Judgement & Lost Judgement PC Review

Judgement & Lost Judgement

One of my all time favorite series Yakuza had it’s spinoff with Judgement back in 2018
and Lost Judgement in 2021, both games received a remaster earlier this year for consoles
and I was in awe that it most likely will not see the daylight on PC; reminiscing earlier
statements that it might not happen, it was quite a delight to see that the games got an
surprise Steam release on the 14th of September just a bit over a week ago, so I had to jump
on the opportunity to dive into them and write a little bit about it for you. Normally
I would cover games one by one, but today as the games tie into each other so to speak:
And it came in a bundle pack, I think it kind of fits to give an overall score for both,
and as usual I will not spoil the story for you, but give you the background information
only, and how it plays.. so you can decide for yourself if it is something you would
like to give a spin.

What kind of a game is Judgement & Lost Judgement you might ask? after seeing the screenshots
posted above. Judgement is a third person action-adventure detective game that sets itself
apart from the Yakuza series, with deeper gameplay mechanics and a darker story.

Judgement’s backstory starts off with digging into your own past how you became a detective,
from managing to acquit Shinpei Okubo on a murder, only to see him arrested again shortly after
for the murder on his girlfriend, this drove you over the edge.. guilt ridden and you quit
your law career, fast forward a bit after some well made cut-scenes explaining it all and
we are in the present day, investigating a possible serial killer that has murdered 4
Yakuzas (Mafia) in the most gruesome way, gouging out their eye’s after he has killed them.

The Police quickly arrest a known Yakuza Captain that you run into earlier in the day pretty
much start of the game, the Yakuza family has requested the law firm where you worked to
investigate the matter, as they are old friends with the firms owner, here’s where you come in.
Your ex partner at the law firm is running the investigation and defending the Yakuza Captain
but you have more experience with the Yakuzas, and they want you as a private detective to find
out any possible evidence; now the game really starts to take shape as you venture around the
kamurocho district in Tokyo (you might recognize this from the Yakuza Games),
finding evidence, talking to people, and figuring out what really happened..

Is the Yakuza Captain Guilty or not? This is also the part where the game takes
distance from the Yakuza series previously, Yakuza is more of the over-the-top action than
anything, straight forward linear in a sense (though that also is in a semi open-world) setting.

Judgement introduces mechanics such as drones so you can sneak in undetected and find people,
tailing suspects, lock picking, an extremely annoying door knob “hacking” thing, and puzzling
together the evidence that you have picked up, analyzing pictures and so forth..

It brings depth into the game play, and let’s you get immersed into the story on a different
level, I particularly liked when you talk to witnesses or potential alibis that you have to
ask questions in a right order to get full points out of it, so it pays off to pay attention here.

For the story of Lost Judgement, you and your ex. Yakuza partner Kaito investigate a rather
strange case of how could a person do crimes in two places at the same time, a bystander on a crowded
train captures video of the accused groping a woman on a train in Tokyo whilst a murder happened
in Yokohama, Defense lawyer Shirosaki, has no doubt that crucial details of the situation
have been overlooked, as Ehara was not even tried for the murder. This is where you and Kaito
come into the picture, helping out some fellow friends and their Detective agency.

The question is though; How could Ehara have committed two crimes at once?
Was the sexual battery just a cover up? Has Ehara gamed the entire justice system?
As victims surface and Yagami digs farther into the truth, he is faced with a question:
Defend the law, or enact justice?

Also in Lost Judgement as Judgement there are some new mechanics that further set the series
apart from Yakuza, Parkour, Chasing (also in Judgement), Tailing, Infiltrate and Search..
with a ton of new gadgets and even a super good detective boi doggo.

Both the stories are long, and interesting, and do keep you on your toes as you immerse yourself.
Judgements story is around the 25-30 hour mark for the story itself and if you really love doing
everything that is possible to do in the game, it’s around a 100 hours easily. For Lost Judgement
you are looking at 23-24 hours for the main story and once more around a 100 hours to complete
everything possible.

So with this bundle you are looking at around 200+ hours of enjoyment, Lost Judgement also
comes with a DLC called The Kaito files that add a few more hours on top of everything.

What both games also feature besides all serious detective work is the wackiness that we found
already in the Yakuza games, with mini games and dating / meeting friends all over town.
There is a staggering amount of things you can play and challenge yourself with here,
To name a few; Drone Racing, Pinball, Mahjong, Batting center (Baseball), Darts..
And not only limited to that; there are some Arcade games you can play too Virtua Fighter 5 etc.
In Lost Judgement there are some old Sega 8-bit games etc.

So as you see it’s not just all serious business, dating, dancing.. eating, smoking, drinking..
To me that sounds like a good way to spend a weekend or many weekends playing both Games.

So that’s about the games story and side things you can do.

But how does it run?

Both Judgement and Lost Judgement, are super nice looking games with detail levels that surprised
me when you crank up the graphical levels, the game does require quite a lot of horsepower from
your system though, and to be honest with my i5-9600k 16gb of ram and a 8gb 3070 GPU I was
averaging around 70-90fps at medium detail, and this with FSR 2.0 in use (performance mode)
There is currently no DLSS option available, could be that will implemented later on? but for
now there is FSR 1.0 and 2.0 to choose from to accelerate things a bit. I’m not entirely sure
what happened during my playtime, but I had on several occasions some stuttering during gameplay
even in places that weren’t too crowded graphically and only lasted a short amount of time, I
guess this could be down to either not perfectly optimized, or I missed some settings?

But overall, when you set the frame rate to locked 60fps (options are there 60-120-Unlimited)
to pick from, you will have a nice time playing the game, if your system specifications are
around mine.

For both games, the Dubbing is fantastic in my ears, very talented folks doing the roles,
so nothing to complain about there.. and overall the world feels alive from a sound perspective.

Below I have posted the minimum and recommended system specs for both games.
Note, this is quite a large download when you install both.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review on Judgement and Lost Judgement of what to expect.

Judgement PC Requirements

Lost Judgement PC Requirements