A sequel to 2018’s Judgement is reportedly in development, according to Yakuza Fansite, Tojo Dojo.
The news comes from a source that the outlet believes to be genuine, this news is also off the heels of a set of trademarks that were filed by Japanese companies yesterday. One of those companies was Sega of Japan who filed the trademark of ‘Lost Judgement‘.
The source revealed that ‘Lost Judgement‘ has been in of the sequel’s working title, with the other being ‘Judgement: Seize The Truth‘. It seems like Sega is leaning more towards the first one but it remains to be seen if it will end up being the final name of the Judgement sequel as companies file trademarks of multiple titles and more often than not those titles never go anywhere.
The game’s title wasn’t the only thing revealed but that the game will feature the return of Yagami, his Watson, Kaito and a minor character from the original game, who didn’t play a huge role in the story; my guess it’s probably Mafuyu Fujii. The sequel will also feature a much darker story than the 2018 game, which is not surprising since Judgement‘s story was already pretty dark with a bit of humour spliced in through side stories that the Yakuza is well known for.
Judgement was released back in December 2018 in Japan and June 2019 worldwide, it’s a spinoff of the Yakuza series and takes place after Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. You don’t play a Yakuza this time around and are out into a lawyer turned detective, Takayuki Yagami and his partner, ex-yakuza Masaharu Kaito who unravels a series of violent murders of Yakuza members. The mystery behind them is tied to the game’s bigger plot, which is getting a remaster and is set to come to PS5 and Xbox Series X |S on April 23rd.
In the 2018 game, Yagami confronted his demons and failures but the way this sequel sounds like he has completely faced all his demons. Yagami went through a pretty traumatic experience that dealt with his parents, also not much of his past is known from when he shows up in Kamorocho – the game’s setting –to when you’re introduced to him at the beginning of the game.
The news of a sequel came out of the left field as the game’s developer is already working on the next Yakuza game, but at the sane time a sequel was inevitable as the 2018 game ended in a very open ended way to continue Yagami’s story. If they’re working on this too then they must be working themselves thin or have staffed up to a point that they can work on both games at the quality level that the developer is known for.
This isn’t official so take all this with a grain of salt as ‘Lost Judgement’ has the potential to be just a pachinko machine, I hope the evidence here says otherwise.
