OK, here we go, baby. I'm typing this while still radiating in the glow of the HYPE AS FUCK ending of Judge Eyes, and I'm going to say it: this is the one. This is the best game RGG Studio has ever made. It is so GOOD! GOTY 2018, without a doubt. I mean, technically I played most of it in 2019 because it came out right at the end of the year (and I played it for 80 hours :P), but I'm declaring it anyway. Game. Of. The. Year. I won't spoil anything, because the game obviously won't be out in English for months, but I just want to talk about some of my favourite things here (and apologies for repeating myself from some of my earlier posts).
I love this game's story and characters. Freed to stray outside the bounds of the usual yakuza-related stories of the main Yakuza series, RGG Studio's writers have gone for more of a longform TV legal drama feel here, with a cast of regulars and a nice balance between shorter, open-and-shut stories and one main case that spans the duration of the game. There are thirteen chapters, each feeling like their own episode of a courtroom drama, with an overall tone that's generally lighter than your average Yakuza but can still punch you in the guts when it needs to. I've always thought that RGG Studio's writers excel at their character-building and their mastery of unique personalities and idiosyncrasies, and I think Judge Eyes is their best work yet. This game had me practically cheering at the screen when one of my favourite characters would make an appearance at just the right moment; they're all so well-realised and wonderfully fleshed out. Even the villains! Y'know what? Especially the villains. RGG Studio's writers are right up there with Naughty Dog and Rockstar.
And it isn't even just the players in the main story, either: Judge Eyes has the best side content in the entire series by a mile and a whole slew of great characters to meet in there. They've taken elements of the Sub Stories and Friend quests of old and turned them into 50 Side Cases and 50 Friend Events, but instead of the one-and-done side characters of old, Judge Eyes's friends will keep coming back over the course of the entire game, with some simply saying hello every time you walk into their store, some you'll greeting you on the street, and yet more who'll actually end up intertwining with other side characters' sub quest lines. The Kamurocho of Judge Eyes feels like the most lively, interactive version of the city yet, because no matter what street you walk down you're always reminded of the wacky Sub Story hijinks you got into with the dude who lives down there, often because he'll still be there to say hi to you. And the penultimate Side Case (the one before fighting Amon) is the best side quest in any RGG Studio game yet. Quote me, baby. Put it on the back of the box.
I was initially really excited to see just how far this game would stray from the typical Yakuza gameplay formula, now that you're playing as a detective/lawyer, and... to be honest, I wish they'd gone a little further. Side Cases will occasionally require a bit of thought from you, rather than just sending you from waypoint to waypoint, and you get a couple of fun Ace Attorney moments, but for the most part it's just Yakuza with a slightly different flavour. You're still going to be fighting through buildings full of punks in suits, hitting your mid-fight QTE cutscenes in bossfights (GOD THEY'RE REALLY GOOD THIS TIME!), taking a taxi to a mysterious meeting place that is obviously a trap. And, y'know, that's still just as fun as ever, but I just wanted a little more detective-ing, y'know? Every now and then they'll pop up a dialogue wheel and challenge you to ask the right questions to get the information you need out of a suspect, but there's no penalty for getting it wrong and the reward for getting it right is like 15xp in a game where most upgrades cost 2000xp. I mean, the developers probably never really intended to go too far into detective gameplay design (no doubt it's a lot of work creating failure states and possibly branching paths), and I did still enjoy what was there, but it's something I'd like to see fleshed out a little more if there's ever a Judge Eyes 2.
The only other small complaint I have is that there's still some of that Yakuza grind here. It's not something I generally mind, since the grind generally only torments those who go for the Platinum Trophy, but sometimes it creeps into the main meat of the game and there's one Friend quest here (the Ebisu pawn shop guy) that took me at least a couple of hours of mindless savescumming in the casino to earn enough chips to buy the things I needed. I just wish they wouldn't do stuff like that. These devs have the talent to create so many genuinely excellent hours of fun, meaty video game, and I'll never understand why they still want to pad them out even further with grindy bullshit. To be fair, Judge Eyes is probably the least grindy RGG game yet, but a grind is a grind and that's still two hours of tedium I'm not going to get back. You have to complete every Friend Event to unlock the final Side Case, and you have to see that final Side Case because it's so damn good, which basically means you have to savescum at the Casino for two hours. Why's it gotta be like that, RGG Studio?
(They do mark undiscovered Side Quests and Friends on the map from moment one, though, so that's a really nice QOL feature.)
Anyway, tl;dr: Judge Eyes is incredible and you should all jump on it the instant it comes out in English. I think it has the potential to really take off in the West, unshackled from the Yakuza series and its seven mainline games of baggage that newcomers might find too intimidating. I would have no qualms about recommending this game to basically anyone. PLAY THIS GAME, BABY!
