It was very easy to look at Judgment’s reveal, and lazily decide that this was Yakuza with Ace Attorney dropped in. I know I did. The thing is, having played the game’s opening 2 hours, that doesn’t feel like a lazy comparison - it’s just a correct one.

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Judgment: 17 Screenshots 17 IMAGES

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In its component parts, this is a Yakuza game. We’re back in that series’ ever-evolving Kamurocho setting (now updated to be an uncanny take on real-life Tokyo’s Kabukichō district as of 2018), filled as it always is with neon distractions and strangers with strange requests.It’s as beautiful as Yakuza 6 but, crucially, Judgment’s Kamurocho felt more alive in my time in it. The open world map is once again densely seasoned with shops, mini-games and arcades, and I’m assured that the meatier side activities that made Yakuza 0 such an enormous prospect will make an appearance along the way. If you want a quintessentially Yakuza anecdote, I took a break from heading to speak to a powerful gang member to spend 10 minutes playing a Kamurocho-themed parody of House of the Dead.And yes, it brings along Yakuza’s wild shifts in tone, too. Lead character Takayuki Yagami is a lawyer-turned-PI, haunted by his successful defence of an apparent serial murderer, and we see multiple flashbacks, emotive speeches and flourishing laments on that subject. But he also has time for comic interludes, and unexpected detours. I’m told side-quests won’t be quite as strange as Yakuza’s substories (so, probably, no fights against a whole club of adult babies here), but they will push you down very different avenues than the core story.It isn’t just borrowing the story structure of Yakuza. While the director has said Judgment won’t feature characters from the series it’s spinning off from, it does share some elements. Most prominently, the early stages (re)introduce the Tojo Clan, Kamurocho’s most powerful organised crime consortium. It seems fairly certain that the Clan will retain the same uneasy ally/enemy status we’ve seen in this studio’s older games.Speaking of enemies, there’s no real explanation I’ve seen for why a former defense lawyer is such a proficient fighter, but Yagami has some familiarly violent skills to deal with those who get in the way of his work. After criticism for the slimmed-down combat of Yakuza 6, Ryū ga Gotoku Studio has pushed Judgment back towards Yakuza 0’s more varied approach. Yagami’s two switchable fighting styles are designed for one-on-one match-ups and mass brawls respectively (both of which are plentiful, thanks to random encounters in the open world), and come with the usual mix of over-the-top Heat Action finishers (now called EX Actions for no real reason) and improvised street weaponry. A seemingly enormous skill tree only promises to add more - an early favourite is the unlockable ability to bounce off a wall and grab an aggressor’s head with your legs for a spinning takedown.All of which is to say that, yes, this feels very much like a Yakuza game, minus that game’s recurring cast members. And it’s those new characters that turn this into something else - and you may have guessed what that is based on the headline.Yagami’s position as a private investigator hired by lawyers to help crack cases helps introduce a series of systemic wrinkles to the usual fabric of Yakuza. You’ll be identifying suspects based on visual clues, gathering evidence at crime scenes, then having to present the right evidence to unlock witness testimonies, all of which leads to more clues, and more investigations. Dialogue’s a big part of all this, with bonuses awarded for asking the right questions.It truly does feel like next-gen Ace Attorney - although, if you wanted to be picky, it’s actually closer to a Miles Edgeworth game than a Phoenix Wright game. While I’m told there will be courtroom scenes in Judgment, the bulk of your investigative work takes place on the streets - it’s more detection than ‘Objection!’, so to speak.The developers have added their own ideas into the mix. You’ll be using a drone to perform some more secretive reconnaissance (meaning, naturally, drone racing has become a side activity). And, of course, Capcom’s cartoon lawyers never resorted to action film violence to get their way, which is very much an option in some circumstances here.Even this early in the game, it’s a surprisingly natural mix. If pulled off right throughout the game, it could ultimately lead to a more consistently interactive game than Yakuza has tended to offer. Where the studio’s mainstay series has tended to alternate between bizarre, all-action gameplay and straight-faced cutscene dialogue, Judgment seems to be transforming those quieter moments into gameplay too. It could easily be read as a play to capture a Western gaming audience more used to being a part of a story than being told one.There’s evidence of that elsewhere - this marks the first time since the original Yakuza that a game in the series will feature an English language dub as well as the original Japanese, bringing in recognised talent to help tell its twisting story, including the likes of Yuri “Spider-Man” Lowenthal and Matthew “McCree” Mercer. That might be a warning sign for Yakuza purists, but full Japanese V/O and English subtitles remain, and the two styles can be switched between at any time. It’s a clear attempt to open up what can seem an impenetrable series to newcomers, right down to the fact that the subtitles and “dubtitles” are slightly different translations, with the former more literal, and the latter more westernised.Whether or not all of this is a push for a bigger audience outside of Japan, it’s definitely a push to feel different. With Yakuza 6 apparently marking the end of Kazama Kiryu’s story, the series’ developers are seemingly looking to try something new within their own traditional strengths. Yes, Judgment feels like Yakuza, and yes it feels like Ace Attorney. But by feeling like both, it feels entirely unlike anything else.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he really wants a realistic Gumshoe to show up. Follow him on Twitter