I stopped playing the game when I got to this point because I just did not want to figure out the crafting
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Fighting my way all the way through the Sotenbori battle arena actually proved to be a fruitful source of better gear and got my party nicely leveled up in their new jobs. I might tweak Nanba. I switched him to Fortune-teller but I’m underwhelmed. I might try something else out for him, or maybe just go back to his base job.
There are several big jumps in equipment power level, and the battle arena would be one of them (since it gives you so many items for upgrades at the junk shop). I really enjoyed how mysterious a lot of the equipment upgrading remained, since some of the items you can just buy from stores and they have no indicator that they can be upgraded.
I suspect it takes a lot of work to design a system that remains loose like that.
So last night I spent maxing out the Ichiban Holdings game, which was a fun time. Now I have a ton of money and a pretty easy way to more if I ever need it. Always fun to get to That Point in an RPG where money stops being a thing.
Right now I am running with Ichiban as a Breaker, Eri as an Idol, Saeko as a Night Queen, and Nanba as a Bodyguard (or whatever the katana class is). Nanba is my only really not super strong one right now, though he can be when I need him to. Also in true YKZ style, i got completely sidetracked by the management stuff and a bit by the go-karting, so maybe I will get back to the game tonight? I am in Chapter 7, ha.
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What properties did you ultimately settle on for maximum profits? I think I got a little trigger happy turning over businesses and my earnings plateaued a bit.
i don’t remember exactly. whatever the most expensive ones i could get were, then upgraded them fully and staffed them accordingly. upgrading staff and being willing to cut people helped a lot.
yeah the battle arena was more fun and worthwhile than I expected, I needed it to beat majima because I was so underleveled. idk what it’ll take for me to win this kiryu fight though, even when I load him up with status effects I always eat shit like 1/3 of the way through
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There’s one trick I found out from the internet (Kiryu won’t attack women) that could tip the scales a bit if you aren’t already taking advantage of that. Then I think just spam healing/buffs too?
I have been putting off the fight a bit because I’m sure it’s going to be a bear.
attempting to avail myself of that strategy is actually making me lose more I think
I can see how that would be the case. I really hate when jRPGs make the protagonist going down an instant fail-state in combat
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the game is not balanced for that shit either!!
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Didn’t know this but damn it makes a lot of sense now in retrospect with Eri and Saeko in my party.
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Ok I must say they really brought it all home for the ending – the game has some obvious pacing / narrative / balance missteps between chapter 8 and chapter 11 or so but that last marathon chapter is really touchingly written and acted and solidifies its position in my mind as the Japanese Saints Row 4 that it initially appeared to be, this hugely affectionate and well-observed thing that knows its history and what it wants to be.
I also appreciated how, for me at least, the only actually challenging fights in the game that required me to respec and plan differently were against kiryu and majima
loved it, strong recommendation, newly inclined to finish where I left off 2/5 and maybe pick up 3/4/6
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does anyone here have an avatar of a high polygon recent game screenshot actually? like every other forum has these high res character creation looking avatars but does anyone here have a AAA face? weird
pretty sure this is from cyberpunk
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Just finished Yakuza 7, probably my favorite Yakuza story of all grafted onto one of the least satisfying battle/gear systems I’ve ever experienced. Loved the characters, loved the main conflict, and one extremely unnecessary twist aside (seriously why couldn’t Tendo have just said those things instead of Mirror Face, Tendo was also used/thrown away by Aoki, but it was so insane and weird that I kind of loved it anyways) loved the conclusion.
But hoo boy that battle system. I spent the first 70% of the game grousing that it was mindless to the point of boredom, but then got my monkey paw wish from Chapter 12 on with fights that were slightly more difficult by virtue of just being 10x times longer and more likely to kill you via RNG.
While I didn’t enjoy any of the boss fights from Chapter 12 on, The Tendo fight was a real lowlight, which was a pity because it put me in a real grouchy mood for the finale that ended up being really good.
(Was there any better way to grind out those endgame fights that I was missing? Basically getting poison up (100hp / turn) then just grinding it out by spamming Ichiban’s orbital laser attack (1000 hp / turn) having saeko healbot as an idol, and have the other two members pick away at their health / lower defense / throw MP restore items to Ichiban? Poison ended up doing basically 50% of the damage and it still took me over 20 minutes to grind out. Nothing any of the other members were doing would do more than 100-200 damage. At one point 15 minutes into the fight he one-shot Ichiban but THANK GOD I had a sacrifice stone on him, if I had wiped there I probably would have never played a video game again.)
Of course upgrading gear / grinding for levels would have helped but the only upgrades I could figure out would have required me to get the level 3 junk shop, which cost 20m yen, which meant going back into Ichiban Holdings for an hour, which, fuck that.
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Also I complained loudly to friends about how, much like FF7Re before it, Yakuza 7 locks hard mode behind a game completion. Now I eat those words. I need to write a thank you letter to Toshihiro Nagoshi for saving me from myself
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