Just a few small hints to make your playthrough shine without giving anything away specifically related to plot or story.

* At three points in the game, you are presented with some kind of challenge dungeon. Do it once, maybe twice, before hitting your next story objective.

* When you get the ability to change jobs, switch Ichiban to the "Foreman" job for an overworld skill unlock that will come in handy. This is easy to miss. Look for boarded up buildings in the bottom left of the map; a key way to get items is hidden here and never explained.

* At one point, a party member will leave for an extended period. If you don't want to spend a ton on items, switch a character in your party into a job that can pick up the slack.

* Adachi's Enforcer job is probably better than his default one overall. Consider switching when you can, or it'll take a ton of grinding effort to switch later.

* The dudes that look like Jesus and don't take damage are just like Metal Slime from Dragon Quest. Tons of defense; drop them quicker with multi-hit attacks.

* Bosses that are resistant to status conditions may still have one inflicted by a more powerful summon, which have higher success rates.

* Raise bond level with existing characters as soon as you can, so that when you get new party members, the out of use ones don't fall behind.

* At some point you will get access to planting veggies to make bento. Having these on hand for the final encounters makes them much easier to tolerate.

Thanks for this, it's really useful advice. I'm like 15 hours in and feel like I've barely scraped the surface of things you can do.

Buy a rocket launcher when you get to Chapter 12, the difficulty takes a massive leap up in the air with the end game bosses.

A few more hints

There is a missable party character if you dont do the management minigame.

Once you switch to foreman you can immediately switch jobs back you dont need to actually be the foreman job to use the skill.

The gambler characters for one of the part time hero missions are a rare spawn along the river near korea town. Im adding this one because it took me forever to find them since they are a rarespawn and you need 10.

* You can heal your party via skills while out in the world. You can do it manually via the Skills menu, or just hit the auto-heal button (prompt shows at bottom right of screen in the pause menu).

* You can auto-recover all your employees in a similar fashion.

*Tag out! During battle, you can use the Etc->Tag Out command to swap out any character in your party -- even if it's not their turn and EVEN if they are knocked out!

* Unlock Kasuga's "Peerless Resolve" skill in the Hero job (it remains available across jobs once it's unlocked). Using it heals Kasuga a little but more importantly allows him to resist the next fatal blow, which is super helpful in long fights against bosses that can one-shot Kasuga right into a game over.

So this is sort of inherently obvious but something that as someone who has played all of Yakuza and had ingrained ideas about Yakuza suddenly realized..

Don't forget for too long that it's a JRPG now and actually visit equipment shops.

Just to point out, the game seems to be balanced for 3 characters at that point, so getting an extra character in your party will greatly reduce the difficulty until new story-based party members start to show up.

You have to interact with the taxis in order to unlock them as fast travel spots, for some reason I must have missed this and wondered why I could never fast travel anywhere 😅

@tunnelman said:

That is a pretty good one. I also didn't notice it until I read it on a loading screen.

If you are unsure whether a fast travel spot is unlocked or not, you can see it while walking around town. The unlocked ones appear in the minimap... so, if you walk near a cab and it does shows as an icon, talk to it...

@doomocrat said:

Fuck this game. I went to do the first dungeon over again even though I found it really boring the first time. Died on the last encounter before being able to save and lost an hour of progress. I mean this game is great, but also fuck this game.

@hermes: It's actually surprisingly problematic that the loading screens go by too quickly to be readable on the Series X. I haven't been able to read a single hint from them.

@trh5001: Another note on the gambler enemy type that you need for a part-time hero quest. If you are feeling like throwing in the towel on getting them to spawn in the city, and you have a lot of time to kill, you can dip into the dungeon and you'll fight one. Repeat 9 times to complete the quest.

Thought about making a new thread, but saw this and decided to ask the question here. What’s the real benefit of switching jobs? Right now my Ichiban is at Level 9 in Hero. If I switch jobs, his stats take a pretty decent hit. Do you get permanent stat bonuses or skills by switching jobs and hitting those level milestones? Is the leveling curve really fast when you start a new job? Also it looks like you can hit level 99 with every job, so there doesn’t seem to be an issue with hitting the max too early. Should I get the character and job skills for each job and then switch?

I’m enjoying the Hero class and the other party members seem pretty good so far, so I’m not sure why I would ever switch.

@clagnaught: You get cross class skill unlocks, and some of those skills are very useful. For instance, the Host ice bucket move is cross class and one of the few water elemental skills in the game.

Also, if you do the construction job you unlock an out of battle cross class ability to break barriers (though it's only used a handful of times)

@clagnaught: There are two skills in each class that can be used regardless of class once you unlock them. You can tell which skills they are because the circle next to them on the class select screen will be a little more red then the others (it is really hard to see on my tv, but I can tell the difference after scrolling through a couple times). I've switched classes in order to get a certain skill on a certain character, such as getting all three elemental types on Nanba or getting a defensive buff on Ichi. You can also wait to do this until later in the game if you want. I didn't start doing it until Chapter 11ish and a character would level up their jobs extremely fast.

Even though each class goes up to level 99, the game considers a class complete at level 30 (two different achievements related to maxing out classes that unlock around level 30 or 35) since you don't unlock anymore usable skills. Not sure if this is their way of saying that it is diminishing returns, but it's something to keep in mind. Also there are Part Time Hero missions related to defeating enemies with Ichiban in certain classes. I personally just switched him to a different class while doing side stories, and then switched him back to Hero before doing a main quest.

Also make sure you switch someone to the Idol class.

Not to resurrect an old thread but this seems like a good place to ask: Do I really have to do the management sim mini game stuff to be able to afford stuff I need/will probably find incredibly helpful in the late game? I've been looking around the internet to see if this is indeed the case and though nobody is saying it's absolutely crucial, nobody is saying it's ok to skip it. But I've played enough of it to know that I will not be playing any more of it and if it's going to become a thing later, I'm just gonna quit playing the whole game now. I guess it doesn't help that I'm already not loving how long I've been playing it and I'm not even halfway through the story but I do like it enough to keep playing as long as it doesn't become more of a slog than it is around chapter 6.

@youeightit: There is one point in the story where you need 3 million yen to be able to proceed. You don't necessarily have to do the management mini-game to get that cash, but it is a pretty good option. There are a few side quests that reward a lot of money and a few expensive items you can sell for a lot if you need an alternative.

Aside from that, I'd say you're fine as long as you play enough of it to unlock Eri as a party member.

@chaser324: Hmm ok. Thanks!

@youeightit: poker is the fastest way I found to earn hight amount of cash.

all you need is to earn your first million yen and play at the vip table which requires 1 million yen for entry.

just remember to save before hand!

@giant_gamer: ok great, thanks!