Lost Judgment

The hub for the school-drama missions, where Yagami infiltrates Seiryo High's clubs as an outside advisor. It starts in Chapter 2 by saving the Mystery Research Club from closure, after which its president Kyoko Amasawa assigns you the other clubs. None of it affects the Main Case — like Side Cases, you take it at your own pace.

• New School Stories unlock off leadership: teamwork, focus, guts and appeal, each raised by different clubs. Teamwork comes from dance and robotics; focus from robotics, e-sports, boxing, the casino and photography; guts from boxing, the casino and the biker gang; appeal from dance, skateboarding, the biker gang and the girls' bar.
• When one stalls, push another — that's the intended loop. The guide's own reading is that the gate is probably the summed progress percentage across all School Stories plus main-story progress, rather than any single leadership level.
• The phone's ToDo app has a School Stories tab telling you what's next, and event locations show on the map as green folder icons.
• Finishing every School Story requires the main case to reach Chapter 9, where you rejoin Sugiura at the Yokohama 99th; no amount of leadership grinding completes them before that.

You advise Seiryo Rabbits, the dance club chasing a contest win. It's a falling-note rhythm game: clear when the Quality gauge finishes above the clear line.

• Hit square, cross, triangle and circle on time to raise Quality. Notes joined by a line are two-button simultaneous presses; tall notes are holds for their full length.
• Costumes make the Quality gauge climb faster, and they're sold at the Hustle Clothing Store in Yokohama's snack district — when you're just short, buy one rather than re-grind the chart.
• Before a lesson you can equip an EX Routine — learned by reading Dance Manuals found in the story and around town — and trigger it mid-song with left, down or right on the d-pad for a per-routine advantage.

A dedicated boxing action mode, separate from field combat. Sparring and matches run four three-minute rounds, with draws decided on punches landed and knockdowns.

• Health is the green bar up top; emptying it knocks you down, and three knockdowns in a round ends the fight. You get up by mashing cross, and how much mashing depends on your remaining stamina. Health refills between rounds.
• Stamina is the circular gauge at your body. Empty it and you can't string attacks; take a straight or hook while nearly empty and you seize up entirely for a while.
• Stamina drains on every punch (harder punches cost more), on whiffs (expensive), on dodges, and when you take body shots. It regenerates slowly when idle, and blocking a body shot gives a small refund.

You infiltrate the robotics club, which is chasing a win at the corporate-run RE Robot Contest. Its minigame is a territory battle: blue for you, red for them, three robots a side expanding their area.

• Whoever holds more area when the clock runs out wins, and winning drops materials — which become the parts that make the next machine stronger.
• The story turns on Yagami subbing in for an absent student at a practice match against another school — win it and club president Domu Okitegawa starts taking him seriously.
• Robotics is one of the best clubs for raising both teamwork and focus, so run it when another School Story is gated on either.

The death races of Ijincho's biggest bike gang: deliberately dangerous runs where blocking and violence are legal, and you win by finishing ahead of the Head.

• The Head starts out in front. Closing the gap means tackling and boosting through the mob riders on the way, and each Head throws their own signature interference at you.
• Controls: left stick to move side to side, R2 accelerate, L2 brake, stick plus cross to drift, stick down for a wheelie, circle to boost, and stick plus square to tackle.
• Beating Kanasugi in the tutorial race opens the bike garage through Amasawa's connections: customisation (upgrades and colour), practice runs to learn a course, the death races themselves, and swapping bikes.

It opens on a graffiti turf war between the Ijincho Hounds and Blue King. The minigame is park missions: beat the target score inside the time limit.

• Score comes from tricks, and the loop is collecting the coin-shaped skate points scattered around the park while landing them.
• Landing GREAT-or-better tricks back to back builds a combo, shown on the right, worth a 110% multiplier at one combo — so keeping the chain alive beats going for bigger individual tricks.
• The community's prize exchange hands out Free Pass Voucher 1 for the VR board game — collect all six free passes and Dice & Cube becomes unlimited, so pick this one up early.

A cheating scandal in the e-sports club, played out through Virtua Fighter 5 matches. Club member Machio Toki asks Yagami to clear president Genya Sanbonmatsu's name.

• The matches aren't hard, but if you want them over quickly the sumo character Taka-Arashi is the easy pick.
• With Taka-Arashi, just mash triangle — it chains the thrust combo on its own and simply bulldozes the opponent.
• The only thing to watch is their wake-up attack: block it or stay out of range, then go back to mashing once they're up.
• TownGo's school missions here are beating Fujiwara (10 Sp), Yoshiba (10), Uozumi (60) and Sanbonmatsu (150), plus reaching two and four wins.

A student who claims to know the Professor's identity let it slip to Emily, the bar's number one — so Yagami works the room to get her talking. Entry is ¥2,000 and a drink ¥800.

• You order a cocktail before talking, and whoever is serving you drinks it too — so order what she actually likes.
• During cocktail talk, a CHOICE prompt gives you a timer to build the right word combination from three options — pick with triangle, square and cross in order one, two, three, and circle undoes a wrong pick. Correct combinations raise her excitement, and past a threshold that converts into the friendship gauge.
• Cocktails raise Yagami's drunkenness, which garbles the word choices — kanji and katakana render as hiragana — and forces you out at maximum. The Drinker skills raise that ceiling.

The photography club shoots delinquency as its theme, on the theory that showing offenders pictures of themselves will make them reflect. Club president Mei Toribe is reckless enough about it that Yagami has to tag along.

• Delinquents you photograph will often just swing at you — plan the shot expecting a fight to follow.
• The club raises focus, but it needs Guts Lv.4 to appear — so run boxing, the casino or the biker gang first to get there.
• The investigative point is that following the delinquents turns up leads on the Professor, and TownGo carries its own photography missions on top (the first is worth 30 Sp).

A School Story and a play spot at once: Seiryo student Kohaku Hayakawa is rumoured to be getting into Ijincho's members-only casino, so Yagami goes in after him. Poker and blackjack are on the tables.

• Buy chips from the attendant before you can play, and trade winnings back at the same counter.
• The prize counter carries Free Pass Voucher 3 for the VR board game — one of the six, so don't skip it.
• Blackjack counts pips at face value, J/Q/K as ten and an ace as 1 or 11 while the total stays at or under 11. Poker is Texas Hold'em — two hole cards plus the board, betting or folding each round.
• The casino raises focus and guts together, so running it unblocks both photography (Guts Lv.4) and boxing (Focus Lv.2) at once.

Reaching Chapter 3 triggers the side case that opens the drone track, after which it's free play. The goal is conquering the Dx League, racing against ten other drones.

• Left stick moves forward, back and sideways; right stick climbs, descends and turns; L1 brakes, L2 looks behind, R1 is turbo, L3 swaps the view, and the touchpad retires or restarts.
• Turbo isn't always available: fly a while and TURBO appears beside the speedometer at the bottom right, then R1 spends it on a short burst — save it for a straight.
• Boost gates line the course: fly cleanly through a blue ring for a timed boost, an orange one for a tornado boost. Thread the centre rather than clipping the edge.

Roll dice, move that many squares through a VR-dressed city, clear the events and beat the NPC racers. It's primarily a money-making spot.

• Each run costs a Play Pass item, obtained from other play spots' prize exchanges.
• Collect all six Free Passes and it becomes unlimited — much less friction than feeding it a Play Pass every time, so get them early.
• Where the six vouchers come from: the Ijincho skate community's prize exchange, Kamurocho's paint search, the casino prize exchange from the casino School Story, the Ijincho side case about the kappa, the Ijincho cat-communication content, and the Ijincho gambling den's prize exchange.

Real SEGA arcade titles, each carrying a TownGo shop mission for a high score. Which cabinet sits in which arcade differs, so check the location before chasing a mission.

• Fantasy Zone (1986) is the Opa-Opa side-scroller where you shoot enemies for coins and buy weapons and engines. Eight rounds, each with ten bases to destroy before the boss appears, and the red cells on the bottom gauge show how many are left. It's at Club SEGA Nakamichi and Game Center Sasaki, and the high-score mission is worth 100 Sp.
• Space Harrier (1985) runs eighteen stages of pseudo-3D shooting. You don't need to kill the small fry, and in places your own cannon fire blocks the view — some stretches are easier if you simply don't shoot. It's at Theater Square and Chinatown, mission worth 100 Sp.
• Super Hang-On (1987) is checkpoint bike racing across Beginner, Junior, Senior and Expert courses. It's at Theater Square and Chinatown, and the mission is 100 Sp plus scoring over six million.

Standard four-player mahjong: build the strongest hand you can inside the allotted rounds.

• Square declares riichi, and placement bonuses apply by finishing order.
• Rules are adjustable before you sit down — turn off anything you're not comfortable with.

Ranking matches, Trial Run and tsume-shogi, paying Shogi Points for prizes.

• TownGo's shop missions include winning without using takebacks: one such win is worth 10 Sp and three is worth 30. Use takebacks freely otherwise, but not in a game you're counting toward those.
• Tsume-shogi problems finish far faster than ranking matches, so they're the efficient option when you only need points.

Koi-koi and oicho-kabu on hanafuda. Its prize exchange holds Free Pass Voucher 6 for Dice & Cube, so it's a mandatory stop at least once.

• Koi-koi is head to head. The earlier month deals first and the winner deals after that; match a month between hand and field to take the pair, otherwise place a card.
• A completed hand can still be pushed with a koi-koi call for something bigger — banking the small win or reaching further is the whole decision.
• Oicho-kabu uses the forty cards from months one to ten: get the last digit of your two or three cards closer to 9 than the dealer's. January counts as 1, May as 5, October as 0.

Three modes — 01, Cricket and Count Up. The girls' bar's board runs the same rules and doubles as a way to raise a hostess's friendship.

• Singles score face value, doubles double, triples triple, and both bulls are 50. A power gauge slides as you throw — press in the best zone — and the dart itself still adds wobble.
• 01 reduces a score to exactly zero — of 301/501/701/901, 301 is quickest. Two rounds of three bulls plus a final 1 finishes 301, which carries you through the intermediate opponents and, played cleanly, the advanced ones too.
• Cricket only counts 15 through 20 and the bull: singles are one mark, doubles two, triples three, and three marks closes the number, turning it from yellow to pink.