When I started playing Judgment, the 2018 Yakuza spin-off from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, I was fully expecting to have to slog through certain moments. I remember listening to gaming podcasts five years ago when it was released in the United States, and getting the vibe that its approach to stealth was straight out of 2008. Going in, I knew that there would be tailing missions — Yagami’s a private eye, they were inevitable — and braced myself, anticipating frustrating detours along a path that wound through an otherwise good game.
To my surprise, though, they don’t suck at all! They’re completely fine – more than that, they’re good. The tailing missions aren’t my favorite part of the game.
So far, that’s the little side stories that pop up as you explore Kamurocho, which are a fan favorite feature in the mainline Like a Dragon series as well. But these tailing missions incorporate some crucial tweaks that make them better than most win-the-tail-or-insta-fail missions from the early Assassin’s Creed era. You would be working your way along the city streets and rooftops for 10 minutes, get an inch too close to the target, get noticed, and have to start all over again.
It feels bad to have to play by rules this arbitrary. Judgment’s tailing missions reverse that trend by being much more forgiving — even to the point of becoming pretty unrealistic. Of course, Judgment correctly knows that realism doesn’t matter.
Here are the basics of how it works: Yagami has a meter at the top of the screen that starts out empty, begins to fill up with blue when an enemy spots you, and transitions to a dark orange when an enemy has been staring long enough to know you’re following them. During that window, you have time to get into stealth and, if you do, the meter will begin to drain. As you move down the street, you keep one eye on your mark, and the other on the next hiding place.
It works well, making you aware of your surroundings and the person you’re tailing without requiring the hyper-vigilance that comes with knowing there is no wiggle room. There are even mid-level checkpoints so a failure is never too devastating. It takes gameplay that has traditionally been unfair and frustrating and adds the push-and-pull you expect in good games of any genre.
As a result, it has me reconsidering whether there was ever anything wrong with tailing missions to begin with. That may sound like high praise, but I actually don’t mean it that way. Judgment just makes tailing missions feel the way they always should have.
There was no reason these missions ever needed to be insta-fail. Yes, it’s more realistic that being seen at all makes you fail the mission, but first-person shooters would be way more realistic if you died any of the dozen times you got shot. Games make all sorts of concessions in order to make their reality line up with the player’s tolerance.
It’s weird that we threw the tailing mission baby out with the insta-fail bath water and I’m glad Judgment had the guts to bring it back.
