GRcade

48 hours, still on chapter 9!

Got over 50% completion, beaten three of the 5 billionaires, taken over two Carabet areas.

The telephone mini game showdown with the Pleasure King.

Just beaten the fourth Billionaire.

The amount of cash generated is insane.

Then you see the cost of the some the abilities and

I pretty much collected over one billion yen every collection from the real estate storyline. Upgrading my skills by using CP at a shrine to speed up collection speed is a godsend, usually take 5-6 minutes to complete all areas' collections. Upgrading the properties' rankings by investing as well to boost the money income.

Beated the final Billionaire and unlocked every gate for Kiryu's abilities plus got his fourth skill set by beaten the storyline.

Now might as well move on with the main storyline now until I switch to Goro and finish defeating the rest of the clubs.

Just beat the Five Stars, and got over 2 billion yen in rewards, and unlocked the final fighting style for Goro.

Nothing much left for me to do apart from doing the story and sub stories. Can't be arsed playing Mahjong.

Also learned all the abilities for Goro's initial style. Can say that I'm feeling a bit burned out playing this game.

I'm working on the Five Billionnaires before I progress the story. Beaten the first one and halfway through the second one, but the store prices are really jacking up now.

Wedgie wrote:Just beat the Five Stars, and got over 2 billion yen in rewards, and unlocked the final fighting style for Goro.

Nothing much left for me to do apart from doing the story and sub stories. Can't be arsed playing Mahjong.

Also learned all the abilities for Goro's initial style. Can say that I'm feeling a bit burned out playing this game.

Burnout is definitely an issue with the game. I completed a good chunk of the substories, and spent a good while beating the 5 billionaires and completing the real estate minigame. By the time it came to the cabaret club I did the first two areas and then just had to give it up, it was just taking up too much time.

I ploughed through the rest of the story after that which I think might have been for the best. I imagine some of the story beats in the last few chapters of the game wouldn't land as well if you were spending hours on minigames in between each chapter.

You need to find advisors/security/managers from sub stories as well which will upgrading the stores a bit more easier, granted they are expensive (Miracle Johnson charge 4.8m yen for one boost for example.)

But it wouldn't matter later on as you'll be making a lot of money.

I'm moving on with the story for now, as I can't strawberry floating beat the two final dance off substories.

I managed to start this game twice without actually saving anything. I just managed to complete the first chapter but it was a slog because I had done most of it before. The levels climax was pretty cool though.

Yeah there's no auto save whatsoever, so losing a fight means game over and back to your last manual save.

It let me restart on the boss a couple of times.

Hmm, might be an exception for bosses. I got whooped in a regular fight because I hadn't been paying attention to my health (I'd foolishly assumed it regenerated after each fight) and had to reload.
The other exception is Mr Shakedown. Who just takes all of your money if he beats you.

I started playing the other day, and I knew there was no autosaving, but had no idea there was no kind of checkpoint system in place either if you died. Better start visiting those phone booths a bit more often!

Making a good progress on the story today and decided to call it a night as I just started the finale.

Man this game does love to throw twists at you at a fast pace.

Game finished, 75.2% completed with 77 hours on the clock.

What a goddamn ride that was.

I've been playing this just over a week now, and a few times I've come close to writing a post here moaning about the side quests. The main story is so good, and at first the side quests just seemed silly and out of place, and often I questioned why a guy like Kiryu would be wasting his time with them. I held back though as I know for most people, the silly side quests ARE Yakuza. Anyway, after stumbling across the Miracle Johnson one, and catching a Great White Shark with a fishing pole, I take it all back.

I've sort of paused the main story to do the real estate quests, and doing the side quests to unlock new staff has actually been really, really fun. I was wondering how the heck I'd ever be able to afford some of those abilities, but seeing the money involved in real estate, it all makes sense now. One thing I'm not sure about is the advisers and the property upgrades. I have one guy that's got really great stats for upgrading properties but costs 48m per go. What advantage is there to using him, other than speeding up the process? If I just upgrade a property ten times for 480k a go, it's at S rank and I've only spent 4.8m. Would there be any difference if I'd spent 48m to do it in one turn?

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:I've been playing this just over a week now, and a few times I've come close to writing a post here moaning about the side quests. The main story is so good, and at first the side quests just seemed silly and out of place, and often I questioned why a guy like Kiryu would be wasting his time with them. I held back though as I know for most people, the silly side quests ARE Yakuza. Anyway, after stumbling across the Miracle Johnson one, and catching a Great White Shark with a fishing pole, I take it all back.

I've sort of paused the main story to do the real estate quests, and doing the side quests to unlock new staff has actually been really, really fun. I was wondering how the heck I'd ever be able to afford some of those abilities, but seeing the money involved in real estate, it all makes sense now. One thing I'm not sure about is the advisers and the property upgrades. I have one guy that's got really great stats for upgrading properties but costs 48m per go. What advantage is there to using him, other than speeding up the process? If I just upgrade a property ten times for 480k a go, it's at S rank and I've only spent 4.8m. Would there be any difference if I'd spent 48m to do it in one turn?

The difference is that you don't have to wait 10 turns to get to S rank, which means 9 turns where you're earning the S-rank money, instead of the lower tiers.

Someone tell me there's a way to view the Karaoke videos without the rhythm game overlay.

Finished this last night. What a game!

It surprises me it doesn't get mentioned enough how similar the series is to Shenmue. Yes, I know it does get mentioned, but it's much closer than I was expecting based on what I'd heard. I actually think Shenmue 3 is going to disappoint many people as it's not going to have the town/city to explore on the scale of the previous games, but it's all here in Yakuza. I think the only real difference is the missing in-game clock and time progressing at it's own pace. There's some elements of Die Hard Arcade/Dynamite Cop thrown in to make up for it though.

I thought they completed nailed the balance between the serious elements and the whacky Japanese stuff, to the point you'd often get both elements together in a scene and it never felt off. The mini game stuff was mostly excellent too. Lost quite a few evenings entirely to just playing poker. The real estate and cabaret stuff were both pretty fun too, although not sure if that was just because of the huge amounts of money that came out of them compared to the regular stuff.