Beast in the East: Yakuza 0 - Part 13

Woohoo

Yes! Majima's spiritual daddy!

Oh, this nutbar!! How far we're coming.

I just beat the game last week and I can't wait till they find more of the awesome stuff in this game.

I am very excited for this episode's antics! Nishitani is one heck of a character. In my own personal Yakuza adventure, I decided to give Mahjong "one quick shot" before finishing the game earlier this week - hours later I am now watching 'World Series of Mahjong' videos. This game is truly a land of opportunity.

EDIT: Just one suggestion coming outta this episode - instead of spending all your money on small incremental upgrades to your health, just buy 5-10 healing drinks (Toughness Emperor or Staminan Royale) from the drugstore for a few thousand yen and spend the big bucks on damage upgrades instead. It's rare that you'll need a huge health bar when you can just heal multiple times during any encounter.

@alex@danryckert@vinnyQuick Real Estate Guide:

One final note on Miss Tatsu, the Beast trainer, which had me confused for a while: she operates slightly differently from other trainers - regardless of your upgrade level, you always need to complete two more of her training challenges to unlock the next mission (which awards new moves). You can block gunshots while holding the crates, too - which will also help to break them and get enough money. The red crates are the most valuable, once they start to show up.

Time for some Beast in the Yeast!

Beat the story last Tuesday and I really can't wait for what is coming up. Also so hyped for Kiwami now.

These videos are the best on the site each week. West need a series to dig in to.

That knife heat move that they do on each other? That's actually a variation on Majima's normal heat move with any bladed weapon, it's just that they're both trying to do it at the same time against each other, so it's pretty awesome.

Oh man, they keep walking right past it everytime, such a tease. There's a good chance they're never going to find that substory, and that's really sad.

I just finished the game last night...there is going to be a lot of Dan's 'cool guy' moments coming up. I cannot wait to see how they react to some of the end game story.

This is one of the best games I have played in a long time, the story was great and the sense of humour fit my absurd tastes. I am so happy this is doing so well.

It's funny how thanks to this game the guys are such huge fans of Majima, while if you play this game in release order Kiryu was this complete badass and Majima was kind of an annoying lunatic I really disliked fighting.

@vinny The audio distorts a bit (i.e. @ 22:59). Sorry for nagging, but could you move the mics further back, since these audio peaks are fairly common with GBeast vids. Thanks for noticing!

@vinny@alex@danryckert Here's my little guide to running the Real Estate.

Ignore the Staff and Store list. They are just lists showing you what stuff you got.

To make money you'll need stores. Go out into the world and visit the different stores in the district you are looking to buy in. They aren't highlighted on any map so you'll really just need to walk by stores and see if the X prompt appears to buy the store.

Press X on a district to manage it. There's 2 things you can do (switch between them with L1 and R1)

1) Assign advisers to stores.

Press X on a store to assign an adviser. You can only assign 1 adviser per store. Each adviser has skills in different areas and each store has a 'type'. Try to select advisers with double circles in the type of store you are selecting for. This will upgrade the store and eventually level it up so it earns you more cash. You can only assign one adviser per store per 'collection'. Collect money on the district and you can re-assign advisers.

2) Assign a manager and security to the district.

Managers make sure your stores won't get stolen by your rivals and will increase the total profits from a district. Security will stop 'trouble' from happening, if trouble occurs you'll have to solve it yourself. Also your security guy will help you in fights in that district and do cool wrestling moves with you.
The longer you keep security and managers on the same district the lower their effectiveness gets. Switch them out every once in a while.

You'll also REALLY want to go to a shrine and buy ALL the business upgrades; they will make it so your businesses will make money a lot faster.

The beasts killing it again! Vinny, Alex and Dan truly are a dream team. Look forward to the two new starters in the West. It will give Rorie a chance to go back and do what he does best.

There goes the possibility of cabaret club streams... For now at least.

Anyways, DNA testing wasn't feasible in criminal cases until the mid 90s, DNA sequencing was way too time consuming and expensive in the 80s.

Mr. Libido now gives you tips on where to find events that will add new videos to the video place.

You get more businesses for the real estate management by physically going to them on the street, and you'll get a prompt to buy them. You can also get a few for free (like the convenience store nearby the office) by befriending the staff. Outside the free ones though, these business aren't active in the game - you can't interact with them in any way beyond buying them and they aren't marked on the map.

If you go to where it says start collections and press X, you get two tabs. One is for using advisers to improve you properties, the other is for assigning staff. You can only do this before you start collections.

For staff, the managers and security folks have two ratings (one of which will vary according to how long they've been assigned to this area.) For managers they protect your properties from takeovers by the Kings, and can give boosts to you income. Security staff will reduce the number of "incidents" (you need to beat up some guys before you collect money again) and decrease number of random enemy encounters on the street.

For Miss Tatsu's training you need to both destroy all the mannequins within the time limit, and destroy enough boxes to hit the money target. Blocking while wielding a crate helps against the ones with guns. As you probably suspect, once you've complete a few training sessions she'll offer you job which is where you learn the new moves.

And dammit, now I'm going to have to start badgering you guys to buy a mandarin orange for Kiryu. Because while it's not that Majima cannot benefit from this delicious and nutritious fruit, it is even better suited for Kiryu!

I'm pretty sure for most of us "veterans" of the Yakuza series, our hearts collectively sunk a little when Vinny said "you hardly ever Quick Step.." when they were going through the ability tree.

"Are you the Joker?"

Well... kind of...

Not a big deal but this supposedly all took place over a few days (Majima had three days to kill Makoto if I remember). Not weeks, time only progresses when you do story stuff. So its supposed to actually be a pretty short timeline

Alex said they'd do longer episodes after doing a 90-100 minute one on but aside from #10 where they were couldn't save, they've all been that length ever since :(

Great, the knife vs bat argument.

Kiryu is just adorable with that radio. He gets so excited.

Just a tip for the Beast training: When I had to deal with a gun mannequin, I would attack once and then immediately guard while holding a box. This would bait out a gunshot, and then I'd be free to wail on the mannequin until the box or dummy broke. Also, always go for the higher value boxes.

Good Viper reference by Alex. Loved it.

Great episode,somebody please point em to the magic substory with kiryu.

It's too good to just let sit on the side.

@alex@danryckert@vinny

And talk to the two guys there........

Also don't forget to bowl

OK brief real estate management tips:

* You buy stuff by actually going to the shops in the area and purchasing them. They can be expensive but it's worth it.

* In Real Estate management screens you can invest in those 'C' rated properties you have to improve them, and the more you do that, the better return they'll give you. Generally try to invest in as many properties as possible, you can do it once per property, per round of collections

* The security/management ratings are from left to right how their effectiveness changes over time when you keep them in the same spot. It's a good idea to switch managers before they start becoming ineffective.

* This mini game is a good way to make a LOT of money, if you put a little time into it, but you don't need to think about it too hard. Just buy properties, invest in them every time you run the minigame, and try to swap out staff when they're becoming ineffective.

Crossing the halfway mark on the game with this episode, lots of cool dude stuff coming up for Kiryu and Majima still.

Another great episode!

You guys should probably just fill up your inventory with the best healing items (staminan infinite or xx and toughness emperor) they cost so little they might as well be free and the game gives you the ability to switch out items or send them to the item box if you pick up anything when your inventory is full, so there is no reason to have more than a couple of empty spaces really.

Edit: And now that you guys are back in Tokyo you should check out the telephone club in the south east corner of town.

Another intense episode; lots going on. Never a dull moment in the lives of Majima and Kiryu.

@loktarogar said:

Yeah, that's been a bit disappointing.

Ah, my favorite way to put off doing work on Monday mornings.

I have not watched it, but if Nishitani is in there that is very exciting.

You guys did way better against Nishitani than I did. His high evasion dragged out the fight for a long time. Maybe I should've used the slime gun! :P

The story does not slow down much from here. Hope you're strapped in!

EDIT: Oh, also, now that you're back with Kiryu, I'd recommend checking out the telephone club (southeast part of the map)! It's weird as hell, and it's worth seeing at least once.

Who was the genius that called the guy a piece of work and not a handful?

Max Payne's Orangen story.

This is your fault, Alex.

A suggestion for buying businesses, if it gets to tedious walking around trying to find each business there are maps online that show the location of the businesses. Its not much of a problem early on but can get quite annoying later.

From Alex and Dan's reaction to the Nashitani fight, unlocking Majima's fourth style would be right up their alley.

Edit: All this stuff is so insignificant as regards to price.... and buys two of the middle tier items. At this point, there's no reason not to roll around with an inventory full of the top-tier health/heat items.

@danryckert I know the menus can be overwhelming (especially for the businesses), but try to take a second and look around the screen, since there's almost always button prompts that tell you what you can do on a given menu. Like on the real estate Pleasure King district menu, you'd see that you can go into each business to invest in them (upgrade their return) like others above have explained. Hopefully a helpful tip for the future, keep up the yakuzin'.

@cloudymusic said:

Yeah, I now wish I'd taken Dan's tack and used a shotgun or something, because fighting Nishitani straight-up was super annoying. Gotta remember that for future bosses.

Also seconding a telephone club visit with Kiryu - I've been waiting for that since the beginning.

I just realized Lee is wearing an authentic Alpha industries parka bomber jacket, tags and all. That's pretty cool detail there!

Jesus Christ, that knife kick was the shit!

I love how big dudes in these series always wear that same damn jacket. Saejima and Lee both have the same taste, it seems.

Also Dan good work so far on the combat! I'd recommend going back to the drug store, but this time buying the best healing. You're only saving 5k~ by choosing the one you did over the better option. Hell you could even spring for the drastic restore that gives health and heat and get your money back after one random fight.

@i_speel_my_dreenk: I used the breaker style for Nishitani and pretty much every Majima boss fight. Enemies can`t dodge it and can`t get room to attack you without you hitting them. It kinda trivialized combat with Majima for most of the game.

Please make sure you go here. You missed it when it was introduced in the story and then never got back to it.

Its wrestling and you can earn alot of money there.

You should consider going there before continuing the story next time.

@alex@vinny@danryckert

Just think of this from Makoto's standpoint. Has be goddam terrifying.

that Adachi voice tho

Common thread:

Tutorial for game system pops up

Dan says "oh boy"

They don't read it

Time passes

Call system inscrutable

I know the once a week format doesn't lend itself to retaining stuff, but I'd recommend putting in 15 minutes of reading (from a guide, not just bits and pieces from comments) off camera on whatever systems and mini games you might not have a good grasp of.

Man, you keep forgetting more of the game's systems from week to week. I really like the videos, but this is clearly not a game you should play once a week for two hours.

It really makes me wonder how they're going to react to future Majima. Existing fans come into this already knowing what he's like, so expectations are already in place, but with them gravitating so much to this particular version of Majima I have to wonder if they're going to be disappointed by his radical change.

FYI: Visit the Kazama family office (near the save point on Tenkaichi street) when y'all want to move forward with the plot.

@zeik: if anything I'm actually really curious as to what is going to bring about this dramatic shift from what is now a rogue with a heart of gold to what he essentially ends up being.

I imagine it will have to be something heart wrenching.