Beast in the East: Yakuza 0 - Part 18

Oh, it Yakuzin USA time.

Goddamn Mr. Libido is shredded! Is this what visualizing does to you?

MajimaMajimaMajima!!

Edit: Guys... GUYS... there's a back room to Club Sunshine. You can save your game there.

Nani?

I dont know if i should blame the localizers or the original writers for that sentence....

Why the fuck is dan saving 10k when he has 10 million?

That thumbnail... Oh no.

BEAST IN THE EAST BOI

It should not surprise anyone but Dan forgot the Alamo.

Great episode as always!

Wow that dancing

Shibusawa was the bookish-looking lieutenant with the glasses.

I really love GBeast stuff, and am grateful for the content. But there is a frequent audio issue with GBeast videos for me, where studio vocal sounds peak and distort (i.e. 16:32 - Dan, 18:26 - Dan, 19:44 - Vinny, etc in this video).

These distorted peaks happen in nearly every video and I think are caused by proximity to the mic voice coil. Close mic situations could be resolved for this by being off-axis or slightly further away (or both). It could also be that headroom on the mic pre-amp isn't sufficient, an impedance mis-match, or compression isn't being used effectively. I do hope someone spots this and makes the audio as good as the content already is.

Thanks for listening (and sorry to whine).

Just a reminder, you guys have tons of items to fill your heat bar taking up space in your inventory.

@alex@danryckert @vinny there was a hierarchy diagram posted/linked in the comments for an earlier episode of Beast in the East. Shout out to whoever posted it, but I can't remember & I just tried looking for it for 5 minutes. Luckily, I saved a copy so I could keep up.

This is a very good series.

I enjoy it very much.

Thank you for your time.

I remember going to a Maharajah in Tokyo, Japanese businessmen got some moves when they let loose.

I really hope someone teaches Dan how to perform the Essence of the Slugger Heat action, it's one of the best moves in the game and really easy to pull off (in Slugger style, when on your 3rd heat bar: Circle then Triangle)

Oh, and if you want to progress with the Mr. Libido quest you have to collect telephone cards.

I don't know really any Japanese from playing this but I just love how Kiryu says Tachibana.

Hot Tip: There's a door to the back room in Club Sunshine - you can save in there, but it's also worth visiting for a fun side mission.

Essence of the Slugger was definitely one of my favourite heat moves; picked it up early on and never looked back.

I just knew that would be a thumbnail if they encountered.

Edit:

@alex: This is Shibusawa. He's the third lieutenant Kiryu has issues with (after Kuze and Awano).

@danryckert: Volgin: "Remember the Alamo" :p

Few tips:

• You can save in the club (and going into that room can trigger some fun events)
• Majima can get the money throwing move (Location: busker directly outside the Grand; you've seen him a few times)
• Majima has a great singing voice ;) (Song suggestion: Rouge of Love)

• The shrine is right in the middle south Soutenbori (Dan spent a age looking at the map, but never hovered over the buildings or pulled up the list, so you guys missed it). You walked right by it at the end of the episode

• Buy an inventory full of the most expensive healing/Heat items - there are some tough fights coming up, and you get the money back in a single random encounter at this point, so buying the cheaper thing is pointless. You may as well get the Heat/health combo. items (difference in price is marginal), and you can always drop a couple if you need to inventory space.

Also, ice in wine sounds weird - certainly something I've never come across.

"Did he shave my mustache?" Dan Ryckert hahaha what.

I like Kiryu in this game because he is kind of a stiff I think he's funny in the silly parts. To me most of his story bits end up just being someone is about to take him down and he puts a whooping on them and they're like "are you even human?!?" and he walks away. And Beast is my favorite style in the game (a lot of fun moves).

Majima is really fun to play as too but I wanted to defend him there.

@alex I would support business episodes. You guys can really easily do Majima business episodes without much distraction at least because you are just in the Club. When I played, at some point I might take a break and let my girls recharge their energy but otherwise you can really sit down and play a lot of that at once (taking breaks to do the story missions where you go check out opposing clubs). But anyways I think at least you guys should do that one for a while. With the Kiryu side you have to do stuff like play Outrun and try to get a certain score. More things that pull you around the map and are also not nearly as fun to do.

But the Hostess Club super fun to play I think. You pick up more Platinum hostesses as you go along (with their fun interview stuff which is pretty well done I think) and some of the girls on the street end up being almost as useful (the Platinum hostesses are good at more things, but if you have a hostess great at one thing are you use them on the right customer base they can make just as much money).

Biffy may come from Biffs being the name brand on all the porta-potties i have seen.

The whole Bed of Styx part is so dumb hahah it seems like someone had an idea for a boat elevator moment and they needed a dumb gladiator part of the game and they just threw them together.

Also Gladius rules.

My heart aches for the fact that we wont get Beast in the East next week... this might be the first time in my life I've ever wanted to go lighter on E3 content and just give me more on a game thats already out.

Heres looking forward to Beast in the East's return in 2 weeks! Good work as always guys, you picked a hell of a game to do a playthru of.. the comedy, the action, the politics and intrigue, all works so well for this format.

Good Work. Making me sad that we are missing a week though :( lol

Take care and have a safe e3, GiantBomb

@thisisacooltag: It was me! Thanks for reposting.

I'm loving this feature, especially after the Shemnue run. It's always a blast with the energy you guys bring to these games.

As much as I'm enjoying the story the side quests and mini-games are the most entertaining bits imo, and would be totally fine with you guys rinsing them into oblivion.

ahhh, that nishitani scene is one of my favorite parts of the game. glad you guys finally got there!

Oh my god, Dan is actually dodging attacks instead of spamming Triangle? What in the world?

I love this video series, but I feel like I have to speak on this game's total nonsense before I explode.

@turbopubx16: I'm no expert in the story of this game, but a couple things I can contribute, at least. Anyone feel free to correct if I'm misrepresenting.

@turbopubx16: I think this game ratchets up drama but you just have to accept and get used to the hero managing to survive. There are multiple times in the game up to this point where someone is beaten by Kiryu and says "are you human!!?" I don't mean to excuse the criticism (to me I wish it was dialed back a bit) but to me it's Japanese drama and it can be fun still if you accept it.

To me it's reminiscent of DBZ. I think many games in general do it as well (Metal Gear Solid also comes to mind) but I think in Yakuza it is standing out to you because it is so dramatic. I think the games do a lot setting up guns and murder as huge for example but then you see some people gunned down and it's whatever, and later in the games you always go up against a bunch of guns.

You have to roll with it. At some point they take a secret elevator to an underground fighting coliseum. Metal Gear also has those moments where the DARPA chief or whoever is expositioning to you and you don't know why really but you just roll with it. It doesn't mean it is well crafted but it's a certain style I guess that for me still has charms. Personally I think the games get a little too much credit from some given the kind of issues you bring up but they are fun.

I also think the games open world stuff really clashes against the drama and urgency of the story. That can always be a big part of GTA or whatever other game but I do notice it a lot in Yakuza 0.

@turbopubx16: Some of the stuff I just think you have to accept because of the type of story it is. Kiryu and Majima can beat up dozens of guys and heal quickly because it`s a bug pulpy marshal art/crime fiction drama.

To some of your specific points I think there might be some stuff you have just missed since it seems you're experiencing this game through these videos:

That thumbnail makes me very worried.

While I do like the side story stuff I'm glad they moved the story forwards a bit. I am all in favor of teh business stuff being its own "break out" episodes.

I think when they get into the higher level Cabaret Club management where certain high level customer requested a certain girl ist becomes a bit more interesting because you have to switch girls out quickly enough to satisfy a high roller. Moreover, I like chatting with some of the other Platinum level girls more than Yuki, for whatever reason I loved Saki's voice and her backstory. I assume they will get as far as Saki from Club Jupiter and that will make me happy.

As always Yakuza is proving to be really fun to watch despite the fact i finished the game over a month ago. It might be too much to ask but I hope they play Yakuza Kiwami. I want them to 'get through' this game efficiently so that when Kiwami is released they feel the diving jump back into a Yakuza game.

Dan's getting pretty good at the combat! The one tip/reminder I'd give him this episode is that the bat can block knives, so it would've been a decent choice for the Nishitani fight. Nice to see him starting to get the hang of dodging though, it's an essential part of the combat in these games.

It`s really good to see Dan getting the hang of the combat and using the dodge more. It also seems like he is having more fun because of it.

I don`t really have too many tips for you guys this episode other than to restate that you guys have no reason to ever buy anything other than the best healing items (Staminan XX and toughness emperor). The cost of those items is so small that they might as well be free, so there is really no reason for you guys to not fill your inventory with hem. That way you won`t find yourself stuck on any fights later in the game.

On the subject of "diet" in the sense of "council", I always enjoyed the name of the Diet of Worms, a phrase in which neither of the nouns means what you think it does.

("Diet" as in "council" or "assembly", and "Worms" as in a city in Germany pronounced "vorms".)

Some tips for the Cabaret Club if you get into it:

- When looking at your hostesses roster, you can see the mood of the hostesses below their portrait. If they have green indifferent moods or lower, you might want to bench them for a round as they perform worse and might be absent the next session (overworked). They fully recover after not using them for one session.

- Yuki is your best hostess for now as she earns the most per customer (she's more expensive) and she has good stats, so she can pretty much take on most kinds of clients early-mid game. By mixing and matching her clothing/accessories, you can get her "looks" to 3 double circles and one cross. Since all items have pluses and minuses to stats, you want concentrate all the minuses on a single stat (say, "Sexy" for Yuki. But it can be anything if you look for the right combo).

- Any client who chooses to extend session will be automatically put into fever mode (best mood, no requests, throws out money every sec), so you almost always want to try to ask them extend session unless you feel you can get richer clientele or they are in a bad mood, in which giving them gifts will improve their satisfaction level.

- Activating fever mode puts a certain number of clients in fever, lvl1 puts 2 clients in fever, lvl2 puts 4 clients and lvl3 for everyone. Clients who are put in fever mode are also immediately put into the best possible mood, so even if you have a client with a red angry face, if he gets put into fever mode, he's mood will flip to the best mood (Very useful when you have very picky clients later in the game). In addition, fever mode restores some of your hostesses HP when activated (important during some club battles).

- Once in fever, they can no longer be asked to extend the session, so the best way maximize this mode is to is to fever freshly arrived clients as they will stay in fever the longest. You also obviously want to fever clients who take long sessions or clients who are richer, but its tricky since it's random (you can manipulate who you put in fever by waiting for other clients to leave or to extending sessions). WAIT FOR THE CLIENT TO SIT DOWN AND START TALKING BEFORE ACTIVATING FEVER, as they won't get hit by fever if they aren't settled in yet.

- Also, stop being such a miser! Expensive gifts for fevered clients help you earn fans quicker (in turn giving you richer and more frequent clients), giving gifts to the girls help them regain HP (important for some club battles). In the early game, as long as it's not a club battle, your goal shouldn't be to earn money but to level your hostesses up and gain more fans.

Hope you get to the end of this mini-game (it's pretty long) as I'm pretty sure you'd be happy with the reward (other then being able to earn 120-130mil per session, which tbh isn't much).

They need to have a B game of the year award this year

|Alex really needs to give it a rest with the side stuff and just them push the story forward.

You've already seen so many of the side stories, and 2 hour long episodes about the real estate clicker and the hostess club are worse then fusing episodes. You're digging for copper in a gold mine at this point

Gotta say I got through this game and found myself much more a fan of Kiryu than Majima. Though Majima is cool, I don't know, it's a bit tough to hear the overwhelming "he's so much better" talk, especially when Dan's reasoning is that Kiryu is a dope .....Dan..... In any case, the sub episodes would be cool but man, if they intend on doing all of them to completion it could take awhile. Lastly, I've always heard it pronounced as "DEE-it". Took a college course on Japan and that's what was said there...idk. Looking forward to more!

Just any FYI guys, if you do that next majima mission you're going right back to kiryu.

I like how every time Dan is about to run into something cool @vinny and @alex make him stop to go the other direction. Like several times they had him turn around before seeing/talking to the guy playing the guitar outside of The Grand.

Majima time? Yeaaaah, buddy.

Im still waiting for the return of the awesome slot car racing!

@nervesnormal: Dude almost this entire episode was story stuff.

Haha, yeah, more than anything the one the I don't really get is the stinginess with money when it comes to the healing items, and on top of that the reluctance to use the ones that'll heal up the whole way or even refill the heat bar. I never carried anything in my inventory except Staminan XX and I popped them like candy when I needed to since they were so dirt cheap compared to what you earn. But hey, they've had no trouble up to now, so I guess it doesn't really matter. It's just something I found pretty funny when I saw Dan pinching pennies at the drug store while rolling with 50 million yen.

Man, I feel like they could put out a game that was just the parts related to the cabaret club and I'd play that. Set in the pretend Japanese 80's, of course.

Boy, this game sure took a real hard turn towards the third arc of Kaiji, huh!