Kayumon

Awesome sequel to the first game "Judgment", perhaps even better than the first one? Even if my playthrough of the previous game was a few years ago, it didn't take long until I was back in the universe of Yagami and his detective work. This time it takes the player to Seiryo High, a high school that is prone to bullying. It looks like they've brought back all the cool elements we knew from Judgment and added even more - you get a new fighting style quite early in the game, new minigames were added and old ones got enhanced. There even is a complete new map, so while you can still explore Kamurocho, most of the time you will be in the fictional Ijincho, which gave some fresh air into the plot.

Ryu Ga Gotoku follows the same recipe here as in their other Yakuza games, you get a pretty deep story which goes the emotional rollercoaster - one second being super emotional, then having something super hilarious happening, funny scenes and then proceed to the dark tone. And outside of the main story you have plenty of sidemissions or minigames that you can play. The High School even has it's own separate arc that you can follow. When I finished the Main Story, there was still so much stuff that I could do there and I really enjoyed it.

At some part the game became kind of a "grinding" game, where you would need to play certain games countless times, until something new happens. That was the part when I layed it down.
Still I thoroughly enjoyed Lost Judgment! People who liked the predecessor will surely like this one too. Be aware though that there are a lot of cutscenes and text boxes to read, so you need to pack some time when playing this game.

Played the whole game in Coop mode, using the new two player mode which was introduced in the Nintendo Switch version. Overall I really liked this game, it was a relaxing experience to play as a couch coop. Being a 12 year old game, the visuals still look good and drag the player into this fantasy world. I find it cool that the Voice acting is a purely fictional language and the story is being told over visuals only. You progress through the levels by walking and solving different puzzles - none of them were really hard for us though, but I like that you need both brothers involved to solve them, so each player has to do something.

So why am I only giving this 3 Stars? First of all the game is very short, which itself is not a bad thing and you would think that this allows for some replay value (there are different achievements and secrets, which you could still find). However both me and my coop partner were so disappointed by the ending part of the game, that now when I know how it ends, I don't want to jump into it again.

Furthermore we encountered two game breaking glitches that stopped us from progressing. One even lead to us having to replay a whole chapter because there was no way to fix it. A quick Google search showed me that these bugs are already present for a while and I can't understand how these were not found by the developers during play testing.

Overall it was worth to play this game once, especially if you can grab it for cheap during a Sale. However keep in mind that it's not going to be a very long game and it's not a perfect coop experience.

I love the LiS Franchise, so of course this was a must-play for me as well. Playing this game definetly gave me back the vibes that I love about Life is Strange - you dive into this new world, can investigate the small details while main character Max gives her inner thoughts on everything and get to know new characters. (They also had the voice actors from the original game again, which was great!)

Max's new powers to switch between different realities was definitely something interesting and fresh. The Game had a calm start and then increased to a very strong mid-game, often times letting me sit there with my mouth wide open and shocked about the events that happened.
When the game came closer to the end though, it kind of lost the common thread of the story and everything felt very rushed. Many things were left unexplained and some character choices did not really make sense, compared to their attitude before. It kind of left me disappointed.

Nevertheless I still had fun with this game, it's also not too long, so it is a good title to play in between. Fans of Life is Strange will also notice some references to the older games, which I find quite nice.