Project Judge Details its Friend Event System; Opening Song’s Music Video Published

Sega and Yakuza Studio revealed new details on Project Judge in this week’s Famitsu. Specifically, they explained the game’s “Friend Event system”.

As a quick reminder, Project Judge is the newest game of Yakuza Studio and takes place in the same universe as Yakuza. Players take control of Takayuki Yagami, an ex-lawyer who became a hard-boiled private detective after a certain case. The game’s main story requires you to solve a serial murder case related to the underworld. Most of the game’s main characters are voiced and modeled after real-life actors. Main character Takayuki Yagami is played by Takuya Kimura,  who used to be part of SMAP, an extremely popular but now-defunct group. (Technically, the “group” still exists with Takuya Kimura as its sole member). Kimura-san is also talented in acting and many other activities. If you’d like to know more about how the actors were incorporated into the game, you can check a making-of video and interviews of the game’s cast here.

The Friend Event system basically unlocks new events and features as you befriend habitants of Kamurocho. Doing this also unlocks new side-cases to solve. One of the characters you can befriend is Sakura Amamiya, a woman from Soutenbori in Osaka. She works as a massagist and you’ll be able to ask her for massages if you become friends. Another character is “Ryan Costa Ninja”, a man who can help you in battles if you befriend him. There’s also a Kyushu No.1 Star ramen restaurant boss you can befriend, who will give you items during battles.

Kamurocho and Soutenbori are both cities featured in the Yakuza Series. Same with the Kyushu No.1 Star ramen restaurants.

As you befriend certain female characters, the relationship can also develop into a romantic one, and you can go on dates together. Sometimes they’ll invite you, but you can invite them yourself too. This was already mentioned in an interview with the game’s producers, where they revealed the story doesn’t have a heroine paired with Takayuki and no particular focus on romance, but you’ll still be able to have “girlfriend related events”.

There are more than three women Takayuki can date. The one they revealed so far is Tsukino Saotome, voiced by Kaede Hondo. She’s a university student.

Next, the music video for “Arpeggio”,  the game’s opening song by Alexandros, was also revealed. The video features Takuya Kimura too. You can watch it below. You can read more about the characters and game systems here. You can also check our playthrough of the game’s demo on PS4 Pro, available on the Japanese PlayStation Store

Project Judge will release exclusively for PlayStation 4, on December 13th in Japan and in “2019” in the west.