Yakuza Kiwami 2

The tutorial fires late in Chapter 4 when Four Shine is taken over, but the Grand Prix itself only opens in Chapter 6. Five leagues in order: Fresh, Paradise, Executive, Millionaire, then the Final Championship.

• Cast come from three places: recruiting, story progress, and substories. Recruiting costs more each time and can return nobody at all, so only spin it when you can afford a blank.
• Dress-up is Platinum-cast only. Changing hair, make-up and dress raises their looks, and anything you have bought once can be re-selected for free.
• Six hostess date events are substories No.69-74 (Koyuki, Kana, AIKA, Shoko, Yua, Kirara), so pushing only the club side leaves those substories stuck.

A defence sim: hold the Kamurocho Hills site against a crooked developer. A raid late in Chapter 5 runs the tutorial once, after which Goro Majima at the West Park site lets you play whenever.

• Clearing missions pays out Majima Construction President Awards, which is what upgrades your workers. Rushing missions without spending them walls you later.
• Riki Choshu and Masahiro Chono turn up for conversation events as you progress; picking the right line there pays extra President Awards.
• The opposition are real-life pro wrestlers, and you need squad composition, worker upgrades and facility upgrades moving together to keep up with the mission curve.

Two events: Nearest-the-Pin and Bingo. Five completion-list rows — 300+ total points on Nearest-the-Pin at beginner, intermediate and advanced, one hole-in-one there, and a 3-line bingo.

• Press circle to start, circle again to set power, then circle on the impact gauge. Stopping in the red just-impact band sends it straight; the yellow bands either side hook it left or slice it right.
• Missing the impact input entirely counts as a whiff, but cross cancels the shot even after power is locked — if the wind shifted, cancel and re-aim.
• Bingo is a different skill: you are knocking out a 3x3 grid of panels to line them up, so you are matching power to a panel rather than aiming at a cup.

Home Run and Challenge courses. Home Run wants 7 or more of the 10 balls out for an A rank; Challenge wants you to beat that course's target score within the same 10 balls.

• Line the cursor up with the pitch using the left stick or a touchpad swipe. The cursor shrinks as the ball comes in — swing with circle, or by lifting off the touchpad, at the moment it matches the ball's size.
• Challenge is not about distance: you are hitting the panels set up around the cage, and which panel you hit decides whether it scores as a hit or a homer.
• Pitch speeds are scripted per course — Beginner 1 opens with straights at 135, 145 and 155 km/h — so once you learn the timing the run repeats.

Five completion rows and the longest grind here: first place at every table and tournament, winning a hand by ron or tsumo 5, 10 and 30 times, and ¥100,000 total from gambling mahjong.

• Get the Peerless Tile cheat item first: one lies in the corner of the third-floor office in the multi-tenant building, another at the end of that floor's corridor, and substory No.31 "Komaki's Training 4" hands you one.
• The 30-win row is the real wall. Cheap fast hands tick it faster than big ones, so keep to riichi and tanyao rather than chasing yakuman.
• The ¥100,000 row falls out of a handful of wins at a high-rate table, so grind the win-count rows there and both progress at once.

Only one completion row — win a game without using takeback — so it is far shorter than it looks. Beyond that there is a ranking league and ten Trial challenges.

• The row is about not taking a move back, not about the strength of the opponent — beat the weakest one once, cleanly, and it is done.
• Shogi points buy trade-in dishes — bronze 10P, silver 100P, gold 1,000P, platinum 2,000P — so bank points and take the higher tiers.
• If you do not know the rules, start with the Trials: they are set positions asking for the best move, which teaches faster than a full game.

Two completion rows: 1,000 chips banked at koi-koi and 1,000 at oicho-kabu. With the cheat items in hand it stops being a gamble.

• Koi-koi's cheat is the Lucky Hanafuda: coin lockers in both cities, under a cafe table, on the floor at a hotel entrance, and as the reward for Haruka trust rank B.
• Oicho-kabu uses two: Arashi Yokan and Doshippins. They lie at the Uematsu Family office entrance, in the corner of a second-floor private room, near the rooftop Christmas tree on 4F, and by the bins behind Cafe Alps.
• The 1,000 is cumulative winnings, not a balance, so losses do not undo it — steady mid-size bets with a cheat active beat swinging for it in one hand.

Blackjack 1,000 chips and poker 1,000 chips. Sai no Kawara and Yotsudera Hall carry high-rate tables, which is where this goes quickest.

• Blackjack has two cheats — the BJ Amulet, which calls the card you want, and the Bust Amulet, which busts the dealer. The first is also the Haruka trust rank S reward.
• Poker's Royal Joker is the Haruka trust rank SSS reward, and also lies in the coin lockers, on the stairs beside the Yotsuba clinic's second-floor entrance, and up the stairs of a building on N Senryo Ave.
• Dragon Palace 2F is low-rate only — if you are going for the 1,000, start at the high-rate tables in Sai no Kawara or Yotsudera Hall.

A rhythm game on square, triangle, circle and cross. Three completion rows: score 90+ on one song, on three songs, and on eight songs.

• Practise at the Sotenbori Karaoke Snack: ¥1,000 buys unlimited songs until you leave, against ¥500 per two songs at Karaoke-kan.
• Songs mix hold sections with mash sections, and the 90-point line is decided there. Time to the moment the note overlaps the cursor, not to when it reaches the lane.
• The eight-song row needs eight different songs, so repeating one favourite only ever fills the first row.

¥200 a play, three modes (01, Cricket, Count Up) and five completion rows: play every rule, beat every rival, win 10 matches, and land 3 then 5 hat-tricks.

• A hat-trick is all three darts in the bull in one round. The 5-hat-trick row counts in single play, so grind it alone rather than waiting on rivals.
• A power gauge sweeps up and down on the left; press circle in the best zone. Even then the dart set you have equipped adds its own scatter.
• Single 20 scores 20, double 40, triple 60, and both bull rings score 50 — in 01 the bull is the steadier target than treble 20.

Two arcade boards emulated whole. Both play like the originals rather than like minigames, and the completion rows want clears rather than attempts.

• Virtua Fighter 2 is the arcade build with its original CPU difficulty — one reliable combo on one character beats trying to play it properly.
• Virtual-On maps its twin-stick controls onto the pad, so movement and dashing feel wrong until you read the control screen in options.
• Both cabinets are in all three Club SEGA branches, so you can chip away at them in whichever city the story has you in.

¥500 for three tries. Three completion rows — win 1, 5 and 10 prizes — and duplicates of the same plush all count.

• You press circle twice — once to set the horizontal line, once for the depth — and the rest is automatic, so those two coordinates are the whole game.
• Cross bails out with tries left, but not while the arm is moving — only before the horizontal step, or as the arm returns to the chute.
• Each cabinet stocks a different set, so if you want a particular plush, check all four rather than feeding the nearest one.

A port of the urinal-mounted arcade unit SEGA really made. From Chapter 2, talk to Machida, the suited man outside Club SEGA, to unlock it. Two games at three difficulties each makes six completion rows.

• You cannot play without enough Pt. Talk to Machida again after your first go and he hands over the Toylets Sensor, which shows the number: it caps at 3,000 and 500 is the minimum to play.
• Top Pt up from the vending machines inside Club SEGA. Teas are far and away the best — Koi-cha, 500 ml hojicha, Iyemon Tokucha and black oolong give 1,200 Pt each, 280 ml hojicha and plain tea 900 — while coffee and soft drinks give 200-500.
• North Wind and Me clears at all three difficulties by starting at 3,000 Pt and simply holding R2. Rewards are Tauriner, Tauriner+ and Insecticide by difficulty.

Not a shutter-timing game — a dialogue game. Inside a time limit you pick words with square, triangle and circle to build a sentence; the right combination fills the affection gauge in the top left, and filling it clears that course and unlocks the next.

• A studio employee stops you on Park Blvd. offering a free first session; that unlocks it. Four completion rows: book Hikaru Aoyama, book Rina Hashimoto, and watch each of their reward videos.
• If the timer rushes you, open the pause menu on the touchpad — the clock stops while it is open, so you can read the options properly.
• Courses cost more as they go — the two casual-wear courses are ¥3,000 each, the cheerleader course ¥6,000 — and each clear opens the next course and outfit.

Watch all 15 videos once for Video Maniac. Three are in stock from the start; the other twelve are ¥2,800 each from Beam and from Kamiyama.

• Kamiyama only starts selling once substory No.24 "Weapon Video Merchant" is cleared, and half the list is locked behind him.
• Two teach abilities: Super Kung Fu Man unlocks Tonfa Mastery and Essence of Tonfa, The Filipino Ace the Kali Stick pair. They only unlock — you still buy them with EXP.
• The Filipino Ace is only stocked after the Hiroshi Hayashi fight in Millennium Tower in Chapter 8, so clearing out Kamiyama earlier still leaves that one.
• The Dirty Video and Suspicious Video seen during substories No.15 and No.16 do not count toward the 15.