorance and alienation, bullying, and a broken justice system with a political climate that breeds countless vigilantes, trapping society in a never-ending cycle of hatred and violence towards each other. I think It takes real courage for a gaming company to talk about all this like that, to show it on such a deep level. By the end of the game, I assure you, it will be hard for you not to sympathize with the villain, because at the end he is as much a prisoner of all this as you are. Who is even right or wrong?

How deep are you willing to go to get to the truth? How much suffering are you willing to endure and inflict? Is it even worth it if people just die because of your stubbornness? I often asked myself these questions as I progressed through the story.
Cheers and bravo to RGG Studio for creating this masterpiece, this game is a literal must play if you are a Yakuza fan. And this is the perfect sequel to the equally great Judgment.

You get to play as a 38 year old man that is a detective and also an ex-lawyer that gets to beat up high schoolers - 10/10 in my book

Loved it as all other Yakuza games. incredible amount of side content, lots of time was lost in casino, mahjong and school dancing ;).
p.s. now waiting to get my hands on Majima in Hawaii.

Very good sequel to the first. The plot took a while to grow on me but it ended up being great. The writers have once again done a good job of coming up with another multitude of wild conspiracies and hostile entanglements as you progress through the story. Overall, I think it did a good job selling itself as a crime/drama/thriller.
Better combat system than the last game, they made skill points less annoying and its soundtrack is very good. Looking forward to Like a Judge Man 3

Lost Judgment is the second game of a Yakuza spinoff starring detective Takayuki Yagami, who uses his (rather simplistic) detective gadgets and sharp wits to solve cases.
In Lost Judgment we are tasked with going undercover at a prestigious high school to solve a string of twisted bullying cases and, solve a mystery that goes deep within the government. Who is pulling the stings? Why are the bullies going missing? It's up to Yagami to find out!
The Story
Before I get into my pro's and con's list I just want to share my thought's on the story.
After putting over 85 hours into playing Lost Judgment for the first time... I felt rather let down. Playing the game at the start was a thrill - what's going on? Who's that? Why is this happening? but by the time I hit.. chapter 3? or 4? practically everyone (and everything) was revealed to me already. I have another... 9 or 10 chapters to go through... really?!?! It lost all sense of mystery by this point sadly. The "main story" was a rather let down with repeating plot points, repetitive conversations with the same point being brought up over and over... it just got stale and I found myself skipping cutscenes because of it.
Con's
⚫The main story... it hurts me to say this as an RGG fan, is rather... bad. Everything is revealed to you EARLY in the game leaving no real mystery to solve. Characters that do talk to you just go round and round in circles revealing nothing new all while repeating or showing evidence that YOU already know and then they do it again.
⚫Some mechanics are just downright stupid or repetitive. Take the chase sequences for example. I found myself running laps around the exact same location just to catch a dude. These dragged out and got overly repetitive over the course of the game.
⚫The "gadgets" were so underused. It was the side quests and side content that used the gadgets the most. Take squirrel hunt for example... I used the noise amp, detective dog and detector over 10 times each during this.... why not make Yagami use them for the ACTUAL story?
⚫You can do parkour in this game. Climb up pipes to scale a wall. Good luck getting OFF the pipe at times as it gets stupidly clunky at times.
⚫During the "school stories" I noticed a lot of non-voice acted cutscenes. Just text to read on the screen. Why? I spent most of my time working on the School Stories rather than paying attention to the ACTUAL story of the game. I wasn't to happy with this and felt rather disappointed as this, to me, was the meat of the game.
⚫Compare this to Yakuza Like a Dragon the fights are rather bland and repetitive. It's the same enemies over and over, just they get more of them tossed in and a few of them bring weapons... that's it.
⚫To use the skateboard you need to use the same button to sprint. At times I accidentally found myself pulling my skateboard out and hitting a car, falling over, or hitting people and falling over.
⚫Some mini-games are not implemented well or thought about. Take the Robotics club from the School Stories for example. The enemy AI scales so quickly it's just insane to beat. They turn quickly, move quickly, attack you so relentlessly... I was pulling what was left of my hair out.
Pro's
⚫I loved the detective gadgets. Using stuff like that as a proper detective made the game much more "detective" like, but again... it was used MAINLY in side content.
⚫Speaking of side content, it was an absolute blast doing all the side content in Lost Judgment. I LOVED the school stories (all but that damn robotics club!!). Take the dance club for example - you infiltrate this club you get to play an AWESOME mini-game which is very reminiscent of karaoke (in a way). You also get other clubs, like boxing, motorcycle club and E-Sports club. All of which have their own unique mini-game, story, side content and so much more. This was the meat of the game.
⚫I loved the fighting styles. Tiger and Crane fighting styles are back in the game and now you also get Snake stlye, which was arguably my favourite because you can parry almost everything. You also get Boxing style, not sure how I got this but I think it was the DLC. Boxing style was more of a "get in your face" type which works really good on boss's.
⚫Some of the mechanics are REALLY good, like the ability to listen to conversations between random people on the street to get "keywords" to start searching for a side case using the Buzz Researcher app. This was a really fun and unique was to get Yagami to investigate locations.
⚫The detail in Kamarucho and Yokohama are just drop dead gorgeous. The amount of detail poured onto the streets of these, brightly lit and densely populated locations are phenomenal. I found myself just looking around at times at all the little details.
⚫You get a little skateboard you can use to ride around on the streets. This was a really fun way of getting around and it mitigated a lot of legwork for the whole "go here, then go here, THEN go here, THEN GO HERE" which we all know RGG are famous for doing in their games haha!
⚫The boxing mini-game was my pride and joy. This is how you do a unique mini-game. Every opponent was different. They attacked different and scaled as I progressed through the school story.
⚫Right, last point about mini-games, haha - there are so many to play. 12 collectable game cartridges to find to play on a Sega Master System in Yagami's office. Club Sega offering games such as Kuma of the dead, Virtua fighter 5 and so much more.
⚫The voice acting is amazing, yet once again!
⚫The soundtrack is fantastic!
⚫I had no performance issues at all while playing. No crashing, freezing, FPS drops e.t.c. The game is very well optimised!
Mt Verdict/TL;DR
After all of that is said and done - Lost Judgment didn't quite hit the mark with it's main story. Revealing almost everything to early, repeating the same "clues" over and over and characters talking in circles at times, I just wanted it to be over.
On the other hand - it hit the mark tenfold with the side content and School Stories content. If it wasn't for these amazing stories, the surprises during them, the PROPER detective work during these cases in Seiryo High School... I don't think I would have kept playing.
7/10 - A Yakuza spin-off that has an acquired taste and a little "Lost Judgment"

This game improves everything that made Judgment, already amazing game. It's legit prob the best Yakuzaverse game I played. The game has so much side content that the whole Seiryo high school club stories could probably be a separate game.
Overall, just an absolute 10/10 game.

Alright, Lost Judgment is a damn good game. The story’s solid, combat is smooth as hell, and there’s enough side stuff to keep you busy for ages. The detective work is fun, the plot’s pretty damn engaging, and the game gives you a good mix of drama, action, and some laughs. Yagami’s a fun guy to follow around and get into his head.
But holy shit, Yagami, we get it—Sawa-sensei. Dude says her name like it’s his damn catchphrase. It’s funny at first, but by the 200th time, you’re just like, “Alright, we all know her name, no need to repeat it every five seconds.” It’s annoying, but honestly, it’s just a minor gripe in what’s otherwise a great game. If you’re into action games with a good story, you can’t go wrong here—just don’t expect to get through it without hearing “Sawa-sensei” at least a few hundred times.