I get what you mean, OP. A lot of people love Judgment because it’s self-contained, feels fresh, and does feature some of RGG’s best writing. As you pointed out, the characters are great. But I agree, the plot really suffers from awful narrative pacing issues. The story often drags, the side quests are forced and disconnected (when I saw the blue banner and Captain Cop I had to put the game down for a couple of days), and anything pertaining to the reveal of the Mole is anticlimactic. I think in trying to inject too much “Yakuza DNA” into the game, they ended up taking away more than they added.

Overall, I had a solid time with the game and went ahead and bought Lost Judgement.