Judgment Duology PC Port Review – Justice Is Served, By PC Master Race

Judgment has at last arrived to PC, and it’s the duology too with all its accompanying DLC. It’s been a long time coming, considering the Yakuza series being brought over as well. As mentioned, the PC port comes with the original Judgment, Lost Judgment, and includes The Kaito Files DLC featuring the Yagami Detective Agency’s ‘muscle’, Masaharu Kaito, which you can obtain in a bundle.

This review will be focusing more on the quality of the port over the games themselves, which we have already reviewed. Do check them out here: Judgment, Judgment PS5, Lost Judgment.

For reference, the basic specs of the PC (ASUS ROG GL531GU) the duology port was tested on:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB
• RAM: 16GB

JUDGMENT

With an initial download of 22GB going up to 33.2GB, it’s still 10GB less than the PC port of Yakuza: Like A Dragon. There is a bit of loading time needed for the initialization, but so long you have an SSD, it should be smooth sailing from that point onwards. The PS4 version suffered from slow loading times, struggling with scene transitions, so this is a definite improvement.

Settings wise, there’s plenty of jazzy graphical tweaks to help improve performance. We have adjustable FPS limit that ranges from 30 to Unlimited, and refresh rate options up to 120Hz. 1080p resolution should work out just fine for most people unless you have a larger monitor.

There’s quite a decent spread of presets, starting from Extra Low, Low, Medium, High, Extra High, then Custom. For the especially particular, there’s plenty of details you can try tweaking though the biggest difference in the presets only seems to be the “sharpness” of the visuals. It’s honestly impressive to see the game keep a “consistent” visual style / effect no matter how low you push the graphics down.

Additionally, there’s the option for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 & 2.0. I hadn’t realized it also supports NVIDIA GPUs, so you do have the option to take advantage of this either way to further upscale the game’s resolution without overly sacrificing your framerates in either Best Quality or Performance flavours. Seeing this option should assure you that the game will most definitely be playable on your rig, with some allowances, as the game itself is quite a demanding title.

On a gaming laptop, there were no crashes, glitches or bugs, outside of the initial scene transition hiccup. At max settings, FSR 2.0 on Quality, the framerate was consistently between 60 to 80 FPS. Occasionally it can fluctuate to 55 or 100 FPS, but considering the original PS4 only offered a 30 FPS experience, the Judgment PC port runs like a dream. With the lowest settings options, the FPS averaged at 70 FPS, so if you can run it at anything higher, please do.

Putting aside the 98 – 99% GPU usage, despite acknowledging the demands of the game, it doesn’t actually use all that much CPU or RAM. It does bear remembering that the port was tested on 1080P resolution, so the performance quality could potentially vary. All in all, Judgment has gotten an excellent PC port.

LOST JUDGMENT

Now, we have Lost Judgment. The initial download will set you back around 44GB, while the file size inclusive of The Kaito Files DLC bumps it up to 56.8GB. Settings wise, there isn’t much difference from the first game, except for the presence of Geometry Quality. This setting is capped to High, with the Refresh Rate also locked to what the system uses, needing you to manually adjust it from your PC display settings for any changes.

I run on the assumption that the sequel is likely more taxing, but surprisingly, Lost Judgment can actually manage a better frame rate than its predecessor at 70 – 80 average FPS for a roughly 10 FPS boost. I don’t even need to assume either; Lost Judgment‘s Yokohama is bigger than Kamurocho, so its improved performance is very welcome. Similarly to the first game, there can be FPS jumps up to 100, but so long it doesn’t dip below 60, I’d say that’s acceptable if not incredible. Unfortunately, there seems to be some inconsistencies in the smoothness of the cutscenes for whatever reason, in what appears to be an even better port.

For completion’s sake, the lowest preset can offer a 20 FPS boost at best, settling at an average 80 FPS. Nothing too drastic, but improved from the first game.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

What is there to say except shower praise on RGG Studio for incredible work on the Judgment duology PC ports? Imagine shadow-dropping such well-optimized releases, with the sequel performing better than the first? While there is certainly one or two hitches, it doesn’t diminish the overall quality. For laptop users, they’re not even as power-hungry as they could have been, so go ahead and be the vigilante you’re allowed to be.

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