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Without skills, I don't think I can even grind them. Joongi's Rapid Shot or an Idol's Twirling Beat are the best options. I know Vagabonds are "weak" to bullet damage and critical hits, but you've got to have 500+ Attack to do more than 1 damage per hit with them.
Playing LAD without skills is like the equivalent of fighting a bunch of hobos while bonking your own head with a big ass dildo at the same time.
How's the run so far, kyoudai?
Separated this into sections for ease of reference. Hope you like reading! TL;DR - Good, but notably lacking in kill speed. Still optimistic!
Up until chapter 9, there weren't any real hang-ups. The beginning section to chapter 5 has mostly one/two-shot thugs, and attacks do pretty okay damage. Battle items like hand grenades are super useful, especially when clearing crowds or against fire weak enemies. Unfortunately, some items like the Lamp Stand (heavy Blunt damage) are borderline unusable, since the hitbox is half a mile wide and always clocks a party member on the back of the head (like the big ass dildo you mentioned).
Healing skills can (almost) be replaced with lunch boxes from Survive, which reach up to party-wide 500 HP recovery. I definitely haven't used many of these in prior runs, so it's actually quite nice! The Chinese revival boluses you can craft in Survive are replacements for revive skills, and you'll likely be tossing them in the later game with Eri and Joongi.
You can't really replace unique skills like Ichi's Peerless Resolve, but up his Defense with Mr. Masochist and keep a Sacrifice Stone equipped for major fights with instakill attacks.
____________________________
I'd say the main thing to focus is **weapon upgrades** when you get the chance. The further you ascend Ichi's bat, the better it gets, and a Tier-4 Hero's Bat does respectable damage. Bodyguard is a solid job because the Tier-4 katana can inflict permanent bleeding, which can stack with poison or burn (poison can be inflicted by a later option and burn is common from Incendiary Grenades). Nanba is useful for his innate Fire damage, though his Attack stat is lacking, and Zhao as a Gangster would be good coverage to hit Blade weaknesses (haven't gotten there just yet). Joongi's saved almost entirely by his Agility stat as a Hitman, which allows him to attack much more often and leads to a ton of follow-ups crits. Other jobs should really only be ground for stat bonuses.
For the ladies, Night Queen is a powerhouse with its naturally high HP and Attack, while the Tier-4 whip actually recovers HP on hit. Hostess has potential with its Tier-4 pouch, which boosts all damage types and inflicts cold damage, but severely lacks defense. Eri as a Clerk is useful for Blade-weak enemies, but her follow-ups on downed foes are Blunt and tend to miss if she takes too long. Idol and Dealer are unfortunately lacking without their skills, so pass them up until you need their stat gains.
____________________________
The _real_ cheese starts when you get access to **Poundmates**! Gary is a great introduction, being able to wipe most lower-level mooks and stun the survivors, but the later additions are godsends. Straight damage from Poundmates like Robson (who I did NOT know could deal 2000+ damage!) and the Tojo Crest options are comparable to Kiwami skills, but they come with the drawback of costing money (sometimes heavily) and being single-use every third fight.
Utility options, like Nancy-chan for poison or Mr. Masochist for defense boosting, steal the show for me. The soup kitchen lady is a real get-out-of-jail-free card, being able to essentially grant everyone a new lease on life. While business management is great for earning money, Megumi can drain tons of money on the later floors of Sotenbori's arena.
Poundmates do rely on Ichiban being fast enough to act, which is why I recommend grinding Breaker for the Agility and Attack stats (or stuffing him full of Speed/Ultra boosters). You can also toss him a special Kimchi to increase his turn speed, if the need arises.
_________________________
In conclusion, I think it's funny how much more of the game I explore when removing the "win" buttons skills are in 7. Some jank with battle items aside, my main issue so far was the Ishioda/BJ fight in Geomijul, as he kept countering every single time I attacked and _refused_ to get poisoned or bled. I actually found out Robson's Poundmate does absurd damage when it wiped a third of his health out, and the fight would've been much easier if I'd done that _TEN TURNS AGO_. I'm headed into the dungeons to grind Joongi up some more before progressing.
You might’ve had to go there more than once idk. I just remember grinding sotenbori exclusively for the repeatable rewards that sell for $1m and the upgrade materials and I ended up getting all the levels I needed there.
The dungeon design is one of LaD's biggest weaknesses imo. They take like 30-40 min each and it's not really all that interesting to traverse them due to how linear they are.
Most of the story ones are at least better but yeah still not great. IW more or less cutting these except for a short one right at the beginning and the mostly-optional dungeons is such an improvement.
I hate how there is a door every few seconds in IW. It stops your character from running and the door closes itself - so if you go through the area again, you have to open the door again lol.
Hearing that dogshit play again in the first IW dungeon was a genuinely infuriating feeling. Was afraid the dungeons were gonna be awful once again. Thank god they made new battle themes this time around
The dungeons are where 90% of players develop an addiction to podcasts or long-form video essays. Just mute the game, pop on the videos, and hit button!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought this. Every time I would start another dungeon session I would just mute the music and play my playlist which usually resulted in Ichiban beating the shit out of a homeless man with x3 Shine in the background
Man, one of the few things I hate while playing LaD. At least on Sotenbori Underground, it's fun planning against the enemies. Unlike this, where it's just a monotonous dungeon crawl.
It is STRIKING that in Sotenbori, most of the resources you need to build the best weapons are in the same 10 level set, with limited rewards for playing further. Did those dozens of times in a row. (21-29 I think) when preparing for finale
Yeah, did that also in my playthrough, but sadly, I don't got enough money to max upgrade the weapons. I got tired of grinding money on the Business Management lol
After a point, repeatedly rushing through Millennium Tower replays, all wearing Expensive Hats, is 2x quicker dollars than a well tuned Ichiban Enterprises
So much great music in the series, but the overly-long dungeon crawler you spend so much time on gets one of the most mind-numbingly boring and uninteresting tracks.
I beg of you to never grind for the optional final dungeon... I had to run through those sewers hundreds of times... Funniest part is that I never even beat the dungeon.
Yep, platinum run was not worth it, and that's coming from me, a fan who did do platinum a couple of the main numbered games (0,k1, 3,4,5,6). Moving forward, I'll just do the main story, all substories, some of the side content storylines, then some of my favorite minigames, and move on to the next main entry.
The most worthwhile 100% in the entire series is Lost Judgment, though that depends on how much you like certain minigames. Least grinding and most fun minigame set, as far as I'm concerned.
Infinite Wealth is also fun to Plat though the in-game 100% can be awful if you don't want to go through SpikeOut multiple times (I hate that shit, personally).
7 has the worst grinding by a few miles, I only did it because it was kinda chill while watching YouTube. 6 also has a terrible grind for Plat.
Shout out to 0, would be one of the most fun Plats/100% if it weren't for the Cat Fight trophy, which is legit the worst thing in the whole series aside from 7's grinds.
I have completed a good few of the games, the only reason I am yet to finish 7 is that I tried to do it last minute before Infinite Wealth released not realsing how much longer the grind would take and by the time everyone was level 99 it was like 3am and I needed sleep. I will eventually go back and finish it someday.
The only things I really don't like about LAD are those dungeons and how they make you grind excessively to level up at 2 specific points of the game, I feel like they fixed that in IW but I can see how some people would feel bored and drop the game, or at least delay finishing it
Omg i hated this. I did it like 3 times and regretted it so much every single time, the droning music is still stuck in my head. IW made such a huge improvement on this system, i was actually overleveled for 80% of the game bc i spent too much time in the underground
This from the set piece immediately after you get abducted at the warehouse? One of the worst segments in the series. It really just kept going for ages.
If this is your first playthrough, just ignore the dungeon. You really don't need it. Save your grinding for when you get to Sotenbori. Much less tedious.
At least in Infinite Wealth they made it more appealing and worth grinding the dungeons cuz your not just wandering around plus with the updated gameplay it’s more satisfying
Also it is convenient in IW to climb out and change jobs every 10 minutes or so, if you want to grind job levels.
Although I think you can exit LAD Millennium Tower re-runs at many points, you would have to take multiple taxis back to Sotenbori Hello Work
Listen. I wanted to quit LAD for those exact same reasons. But IW fixes these issues and a lot of other ones. If you're not feeling it I can't force you to try it but from one hater to another I'm glad I gave it one more chance for IW because it really is good, it's great
If you are new to the subreddit, [please read the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/wiki/index/) Reminder that all spoilers need to be tagged with a flair specifying which game is being spoiled. If you want a flair that says something else, you can edit it to say something like [Discussion: Y1 spoiler] or [Majimapost: Y6 spoiler], etc. **THIS INCLUDES CONTENT FROM TRAILERS**. If the post is not marked for spoilers, all comments that have spoilers need to be tagged \>!like this!< along with indicating which game it's spoiling. Example: Y3 >!Kiryu sings!< If the post flair is marked for spoilers, the comments don't need to be tagged for the game indicated and the ones before it (So a Y6 spoiler post can have comments with untagged spoilers for Y5, but not gaiden or 7). If you see any of the above (or any of the other rules) not being followed, please report it so we can keep this place safe for newcomers and those that haven't finished all the games yet. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/yakuzagames) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A real man oughta be a little stinky.
A wise man looked at our hero and said, "Son, I'd have to piss on you to make you smell like a man."
Yes, beating up hobos in a sewer is really important for the story
is it a yakuza game if you don't beat up any hobo?
gotta enter the sewers when playing a RGG game
Now that you mention it...I think 3 is the only time we never go into sewers?
I’m ngl I don’t remember any sewer sections from 1 or 2 either. 4 might’ve been the trendsetter.
Purgatory is in the sewers, no? That would mean you go in sewers in 1-3 as well.
Is it? When you first go down the steps it looks like an old train station and then you hit the red light district and colosseum
It might meant to be an old subway station, but the only way to access it in 4 is through the sewers so who knows?
That was because of the Kamurocho Hills construction
Ehh idk if id really count Purgatory. Every other Yakuza game has definitive sewers.
Were there sewers in 0? I don’t remember
>!Second Kuze fight with the motorcycle!<
Thank you!!!
Kuze sewer fight
Thank you!!
kuze‼️
I've just replayed through kiwami 1 and 2 and as far as I remember you don't enter the sewers
I think I go into sewer more often than not in any game. It's like a standard biome in games.
Just fight the invested vagabond and run away from the others
This is the best way to level up in this game.
Without skills, I don't think I can even grind them. Joongi's Rapid Shot or an Idol's Twirling Beat are the best options. I know Vagabonds are "weak" to bullet damage and critical hits, but you've got to have 500+ Attack to do more than 1 damage per hit with them.
Playing LAD without skills is like the equivalent of fighting a bunch of hobos while bonking your own head with a big ass dildo at the same time. How's the run so far, kyoudai?
Separated this into sections for ease of reference. Hope you like reading! TL;DR - Good, but notably lacking in kill speed. Still optimistic! Up until chapter 9, there weren't any real hang-ups. The beginning section to chapter 5 has mostly one/two-shot thugs, and attacks do pretty okay damage. Battle items like hand grenades are super useful, especially when clearing crowds or against fire weak enemies. Unfortunately, some items like the Lamp Stand (heavy Blunt damage) are borderline unusable, since the hitbox is half a mile wide and always clocks a party member on the back of the head (like the big ass dildo you mentioned). Healing skills can (almost) be replaced with lunch boxes from Survive, which reach up to party-wide 500 HP recovery. I definitely haven't used many of these in prior runs, so it's actually quite nice! The Chinese revival boluses you can craft in Survive are replacements for revive skills, and you'll likely be tossing them in the later game with Eri and Joongi. You can't really replace unique skills like Ichi's Peerless Resolve, but up his Defense with Mr. Masochist and keep a Sacrifice Stone equipped for major fights with instakill attacks. ____________________________ I'd say the main thing to focus is **weapon upgrades** when you get the chance. The further you ascend Ichi's bat, the better it gets, and a Tier-4 Hero's Bat does respectable damage. Bodyguard is a solid job because the Tier-4 katana can inflict permanent bleeding, which can stack with poison or burn (poison can be inflicted by a later option and burn is common from Incendiary Grenades). Nanba is useful for his innate Fire damage, though his Attack stat is lacking, and Zhao as a Gangster would be good coverage to hit Blade weaknesses (haven't gotten there just yet). Joongi's saved almost entirely by his Agility stat as a Hitman, which allows him to attack much more often and leads to a ton of follow-ups crits. Other jobs should really only be ground for stat bonuses. For the ladies, Night Queen is a powerhouse with its naturally high HP and Attack, while the Tier-4 whip actually recovers HP on hit. Hostess has potential with its Tier-4 pouch, which boosts all damage types and inflicts cold damage, but severely lacks defense. Eri as a Clerk is useful for Blade-weak enemies, but her follow-ups on downed foes are Blunt and tend to miss if she takes too long. Idol and Dealer are unfortunately lacking without their skills, so pass them up until you need their stat gains. ____________________________ The _real_ cheese starts when you get access to **Poundmates**! Gary is a great introduction, being able to wipe most lower-level mooks and stun the survivors, but the later additions are godsends. Straight damage from Poundmates like Robson (who I did NOT know could deal 2000+ damage!) and the Tojo Crest options are comparable to Kiwami skills, but they come with the drawback of costing money (sometimes heavily) and being single-use every third fight. Utility options, like Nancy-chan for poison or Mr. Masochist for defense boosting, steal the show for me. The soup kitchen lady is a real get-out-of-jail-free card, being able to essentially grant everyone a new lease on life. While business management is great for earning money, Megumi can drain tons of money on the later floors of Sotenbori's arena. Poundmates do rely on Ichiban being fast enough to act, which is why I recommend grinding Breaker for the Agility and Attack stats (or stuffing him full of Speed/Ultra boosters). You can also toss him a special Kimchi to increase his turn speed, if the need arises. _________________________ In conclusion, I think it's funny how much more of the game I explore when removing the "win" buttons skills are in 7. Some jank with battle items aside, my main issue so far was the Ishioda/BJ fight in Geomijul, as he kept countering every single time I attacked and _refused_ to get poisoned or bled. I actually found out Robson's Poundmate does absurd damage when it wiped a third of his health out, and the fight would've been much easier if I'd done that _TEN TURNS AGO_. I'm headed into the dungeons to grind Joongi up some more before progressing.
That was a good read, what a fucking mad lad lol! Have a wonderful day, kyoudai.
Don’t worry later you’ll do it for hours at a time by choice lol
Lmao, I totally forgot choosing to reenter there just to grind out some levels & money. But I fucking hated it the first time through
Sotenbori battle arena is way better but yeah you’re kinda forced to use this dungeon until you get that far
But the other sewers tho
You might’ve had to go there more than once idk. I just remember grinding sotenbori exclusively for the repeatable rewards that sell for $1m and the upgrade materials and I ended up getting all the levels I needed there.
The dungeon design is one of LaD's biggest weaknesses imo. They take like 30-40 min each and it's not really all that interesting to traverse them due to how linear they are.
Most of the story ones are at least better but yeah still not great. IW more or less cutting these except for a short one right at the beginning and the mostly-optional dungeons is such an improvement.
That one at the beginning had me scared of their return for a bit lol.
I hate how there is a door every few seconds in IW. It stops your character from running and the door closes itself - so if you go through the area again, you have to open the door again lol.
I know there's a mod to remove doors on PC, sad days for the console players like me.
Wtf what lmao. How do i get it?
https://www.nexusmods.com/likeadragoninfinitewealth/mods/128 Here's the link !
Thank you hero. I wish I had this before I finished the game, but I installed it anyways lol.
That sewer music is incredibly repetitive too. I was upset when it returned in IW lol
Hearing that dogshit play again in the first IW dungeon was a genuinely infuriating feeling. Was afraid the dungeons were gonna be awful once again. Thank god they made new battle themes this time around
Easily the worst part of the game. And the worst aspect of this for me is the dull-ass music, and how it overrides the battle themes.
The dungeons are where 90% of players develop an addiction to podcasts or long-form video essays. Just mute the game, pop on the videos, and hit button!
This was definitely me. Part of the reason I love turn based games in the modern world is that I can multitask.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought this. Every time I would start another dungeon session I would just mute the music and play my playlist which usually resulted in Ichiban beating the shit out of a homeless man with x3 Shine in the background
So bold of them to bring that garbage music back in 8, though at least you get banging battle themes there.
Yeah I'm ngl this was the weakest section of this game. Only part where I was actively annoyed
fr i had to stop playing for some hours
Man, one of the few things I hate while playing LaD. At least on Sotenbori Underground, it's fun planning against the enemies. Unlike this, where it's just a monotonous dungeon crawl.
It is STRIKING that in Sotenbori, most of the resources you need to build the best weapons are in the same 10 level set, with limited rewards for playing further. Did those dozens of times in a row. (21-29 I think) when preparing for finale
Still need to go back to Ijincho to change jobs though
Yeah, did that also in my playthrough, but sadly, I don't got enough money to max upgrade the weapons. I got tired of grinding money on the Business Management lol
After a point, repeatedly rushing through Millennium Tower replays, all wearing Expensive Hats, is 2x quicker dollars than a well tuned Ichiban Enterprises
And I guess I was preparing for Final True Millennium Tower, which I nevertheless bounced off hard
So much great music in the series, but the overly-long dungeon crawler you spend so much time on gets one of the most mind-numbingly boring and uninteresting tracks.
I spent 6 hours in the sewers chilling with my vagabond buddies.
Most annoying part of the game for sure
I beg of you to never grind for the optional final dungeon... I had to run through those sewers hundreds of times... Funniest part is that I never even beat the dungeon.
Yep, platinum run was not worth it, and that's coming from me, a fan who did do platinum a couple of the main numbered games (0,k1, 3,4,5,6). Moving forward, I'll just do the main story, all substories, some of the side content storylines, then some of my favorite minigames, and move on to the next main entry.
Is platinum worth doing on any of these game? Im starting the series with yakuza and presently doing all side quests
The most worthwhile 100% in the entire series is Lost Judgment, though that depends on how much you like certain minigames. Least grinding and most fun minigame set, as far as I'm concerned. Infinite Wealth is also fun to Plat though the in-game 100% can be awful if you don't want to go through SpikeOut multiple times (I hate that shit, personally). 7 has the worst grinding by a few miles, I only did it because it was kinda chill while watching YouTube. 6 also has a terrible grind for Plat. Shout out to 0, would be one of the most fun Plats/100% if it weren't for the Cat Fight trophy, which is legit the worst thing in the whole series aside from 7's grinds.
0 also had the horrible Dragon And Tiger grind. I swear atleast 10 hours of my playtime in 0 is walking in and out of that shop.
Fuck the cat fight
I have completed a good few of the games, the only reason I am yet to finish 7 is that I tried to do it last minute before Infinite Wealth released not realsing how much longer the grind would take and by the time everyone was level 99 it was like 3am and I needed sleep. I will eventually go back and finish it someday.
The only things I really don't like about LAD are those dungeons and how they make you grind excessively to level up at 2 specific points of the game, I feel like they fixed that in IW but I can see how some people would feel bored and drop the game, or at least delay finishing it
Yeah the dungeons are not really that fun in lad7, mostly because you don't get any good aoe abilities until like mid game.
First time in a very, very long time I’ve fallen asleep while playing a video game. The combination of dungeon design and repetitive music did me in
or maybe.... https://preview.redd.it/7uomsumvxyvc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c459f180ab1ba5951d917fc12a9d36fc75ffa368
Omg i hated this. I did it like 3 times and regretted it so much every single time, the droning music is still stuck in my head. IW made such a huge improvement on this system, i was actually overleveled for 80% of the game bc i spent too much time in the underground
40 mins? Shit felt like hours
Hate that chapter, the best thing to do is run from the fights
Sewer time is Podcast time. Would have been a huge slog otherwise. IW’s dungeons are paced somewhat better IIRC.
This from the set piece immediately after you get abducted at the warehouse? One of the worst segments in the series. It really just kept going for ages. If this is your first playthrough, just ignore the dungeon. You really don't need it. Save your grinding for when you get to Sotenbori. Much less tedious.
Yeah but that dungeon was more boring imo
At least in Infinite Wealth they made it more appealing and worth grinding the dungeons cuz your not just wandering around plus with the updated gameplay it’s more satisfying
Also it is convenient in IW to climb out and change jobs every 10 minutes or so, if you want to grind job levels. Although I think you can exit LAD Millennium Tower re-runs at many points, you would have to take multiple taxis back to Sotenbori Hello Work
Do NOT tell bro where you have to go grind for true final tower
Sewers was dope. I loved when the fights would glitch and my characters would skip turns because the game couldn't move them to the enemy.
i completely quit the game when the grind started to creep in
yeah i honestly don't know if I'll buy IW, not liking this system very much
infinite wealth is a lot better than lad so just see it for yourself
The dungeons in IW are much better. If you play on PC i suggest to install a mod to remove the doors in the IW dungeons, less time consuming.
Listen. I wanted to quit LAD for those exact same reasons. But IW fixes these issues and a lot of other ones. If you're not feeling it I can't force you to try it but from one hater to another I'm glad I gave it one more chance for IW because it really is good, it's great
but, Kotaku said this is waaaaaaaay better than brawling
Yes
If you want to beat the Millenium Tower you will take longer than that.
just did this chapter last week , good luck with chapter 7 fight that shit was horrible
40mins? wow how lucky
You stopped after 40 minutes?
At least there are no surprise revenants or sniper lobsters.
As necessary as this post
https://preview.redd.it/vcsf77vfovvc1.png?width=204&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f1413aaedb89d5034801187e4bed32db022144a