Beast in the East: Yakuza 0 - Part 14

Admittedly, the combat is a little clunky but Dan's having way more trouble with it than he really should be. For me, it helped to count out the number of times I pressed the buttons so I wouldn't lock myself into animations. And like other people mentioned, he needs to stop mashing triangle unless there's actually a heat action available. Most of the heat actions are usually only available when you grab a guy or have a weapon unless there's a specific ability that says otherwise.

Even all these years later, EVEN IN DEATH, Sega and Michael Jackson are forever intertwined.

"Do a Mustafa in the sky thing" I love Dan.

@asraimun: Yes, black box was a muuuuch better item. It was the Trouble Finder, an item that when equipped shows the starting point for any available substories.

EDIT: My mistake, that's later. If they ever have the chance to pick a black or white box again, they should definitely pick black.

RE: the visitation thing, divorces in Japan are fucked with regards to visitation rights; basically, you have to be REALLY well off to get it, and it's really not uncommon for parents / kids to never see each other ever again following a divorce.

@danryckert: But his skeleton does the moonwalk...(the moment you realize you liked a weird thing that's maybe not as cool as you thought).

PS I remembered they made a big deal about this one too, a return to HOOOORROOR! Thriller 2 it was not haha.

Also regarding taking on Mr. Shakedown, Rush style is the best approach to fighting him in the game. Once you get down the path a bit, you can dodge and build heat, get a lot of attacks in quickly and get out again. Beast and Brawler lock you in animations for too long. Majima's thug style is the best option for his own Mr. Shakedown fights, but it's not nearly as good as Rush is.

Now I'm falling down a YouTube hole of watching MJ videos... Since Alex mentioned Smooth Criminal, here's something you may find interesting. P. S. Fred Astaire f'ing RULES. For shits and giggles, watch Jamaroquai's Virtual Insanity video, then google Fred Astaire Royal Wedding and watch the ceiling dance. Look familiar?

@awesomeo4000: Lol nice. Haven't watched the video yet but I can certainly see it.

This really isn't a spoiler or anything, because it has no story attached to it, but the dude in white standing at the north end of the same long alley you did the password thing in gives you access to the weapon shop with Kiyru. The main reason for this is that you can fix your broken weapons (they really help with Mr. Shakedown fights!)

@vinny@alex@danryckert Sorry to disappoint you, but Reina isn't a real woman.

At this point (and for many hours now) there's nothing game-wise making Mr Shakedown off limits. It's strictly Dan's personal skill at combat. Not getting hit is still of vital importance when fighting Mr Shakedown, which doesn't really gel with Dan, so maybe it's not such a good idea after all.

He's no more challenging than a boss fight, but I've never seen anyone consistently go down within two seconds. You cannot just wail on him, because you're down after a couple of hits.

PS - Why hasn't there been karaoke in just about every episode?? It's so good, and you've been ignoring it. There must be songs that you haven't even done yet.

@danryckert Use Rush mode when fighting Mr Shakedown and do three hit combos then back off. Wait for him to charge before following up with another three hit combo. It can take some time to widdle him down but the cash rewards once you beat him a few times get insane.

Asian-Ben vs Dan fight at the end, went as expected.

@alex@danryckert@vinny

Treat Mr. Shakedown like a Dark Souls boss. Do everything to avoid getting hit, like dodging, while also taking shots when you can.

You really need to be dodging. Start dodging! You can do so much with dodging. You can avoid gun shots, you can easier manage enemies. DODGE DODGE DODGE

That was worth every second of watching it. Man MJ was a genius. Amazing.

Defeating Mr. Shakedown should be pretty easy if you have any more than no patience at all. Literally all you have to do is bait out any one of his four very slow attacks, dodge them, and punish.

Wow Alex was right, somehow, being 29, I've never sat down and watched the full 9 minutes of the Smooth Criminal Music Video.

That might be the best music video I've ever see

Ask Dan why he's bad at stealth in games.

@blacklagoon: my bad

Haven't consumed all of the earlier episodes, but I'd love to see y'all play some Out Run. If you play it as Kiryu, you can befriend the lady in the arcade! Who knows, you might be able to unlock another classic Suzuki Sega arcade game in Y0...

@alex@danryckert@vinny Just a heads up, some places you can't buy because you can only obtain them through friendship with the merchant. The Sushi Jin owner and the Poppo Tenkaichi St. clerk have friendship meters from buying from them often. Eventually they'll offer to partner with your business. There are businesses like this too in later parts for Kiryu and in Majima's side businesses.

Side quest/Friendship related things: When you get back to Majima's there is a guy outside the Grand that teaches you the money tossing/lets you deposit money. The green suit guy Kiryu learned it from in the billiards clubs and the guy Majima learned it from will allow you to trade money from each main character. Also with Majima there's a sub story that actually builds up some more character background for the series and that also unlocks two more substories for Kiryu back in Kamurocho. This location is where the Majima substory starts.

@magnetismi: You saw Dan's attempt at Rush Mode training, right? Hammering square against Shaky won't end well.

The combat in the game isn't super difficult but it's got a certain timing and pace to it which a combination of one session a week and Dan's, shall we say, single-minded play style equals frustration.

I hardly touched the property and hostess minigames until after I'd finished the main story so I hope @alex, @vinny and @danryckert don't think they're more essential than they actually are. Majima's one is super fun and I love seeing them playing it but Kyru's takes a bit of time before it starts to give anything other than money.

A tiny part of me dies each time Dan does that little kick move.

@auspexao: Kind of frustrating when Vinny is on point and the other are like, "What? No, that unique character model couldn't possibly be anything."

@awesomeo4000: @demoskinos: The black box did not contain the encounter finder (http://www.khhsubs.com/rggzero/substories.html -see substory 12) you have probably mixed it up with substory 23.

@paulunga I think they were thinking about Marina (the secretary) and not Reina and just mixing up the names.

Hey guys, just wanted to comment and say if you want Dan to use the heat actions, he just has to like, stand still for a second before the heat prompt shows up. If he keeps hammering on attack the heat option wont even appear in the corner, but if he lays off the button for a moment (Like with the Sunburst katana) the heat prompt will appear. Something to keep in mind.

Loving the series!

@toa5t3r: Actually, Kiryu doesn't actually have any heat actions with swords in this game beyond the generic stomp/kick on downed enemies. (Most likely because him learning to use swords properly is a plot point later in the series.)

Needit needit

Stephen Spining's dead-eyed stare really made that quest.

omg this rush training might teach Dan proper movement and how to dodge!

Don't bet on it. The combat is obviously meant to be spamming the same combo for 30 hours(square(x4) into triangle) and then mashing triangle like your life depended on it when you're trying to do a heat move. Dodging is for dorks that actually know how to play video games.

Thank you Van Dan

Just a small tip, further north in the same street as the password vendor guy you did this episode, there's another NPC that you can talk to. (you actually passed him at least twice this episode)

Real estate game takes quite a while before becoming very profitable.... and you might consider this cheating, but looking up all the shops you can manage will be significantly less frustrating then trying to find them by one by one. There are 10 shops per area (listed in the "business" section of the pause menu) but no indication of where they are, so imo it's best just to look up an area map of all the properties (the real estate game isn't that fun anyway).

Finishing pocket racer takes a long time (especially "King of Speed" and the later other sub-stories) so good luck with that...

Miss Tatsu's training gets harder later on... so hopefully Dan learns to stop mashing (he completely missed in an instance and still did the full combo...) and block once in a while.... Also if you're not holding on to anything you'll start jogging in beast mode after a while.

It might be easier to do heat moves if you read up (triangle on the abilities screen) on what heat moves you can do with each style under what circumstance, you'll need a lot less guess work then.

After the discussion in the episode I googled "Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg". First thing I found was that Michael Jackson apparently spent $150,000 on a voodoo ritual intended to kill Steven Spielberg.

link: http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/04/leisure.jackson.reut/

Wait, you played two entire Yakuza games over the past week?

I just finished 0 between this episode and last, and it's taken me almost since this series began.

Shout-out to the Phoenix Wright series for teaching me this a long time ago.

Also, it's the title of my favorite Zazen Boys song.

oh god go find that kid with the sidequest IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

My obligatory AWWW YISSS

Setting up heat moves -- making the icon appear rather than just keeping an eye out for it -- is a skill that I hope Dan develops over the course of these games. I hope we're not simply at a road block here. There really aren't that many contexts for heat moves, so it's actually quite easy to get an instinct for it, but who knows...

There is so much that happens in each of these episodes. It's incredible.

Dan "Dick grabbing and Panther stuff" Ryckert.

I highly recommend looking up a map on where to buy real estate places. It's not cheating so much that it's a quality of life thing. All the places are unmarked and it's really easy to miss them. Why they aren't icon on the map is beyond me.

Sou desu ne, Stephen Spining, sou desu ne indeed

At 51:40...is Vinny co-opting lyrics by the Suburban All-Stars?! Or am I going crazy

@sonatar: My first thought was that "Read A Book" song, which Vinny and Jeff referenced way back in the day on some ER videos. Sure enough there's a very similar line in that. Vinny's version is just notably less dated.

It's possible Suburban All-Stars was inspired by that song, and included a gracious homage. Or, someone bit Suburban All-Stars' lyrics.

So desu ne

If they knew how to fight mr shakedown they'd have so much money to buy businesses. Shakedown is not hard with Kiryu if you get good at using Rush to build up heat and the swich to brawler to hit him with a heat move.