Lost Judgment has the Worst RNG I’ve Ever Seen

I’m sure you’ve seen the term “RNG” floating around the internet now and then, but not everyone knows what it means. It stands for “Random Number Generation” and basically it means anything that happens at random in a videogame. Monster encounters in an RPG and critical hits are two examples of RNG. So what does RNG have to do with a game about a skateboarding kung fu detective investigating a school bullying case in the port town of Isezaki Ijincho?

As part of Yagami’s investigation in Lost Judgment, he’s asked to join several school clubs. While boxing does rely on a certain amount of RNG, this can be mitigated somewhat by lowering the difficulty level. You have to win a game of poker, which by its very nature is always going to be heavily RNG and super annoying — but understandably so as it’s a game of chance (and bluffing) in real life too. I thought that a quest line had broken because it turned out that whether or not the characters are there each time is RNG, and you have to pay a ¥2,000 entry fee each time just to find out!

Button mashing generally works

But no, what this rant is mainly about is the Robotics Club. I imagine that people who’ve played Lost Judgment just started nodding at their screens, because they know what I’m talking about. The club wants to win a tournament, which requires a team of three robots to capture squares on a field, with two AI-driven and one human-controlled. Your job is to control that one, as well as decide on how to upgrade all of them, and research said upgrades. You also have to find or purchase materials to create them, or of course you can farm them by playing practice matches against defeated opponents.

To capture squares on the field, you or your AI pals need to grab glowing tetromino shapes, then place them next to squares you already own. To win your team must either capture more squares by the end of the match, or manage to place a tetromino inside the opponent’s base. Where the shapes spawn on the board is random, so if they keep appearing near the opponent there’s nothing you can do about it. Similarly, which tetromino the shapes are is also random. Yet another piece of RNG is what your AI buddies will do at any given moment, will they attack the enemy, block them, get in your way, accidentally blunder into a shape for you to place… You can research AI chips which give them specific commands, but those are mere suggestions in my experience…

Those upgrade materials I mentioned earlier? Pure RNG. The ones you can’t buy, anyway, but some materials cost thousands of yen each, and take it from me you won’t have a lot of walking around money until late in the game. You could think about obtaining cheat items and taking yourself to the blackjack table, but the cheat item is available via random drop, or by spending skill points that you get from fights. Guess how fight spawns are calculated? RNG! And then at best you’ve got about 10 fights before you can even afford a cheat item.

The drill is useless, replace it with a hammer

“What about the Dice & Cube mini-game?” you might ask. “There’s tons of money to be made from that!” True enough, and I myself made about ¥15 million from that alone. But not until I had obtained the six Free Pass tickets. Each visit to Dice & Cube requires multiple tickets that you can’t buy using money, only skill points, skateboarding points, or randomly dropped by enemies. And the skateboarding points don’t rack up very quickly.

So, I saved up, sold a bunch of stuff I’d obtained through fights, spent over ¥1 million, gambled, skateboarded, fed cats, and located squirrels to get all six Free Pass tickets. None of that was directly RNG, but most of the money was reliant on it. Will one of the tough enemies spawn? Will they drop 50k or 100k? Will they have a sledgehammer and require me spending money to refill my health because Yagami can’t block a sledgehammer? Will they drop an item I can sell? YES I want to sell you another plate made out of solid silver, what of it Ebisu Pawn?!

In all I spent hours more on the latter half of the Robotics Club quest line than the first half, thanks to grinding for materials or money to buy said materials required for upgrades. Especially if you factor in my rage quitting. Oh, the enemy decided to attack me so much I was pinned in one spot while they collected and placed five pieces? Quit. I had too many bad piece spawns because of the shape of the arena? Quit. My AI buddies kept getting in my way? Quit!

Like this, but I'm Yagami and the other guy is my controller

Why did I force myself through all of this damned RNG when I could have just stopped playing the optional club? I needed to know who The Professor was! I put myself through multiple Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown fights, I wasn’t going to let some bad RNG stop me from finishing the Mystery Research Club side story. It had a really good storyline that was well worth the effort and stress. However, if there had been an extended gambling storyline, I’d have given up like I gave up gathering all of the friends in Judgment… Screw grinding Mahjong, and screw RNG.