My progress has literally been soft locked.

[grail666]

The game claims that any of the three broad paths gives you everything you need to complete the game. After 20+ hours I can tell you that that is not true. My progress is soft locked because I can't get anymore GPP to unlock new abilities.

I have to beat the Ghost of Sneaker Prime and Chappie. Both utterly counter my Agility build and I can't farm GPP from any of the other fighters (Harold and Kumar) because their builds utterly counter my build too. I don't have access to the other fighters in the division because I've challenged them too many times and I can't set up any more fights with them. I'm also going Sensei path so there's no getting GPP from the police job.

There is literally no way to beat the game now without restarting from the beginning, and quite frankly: 1) this game is not that good of a game for me to want to dump another 20+ hours into it; 2) It's absolutely terrible game design to cripple the player in this way.

No, I don't care that others didn't have this problem. Good for you if you were able to find a way through the game. But I am locked out of completion because of these issues.

So far I haven't done any save scumming, but I'm going to have to try that to see if the RNG will favour me enough that I can eek out a win somewhere and hope that's enough for me to progress. These are an absolute down vote and negative review from me. You are wasting my time and money by making the game like this. Yes, I want yo be challenged. No, soft locking is not a challenge.

If anyone has constructive feedback on how to progress, please share. If not, don't respond (although I know you will because there's no such thing as a mature adult on the Steam forums).

[Mortimer]

I don't know your current Stats but make sure your Stamina is at least 2-3 Levels above your Agility. (No matter your Build, Stamina should always be your highest Stat.)

Then you swap your Dodge-Skills for a Block. (Basic one is fine)
You could double up on this by taking either the Basic-School or Arrrkido from Bobo.
(If you have at least 1 Basic Move like low-kick for it)
Stamina does not only determines your Max.-Energy and Energy-Regen, Stamina also determines your Chance to Block as well as your Damage-Reduction from Block to a certain degree.
(It may also increase your HP, but not as much as Strenght does. Can't confirm for sure.)

As you didn't mention it in your posts before I'm going to ask:
Did you use Buffs for the Fight? If so, have you tried swapping or stacking Buffs?
As the Battle-Trance gives you +15HP back every Round and reduces the Damage you take by 10%.
The Melange gives you +25 Energy back every Round and increases your chance to block by 10%.

Originally posted by grail666:

Yeah, man, I know I don't have to win every fight. And no you can't just fight anyone else. At a certain point you can no longer fight them.

Not true. Your Opponents are based on your current GPP-Total.
If you want to fight easier Opponents again to farm more GPP & Money, you need to lose GPP-Total.
1) Either Fight an "impossible" fight and hack it, so you lose way more GPP on defeat...
2) Or sign for a fight (higher or lower) and don't participate in the Fight. You'll lose a lot of GPP-Total for not showing up to a fight.

You can do the 2) whilst you train your stats. And work your way towards the Victory.
If I might suggest some cheap talents to pick up once you're able to gain GPP again to make Opponents like "Very Braveheart" even easier are the Basic-School-Stamina Line:
Esp. "Shovel Hook" + "Hard Block" + "Agressive Scream". You can also take "Break Rythm" as it is a good Modifier to use in any build of the Game.

In this Game it is impossible to Softlock yourself, unless you encounter a Bug where you got stuck in a Cutscene for example.
Just because you can't figure out how the mechanics work and how to get yourself out of a situation, doesn't mean that's the Game's fault.
You've been spamming this Discussion Forum with numerous posts regarding the same Topic, as for you it seems like raging is easier then studying.

These Tips should get you out of your Situation 100%.

Cheers

[Yo]

Stamina should not be your highest stat, highest one should always be your main stat so you can unlock later skills in the tree as fast as you can

[MoreEvilSquid]

Originally posted by Mortimer:

I don't know your current Stats but make sure your Stamina is at least 2-3 Levels above your Agility. (No matter your Build, Stamina should always be your highest Stat.)

Then you swap your Dodge-Skills for a Block. (Basic one is fine)
You could double up on this by taking either the Basic-School or Arrrkido from Bobo.
(If you have at least 1 Basic Move like low-kick for it)
Stamina does not only determines your Max.-Energy and Energy-Regen, Stamina also determines your Chance to Block as well as your Damage-Reduction from Block to a certain degree.
(It may also increase your HP, but not as much as Strenght does. Can't confirm for sure.)

As you didn't mention it in your posts before I'm going to ask:
Did you use Buffs for the Fight? If so, have you tried swapping or stacking Buffs?
As the Battle-Trance gives you +15HP back every Round and reduces the Damage you take by 10%.
The Melange gives you +25 Energy back every Round and increases your chance to block by 10%.

Originally posted by grail666:

Yeah, man, I know I don't have to win every fight. And no you can't just fight anyone else. At a certain point you can no longer fight them.

Not true. Your Opponents are based on your current GPP-Total.
If you want to fight easier Opponents again to farm more GPP & Money, you need to lose GPP-Total.
1) Either Fight an "impossible" fight and hack it, so you lose way more GPP on defeat...
2) Or sign for a fight (higher or lower) and don't participate in the Fight. You'll lose a lot of GPP-Total for not showing up to a fight.

I think he's saying he's currently at the rock-bottom of the ladder and so he has to fight them?

Which is not entirely true of course since in the pro leagues you always have a choice of 2-4 fighters. Sure all of them will now cost money to fight (the higher ones more so), but at this point in the game money stops being a concern anyway.

[MoreEvilSquid]

Originally posted by Yo:

Stamina should not be your highest stat, highest one should always be your main stat so you can unlock later skills in the tree as fast as you can

True - personally the only time stamina was my highest stat was when I was going stamina focus.

That said, higher stamina is definitely always better (and unlike strength there is zero downside to high stamina). Apart from the fact that having way more stamina than you will ever use in any fight is a waste of training...

But yes, there's definitely no need to go nuts - if you start to run out of stamina after one round then adjust your moves so that you run out slower or regain some next round.

[Mortimer]

Originally posted by MoreEvilSquid:

But yes, there's definitely no need to go nuts - if you start to run out of stamina after one round then adjust your moves so that you run out slower or regain some next round.

Having Stamina up to 2-3 Levels above your Main-Stat makes every Fight significantly easier.
You can get away with 2-3 Levels below your Main-Stat, but if you differ more, the harder the Game gets.
I like to be an "active" Fighter. I want to drive my Opponent towards the Rope, drown his Energy and beat him up as fast as possible.
If you run out of Energy, or about to run out, you need to swap in weaker Skills and Recovery-Skills, preferably ones not using Tonus
-> That's leading you to become a "reactive" Fighter instead. At this Moment you'll have increased the Chance of losing by a lot. Unless your recovery was so strong that you can change back to full Power-Mode the turn after.
But in most Fights where the odds are quite even, I began to struggle (and often lose), once I lost my Momentum and became only reactive.

(Unless you play a Tortoise-Build, which is based on "reactive" fighting. But in this case we're talking about an Agility-Build forced to reactive fighting.)

[Yo]

The optimal strategy and fastest way to beat the game is to pump your main stat as high as you can while keeping up with the other two stats, and for agi path you never want to go above 7 str and you want stamina around half your main stat, any higher and you're wasting time cuz you could be training your main stat aka agi instead

I haven't played path of bear or path of turtle but for bear you might want to leave agi behind and focus more on stamina than on agi, after str of course. But not more than half than str or else you're just wasting time

[Yo]

So for Agi build you want

Agi - as high as possible
Sta - around 1/2 of agi
Str - 7

For Str build you want

Str - as high as possible
Sta - around 1/2 of str
Agi - not sure, having more initiative can recover more energy due to more turns so perhaps levelling more is good, but not more than stamina

And for stamina build i'm not sure since i never played it

[Mortimer]

Originally posted by Yo:

I haven't played path of bear or path of turtle but for bear you might want to leave agi behind and focus more on stamina than on agi, after str of course. But not more than half than str or else you're just wasting time

Well, I have beaten the Game with all 3 Styles.
- Bear with 95% Achievements in ~144days, with ~14.700$ at 31/18/33
- Monkey with the remaining 5% Achievements in ~138days ~6.600$ at 9/31/31
- Tortoise within ~103days with ~5.600$ at 9/21/34

Could you beat the Game faster? Sub 100 days? Probably. But there's no inted to. No Achievements. So, yeah, I needed ~11hrs per playthrough and it was pretty chill.
Now waiting for the DLC to be announced.

[MoreEvilSquid]

Originally posted by Mortimer:

Originally posted by Yo:

I haven't played path of bear or path of turtle but for bear you might want to leave agi behind and focus more on stamina than on agi, after str of course. But not more than half than str or else you're just wasting time

Well, I have beaten the Game with all 3 Styles.
- Bear with 95% Achievements in ~144days, with ~14.700$ at 31/18/33
- Monkey with the remaining 5% Achievements in ~138days ~6.600$ at 9/31/31
- Tortoise within ~103days with ~5.600$ at 9/21/34

Could you beat the Game faster? Sub 100 days? Probably. But there's no inted to. No Achievements. So, yeah, I needed ~11hrs per playthrough and it was pretty chill.
Now waiting for the DLC to be announced.

Strangely enough, my first run through, using Monkey, my stats were (Str/Agi/Sta: 13/33/15) at the point I won the last div 1 fight, day 145.

I lost a few fights here and there - a couple of them even more than once - and some other fights I won by a hair's breadth, so it definitely wasn't the most optimum run imaginable. There were a few times where I succeeded only after buffing my stats a level or two (whether stamina or strength - agility was always my focus so only buffed the others when they got too low).

While stamina is definitely more important than strength for agility and strength can be a hindrance on top of that, I found a few times the extra health it gives you helping me more than the extra energy usage was hindering me (that's the prime reason to buff strength for agility build - the health). That and there's a lot of stuff in the agi tree that helps with regaining stamina and/or not losing it too much, and I found that running out of stamina isn't an issue if you can knock the opponent out before it happens. ;)

Also, the buffs you get from the "special" drink you get from the various employers can make a big difference, especially the one suited to your fighting style. Sakura Tears made the difference for me in a couple of the tougher battles.

[yutterh]

You can beat him with an agility build and with cobra. what are your stats and have you unlocked 1000 and 1 winds and phantom? I'm using cobra and I have a pretty good dodge chance. definitely need more info on your stat build and what moves you have unlocked.

edit: Looking at the fighters, if very brave heart is your highest opponent you can reach and others are counters, you should go after trendy man as he does not counter dodges. if you can choose someone above braveheart then go for Preez as she doesn't have any counters to dodge either.

My attack set up with cobra is as follows

high kick / high kick / Qi concentration
1000 and 1 winds x 4
dance / fake move / phantom / typhoon

I am at 4057 GPP during this run and my current stats are

str - 8
agi - 31
sta - 26