Lost Judgment DLC Review: Kaito’s Files – A Broken Past

The long-awaited Lost Judgment DLC centered on Kaito, Yagami’s sidekick, has finally arrived to round out the season pass content. Four chapters for as much excitement as the main story?

Master Masaharu Kaito, brings back the loved one

Yagami gone out of Kamurocho or even Tokyo for a few days, his unlikely-shirted ex-yakuza sidekick Kaito drags out his troubles trying to find drinking partners, failing to be overwhelmed by business. Unless an unexpected and particularly well-paid affair takes him out of his slump? An extremely rich and busy businessman comes to ask him to find his wife, with the reward of a few million hot yen. Routine business, except that… The wife in question was Kaito’s former girlfriend, when he was a yakuza, who left overnight to buy cigarettes without ever coming back. She would have come to Kamurocho recently when her wife is supposed to have died two years ago… And the surprises are far from over for Kaito who has to chase Mikiko through the streets of Kamurocho, confront his past and make many connections between it and the case that interests him. The icing on the cake, a teenager named Jun points the tip of his nose and sticks to his coattails, claiming to be their son… Come on.

Many flashbacks to Kaito’s past punctuate the DLC

The combat system does not evolve, and that’s good

Work, commerce, customer attraction

But nothing is ever simple for the Yagami detective agency and of course, this case is not just about a banal investigation to find Mikiko: many other more or less shady men will cross paths with the gruff nag. And that’s good, he has the answer: unlike Yagami who has several rather aerial martial arts in his detective panoply, Kaito focuses on two fighting styles which are reminiscent of the capacities of the former Kiryu Kazuma, with a very offensive style (puncher) and the other based on defense (tank). How good it feels to grab a scooter with both hands and twirl it around to literally smash through the troublemakers to investigate in circles!

On the other hand, investigations oblige, Kaito takes up some concepts of gameplay quite logically: we are thus always entitled to spinning mills, sneak infiltrations (with a few fists in the muzzle well felt all the same) and thefts of drones, but in a drastically reduced quantity necessarily, at the height of the duration of the DLC ending in a few wee hours. Also, the former yakuza has to his credit a particularity vis-à-vis Yagami: his “bestial” side allows him to rely on his “primitive senses” to analyze places; you can thus alternate between sight, hearing and smell to find clues and move forward in the story. On the other hand, you have to think about going back and forth or even checking the same places several times in a row by changing the primitive direction to unlock clues – I thought I was stuck at one or two moments, saying to myself ” but I’ve already checked that three times… Well yes, a new thing has appeared”. A little painful… Otherwise, Kaito can also use his senses in the streets of Kamurocho, to find flashbacks (!) to unlock skills, hear cats that will spin objects and skill books (oh good) when they are scratches and sniffs things between two bins to again pick up gold plates or – always – skill books. Definitely, you have to play with your bestial senses everywhere if you want to unlock everything…

Kaito will be able to examine more carefully thanks to his bestial senses

100% guaranteed success

As DLC for a game that has nothing more to prove, Kaito’s Files only enhance the recipe by changing a few menu ingredients. In the end, we are clearly not lost and the adaptation is immediate to focus on the story of Kaito and his setbacks, between very muscular clashes and improbable encounters. If we can regret something, it’s that the DLC is still a little short, but at the same time it was better that it didn’t drag too long, the story clearly not having the same depth as that of the basic game. However, you can take more time to unlock all the skills, which opens a final bonus confrontation like what was done with the Amon dynasty in the Yakuza… On the other hand, no matter how hard I look, I don’t I still don’t understand why he resented Kaito so badly, so as far as I was concerned these were mindless matchups just for the sake of kicking some serious mid-bosses. This does not prevent the DLC from being pleasant to browse even if the chapters follow one another very (too?) quickly. And who knows, the finale may open the way for a future episode, even if the future of the license Judgment is for the moment quite obscure, still suspended from the confusion between Sega and the agency of Takuya Kimura, the actor playing the hero Yagami. Hoping they come back for a third episode in the years to come, alternating with the revival of the Yakuza series… That’s all I wish!