How to Change Your Save Files Difficulty

yeah

For some reason in Yakuza 3 & 4, after you beat the story and start Premium Adventure the difficulty is automatically changed to Normal. So you can use this guide to play Premium Adventure on any difficulty you want (or whatever reason you want to change the difficulty for). This should also work for Yakuza 3 btw.

What you'll need

You will need a hex editing program. A good free one you should use is HxD [mh-nexus.de]. You will also need a Yakuza 4 save file (lol)

Steps

1. Find your games save files. They should be at
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\(your steam ID)\1105500\remote
It should look like savegame1.sav. You should make a backup just in case something goes wrong

2. Open up the save file by right-clicking on it then clicking on Open with

3. When prompted Choose HxD Hex Editor (If its not there click on "Look for another app on this PC" and find HxD)




4. Once its open change the 2 selected bits to:

00 00 = Easy
01 01 = Normal
02 02 = Hard
03 03 = Legend/Ex-Hard

5. Save your changes and boot up your game. You can go to any Hideout and select Stats to check your difficulty

Thanks for reading!

If you need help feel free to comment.

[kirbo]

many thanks, used it before the final boss to get both achievements for normal/legend. I haven't minded replaying Yakuza games on legend thus far with my 100% clear files, and i was willing to actually do it twice... until i did it once and out of the 3.5 hours of playtime most of it was mashing through dialogues... yeah no thanks.

[Supremacy]

Yea, I don't care call me a cheater if you want but I'm just Hexing the game to Legend in the beggining, im not doing a pointless Hard playthrough. Just because this game silly-ly does not stack. So long as you beat Legend legitimately you're legit. Did it in 3 and will do it in 5 if it doesnt have stacking.

[Dante]

Also, in the last screenshot, it says that you never changed difficulty. So it means that the game will never notice if I modify in the hex? Stats screen will remain without extra accidental numbers?

[Dante]

It will definitely change the difficulty, and then also unlock the achievement when you reach the end of the game? I started playing on Hard just to find out that there is a "Normal" completion achievement...

[Chris]

I just did it with Yakuza 3 because I struggled with the Mack chase.

[Chris]

@ McKoy Yes it can.

[McKoy]

Can this work on a save file on an ongoing story mode?

[Chris]

I confirm that it works with Yakuza 3 too. I started a NG+ from a normal premium save. Then, I saved my game, made the changes in Hex editor and could see that I was playing in Legend difficulty via the stats at the first hideout. Thanks