Yakuza Kiwami - Fighting Tips & Tricks

Tips & tricks to help battles go smoother in Yakuza Kiwami.

The Basics

First off, in every fight you wanna make sure you defend yourself well! Don't just rush into fights arms swinging or you'll get your butt whooped. Defend and attack when it's safe. If you're blocking but the enemy can break through your blocks easily, then don't block and switch to an evasion defense strategy by running or using rush style evasion.

Also, always fill up your inventory with healing items!

Chapters 1-3

For these chapters, there aren't many side quests to gain experience points from, so just do all the side quests available and do your best with the skills you can acquire. Make sure you buy lots of food or healing items, you'll need them!

Get to know the Fighting Styles
Brawler style is great for blocking and attacking.
Rush style is great for evading and when your opponent can easily break through your blocks.
Beast style is great when there are lots of objects lying around. (Kiryu automatically picks up the nearest objects when pressing the attack button and swings them at enemies.)

Chapters 4 onward

This is the chapter where many sidequests begin to open up, so you can begin to gain more experience and get much more powerful. Do as many sidequests as you can and also make sure to do the Majima Everywhere quests. Not only does beating him give you a ton of experience, but this is the only way to develop the Dragon style.

FIGHTING TIPS & TRICKS

Here are my best fighting tips & tricks for Yakuza Kiwami

Use your CP to buy armor from Bob Utsunomiya (The clown dude)

You will be able to get some powerful items from this guy that will make your life a lot easier. Most notably are items like Trouble Finder (Shows where sidequests are on the map) and most importantly Yakuza Training Gear, Dragon Binding, and Dragon Mail which will increase your defenses dramatically, allowing you take less damage and survive longer in fights.

If your not a fan of grinding, don't worry, I was able to get these items just playing the game normally and doing side quests without worrying too much about CP.

You can find Bob at Tenkaichi Gate.

Learn the Essence abilities!

These are called 'Heat Actions' and can be used when the heat bar is filled up a certain amount. Not only do these moves look cool, but they are unblockable! This is a great way to do damage to enemies, especially bosses! (Some heat actions may be difficult to perform on some bosses so find the ones that work in each situation!)

Charge your heat gauge by playing defensively and fight using heat actions!

Learn the abilities 'Black Tortoise Spirit' and 'Swallow Spirit' from the Soul skill tree and 'Extra Quickstep Distance' from the Body skill tree as soon as you can. These abilities allow you to quickly build up heat while you defend and evade, allowing you to unleash unblockable heat actions repeatedly all the while keeping yourself safe from harm. Very useful for boss fights!

To charge your heat gauge while defending, you can either block attacks in brawler style, or if that doesn't work quickstep evade enemy attacks in rush style. If you do this successfully and avoid getting hit you should be able to build up your heat gauge quickly. Then just use a heat action and then rinse and repeat. You will do more damage if you use a variety of different heat actions instead of the same one repeatedly.

Tip: Blocking in Brawler Style only charges the Heat Gauge, but you can quickstep evade enemy attacks in Rush Style if you want to charge the Climax Heat Gauge!

Always carry items that raise heat energy for when you fight bosses

Keep a handful of heat increasing items like Tauriner ++ handy in your inventory for whenever you face bosses, or Majima. That way, whenever a boss begins to glow and recharge his health, you'll be ready to stop it whenever. I always carry 4-7 of them, and fill up the rest of my inventory with healing items.

Use weapons for extra Heat Action options.

I don't normally like to use weapons because durability goes down too easily, but you can use weapons to perform heat actions easily with certain weapons and it only costs 1 durabilty per heat action! The reason it's good to bring weapons is because weapons add more options for heat actions. If you keep using the same heat action on an enemy more than once you'll deal less damage.

Some notable weapons with easy heat actions are:
Bat (enemy must not be attacking to activate)
Knife (Heat action when using any style other than Dragon Style)
Knife (Dragon style heat action once you learn 'Essence of Mad Dog: Dagger' from Majima.)
Katana (Dragon Style Heat Action. Must learn 'Komaki Swordsmanship' in Chapter 6.
Kali/ Dragon Sticks (Dragon Style Heat Action. Must learn 'Kali Stick Mastery' from Majima. Enemy must not be attacking.)
Umbrella
Blackjack
There may be more, but these are just the ones I used. Some weapon's heat actions are stronger and some are weaker.

Use your environment for extra Heat Action options

There are some heat actions which can be performed using your environment.
Remember, your heat bar must be filled a certain amount to do a heat action.

Wall Grab an opponent and perform a heat action near a wall.
Cars Grab an opponent and perform a heat action near a car.
Trash cans Perform a heat action while holding a trash can.
Etc. Try out different things!

General tips when fighting large groups of enemies

When facing groups of enemies, they will usually attack you one at a time. Block one enemy's attacks then immediately combo attack someone other than the person who just attacked you. This is because the person that just attacked you will usually not attack again right away after just attacking, so you can know your safe from that one guy for a little bit while your pummeling someone else.

When facing really really large groups of enemies, try your best to defend and evade while fighting but also try running around if things get too hectic. Of course make sure there are never enemies behind you.

Also, if you ever want to avoid using a heat action, like for example kicking someone on the ground who has 1 hp, just hold the left trigger before pressing the 'strong attack' button.

Keep an eye out for useful items/ rewards in shops, etc.!

There are lots of equipment in this game that will give you lots of advantages, keep an eye out for them and make sure you grab them if you think it's useful. Shops also add new items in certain chapters, so check them out once in a while.

How to stop bosses recharging health

Make sure you learn the essence of extreme abilities as early as you can. You can use these heat actions when bosses glow a certain color to prevent them from regaining health. Just switch to the fighting style of the appropriate color and press the heat action button near the glowing enemy while your heat gauge is sufficiently filled.

This is why it is useful to carry a handful of tauriner++ in your inventory specifically for bosses.

What about when bosses glow with a red aura?

You'll need 'Essence of Extreme Dragon' in the Dragon skill tree for bosses that glow with a red aura. However, until you get that ability, you can also stop any enemy with any aura or glow (including red) from recharging their health simply by using any regular Heat action. For example, weapon heat actions or the 'Essence of Sumo Slapping' heat action from the Dragon skill tree.

Closing

These strategies helped me get through the game and all the side content fairly easily without too much trouble, hopefully these strategies will help you out too!

[smitler]

thx

[✝ Caius ✝]

Tom

[tom]

ok

[ezzypixel]

Tiger Drop is strong, but Heat actions are fun. I like breaking opponents arms and dislocating their legs.

[tom]

Tiger Drop + Extreme Beast Heat Mode

[HawkShaw98]

My mantra for the most part of the game was relying on the Rush style, as it allows to keep distance from the enemy and observe the enemy first before going in with other styles.Also, the grind for Tiger Drop was by far the most rewarding man, I mean that move is OP af, even the Komaki Parry to some extent. Btw nice guide man!!

[Zoomii]

Tiger Drop is pretty easy once you figure it out. Just hold the lock on button, than press the heavy attack right before their attack lands. It can be difficult to pull off at first, but once you get it down you should be able to do it successfully most of the time.

[ezzypixel]

@Zoomii You can do that or use Heat Actions. For me, using heat actions was easier than trying to figure out how to do the Tiger Drop.

[Zoomii]

All you really need is Tiger Drop from Komaki.