Judgment

Judgment All right, next up is Judgment. This is where we're stepping away from Kiryu's main story and spending time with Takayuki Yagami, Masaharu Kaito, and a different group of people living in the same city. I want to be clear about that before getting into the guides. Judgment belongs in this series discussion, but you don't need to treat it like another numbered chapter in Kiryu's life. It's a separate story in the same world. Knowing Kamurocho gives you some familiarity with the setting. Knowing every previous game's plot isn't a requirement for following Yagami's case. The basic setup is that Yagami used to be a defense attorney. A case that should have been a major professional victory instead became the reason he walked away from that career. By the time the main investigation gets going, he's working as a private detective, taking smaller jobs and getting by with Kaito's help. Then a series of murders pulls him into something much larger. That's as far as I want to go with the central mystery here. The walkthroughs will have spoilers where they're necessary. This post doesn't need to hand you the identity of the killer or explain the ending before you've even started. What changes with Yagami is his relationship to the city. You still have the street fights, restaurants, arcades, absurd situations, and serious criminal cases that come with these games. But you're also following people, checking footage, finding evidence, questioning witnesses, and trying to establish what actually happened. A character saying something with confidence doesn't make it reliable. An explanation that seems convenient doesn't make it complete. His old life as a lawyer matters throughout that process. The investigation isn't detached from the consequences of getting a case wrong. There are people who have to live with those decisions, including Yagami himself. That gives the legal side of the story a reason to be there beyond putting a courtroom scene between the fights. Kaito is an important part of this too. He's Yagami's partner, with his own history and connections, and the two of them approach situations differently. The supporting cast expands well beyond the agency: the people at Genda Law Office, other investigators, informants, police, and people whose connection to the case isn't obvious when you first meet them. Pay attention to what each person knows and when they could have learned it. The combat is still real-time. Yagami starts with two styles, Crane and Tiger. Crane gives you sweeping attacks for handling groups. Tiger is the more direct option when you're dealing with one stubborn opponent. Wall attacks, vaulting, throws, and EX actions make movement part of his fighting style. If you're coming straight from Kiryu, give yourself a little time to learn what Yagami can do rather than trying to make every encounter work exactly the same way. One system that deserves an early warning is mortal wounds. Certain attacks can damage your maximum available health, and normal food or regular healing won't clear that injury. You need the appropriate treatment or a medical kit. That matters much more when several difficult encounters are happening close together. Going into a boss fight with plenty of healing items doesn't help as much as you think if a chunk of your health bar is still unavailable. Outside the main case, the city has 50 side cases and 50 friendships. Those two systems feed into each other. Helping people builds your reputation, and reputation opens more work. Some friendships involve a few conversations or purchases. Others take you through minigames, recurring requests, or substantial side stories. A person who looks like another optional marker can be the reason your next case hasn't appeared yet. There are also four dating routes, drone racing, Dice & Cube at Paradise VR, batting cages, darts, gambling, mahjong, shogi, and the arcade games. If you're going for full completion, you will spend a lot of time with those systems. Finishing the story and finishing everything the game asks you to do are very different commitments. That is why I'm separating the completion work into actual walkthroughs. Telling somebody to “finish all the side cases” isn't much help when one case needs a particular friend, another needs a reputation threshold, and another is waiting for an investigation somewhere else. The same goes for drone parts, the VR Free Pass, skill books, and the arcade requirements. The details are the useful part. A version note matters here. The original PS4 release has Puyo Puyo and a pinball machine. The remaster replaces them with Virtua Fighter 2 and Out Run. So if you're on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, or PC and an older checklist sends you looking for Puyo Puyo, you're not overlooking it. You're reading a requirement from the other version. The remaster also changes the presentation and performance, but it remains the same first Judgment story. For the platinum or all achievements, the main things to plan around are the story-specific missables, the cats found during story investigations, full KamuroGo completion, and a LEGEND run. The optional cases themselves can be finished afterward in Premium Adventure. The story investigation cats are the part I would keep beside me from the beginning, because they have to be found in one playthrough. There aren't coin-locker keys to collect here like there are in several of the Yakuza games. The equivalent location work is going into the actual things Judgment uses: the investigation cats, skill books, QR codes, drone upgrades, and the items tied to unlocking the rest of the city. So that's where we're going with this one. Judgment first, then Lost Judgment, then The Kaito Files as its own story expansion. Each gets its own coverage, and the guides will account for the systems that actually belong to that game.