not really, I manage to beat most of the boss fights with Can style(or maybe Gan) by press forward square -> forward triangle, the move where you stab forward and impale the person. Also the game auto save whenever you exit or enter a new zone. I manage to beat another players character last night, he was kicking the shit out of me(he one shots me), but since you can fight player character who killed you by talking to a horse(Yes a horse) in the cemetery, I went with full spring harvest, and chopped him up. got a really nice weapon.. it's a really long unbreakable sword, 3 big shots charm, 212 attack
Nah, it's perfectly fine on normal and many stances have damage reduction abilities. Some of the sidequest chains can put you in situations that a first runthrough would be ill-equipped for but there is no penalty for just cancelling a mission and coming back to it later.
I hate some of the protection/escort mission.. since there are friendly fire, sometimes I accidentally kill the person I'm suppose to protect.
Speaking from the other extreme though, the highest difficulties are really, really punishing. You really do need to be cautious and read the flow of battle as enemies are capable of killing you outright in one or two hits. If you need a Dark Souls contender, you have it right here. I will not spoil, but suffice to say that starting the Light of Hope route on the highest difficulty is nothing short of nightmarish.
The one with the english teacher is godawful because he seems to stop following you the second a Prajna gets near. Considering that your dojo students you encounter in the wild stick to you like glue if you don't tell them to back the fuck off it's a bit weird.
Man, the reviews were not kind to this. On the other hand, $40 isn't a big hit on my budget. It's on PSN, right? If I want to play this by the end of the month I better start the download soon. Decisions...
IGN gave it a 5.5, for comparison they gave Yakuza 4 a 6.5. Yakuza 4 is one of the best games of all time. I can understand why someone wouldn't like it, hell I was interested when it released but held off because $40 is a lot for a game with little buzz around it. I was eventually sold on it by a video review that showed gameplay and explained some of the systems. I can understand why it got poor reviews though, it has a graphical tearing issue that you have to discover the fix for by prematurely ending the game and not saving. The game world is tiny. It also does an incredibly poor job of explaining just about anything in regards to the systems, you get a very brief tutorial at the start if you pick the right dialogue option but it doesn't even scratch the surface (the minigames do have a screen full of text for each but until you actually do the actions it tends to read like nonsense.)
It may be a localisation issue (i.e. bad translations). I've only ever played the Japanese version but I've never had any issue with the explanations (and the manual was very comprehensive). I do agree the game world is tiny (not that the previous games were any bigger - I think only Way of the Samurai 3 might be, marginally), but the game pretty much makes that up with the interactivity (in the same sense that the Yakuza games usually do with a single . Most other games tend to fill their bigger worlds up with pretty, empty space.
The PSN version has a digital manual but it is only a controller layout, they don't explain anything. And you have to be at the main title to see it.
Yes, I do indeed have it :D It's like the Yakuza cast suddenly decided to play in a massive historical epic with a dressed-up(down?) Kamurocho as centre stage. Fighting system is somewhat similar to Yakuza's. Unlike Way of the Samurai, Kiryu Kazuma Musashi only has four styles to fight from (barehanded, one handed, two handed & dual wield) but he can invent new moves to be used within each style (who needs teachers with Miyamoto Musashi). It's pretty surreal how he does that too. He stares at a form of nature in motion (like a cat stalking and catching a rat, or a flying squirrel), suddenly has a flash of inspiration, crouches down with inkbrush & parchment to paint an impression...and suddenly knows a new move. If only we could learn martial arts this easily. Yeah, sounds like the localisation folks skimped on the manual all right. Huge shame.
I imported it, I can only understand about half of the game, but the temptation mini game is hilarious..
That is awesome... and only slightly less surreal than Saejima taking out a block of wood and carving a sculpture of an exact scene in time. I think that's more the fault of Sony of America than it is XSEED (though I'm curious how NIS handled the EU release... apparently, the EU got shafted on DLC), since SoA has a policy that games need to have an English voice track in order for a physical copy to be released in the US. I'm curious how Sega avoids this policy, actually... the answer probably involves a lot of money.
Finished my first playthrough with the "Straight Samurai" ending. Inexplicably underage ambassador girl got killed so it seemed thematically appropriate for me to go on a blood soaked vengeance rampage. So I've got a sword with "Life and Death" and about 65 strength. Should I do another easy runthrough to buff it or can I handle normal at this point?
I'd buff it a bit, myself. You may have figured this out already, but 'Life and Death' allows you to regenerate Vitality when you're not moving or attacking... and it stacks with other 'Life and Death' charms on the same sword.
I've yet to play on easy, don't be a wuss! An easy way to get that sword stronger is to intentionally raise the crime rate and then talk to the questgiver in the magistrate who wants you to massacre yakuza (the quest ranges from 25 to 200 kills needed depending on what the crime rate is so don't be too bad or you'll be in for a long fight) and get it appraised with kill titles. As others have said strength doesn't seem to matter that much on Easy/Normal, all of my swords have been around 100 after strengthening and I've not had any problems. What you should do is choose a story path that puts you at odds with the Prajna and eventually kill Kogure (Akagi's lieutenant) to get his Kasshin Iai Jutsu style which is very powerful and has Strengthen skills that go up to 75% damage reduction.
Adding to this, you can also work for the Yakuza side by talking to the Mistress of the Gambling Den in Town; you'll need to ask her for work, then tell her you'll kill her... she's impressed by the sheer amount of courage/stupidity you exibit, and tells her flunky to give you work. From there, you can talk to her directly to get the Magistrate killing mission. ...There's an issue with this, though... if the gate is closed - and if you aren't on the Magistrate path or doing Light of Hope, it usually will be - the mission can't really be completed... the Magistrates eventually get stuck behind the closed gate. That said, if you know what you're doing, it can be pretty rewarding to alternate between the two questgivers for money, kills, and style grinding. Oh, and while I do agree that the kill titles are awesome, the top-tier durability title (gained by breaking your sword and getting it repaired multiple times) is pretty awesome, as it makes your sword unbreakable. Considering you can't get this any other way - by contrast, you can get your sword to the 500 damage cap without a title with enough work - it's pretty nice.
Yeah it's great but it so breaks the game on Normal. Also you should add that if you talk to the flunky first and antagonize him until he says "If you leave while I'm talking to you you'll regret it" and then goes into an endlessly stream of shouts if you leave he'll take all the money you have on you. Save often!
I thought that maybe if you just kept advancing his dialogue that you'd win some super secret quest but after about 5 minutes I gave up. Also we should mention the easiest way to get a great sword - turn on network and switch areas until a phantom shows up and unload a full spring harvest on them.
And I should add that on higher difficulty levels, phantoms with better swords are more likely to show up. This is kind of unproven and just from my previous experiences (i.e. it could be just me), but I suspect the phantoms you see are characters who have completed a playthrough on the difficulty you're on. My best weapons come from phantoms on impossible difficulty. But beware! Even a full spring harvest will not be enough against such foes - and if they get even a single shot in, you're done. Edit: To be fair, the last time I fought a phantom in such spartan conditions, I had a less-than-optimised weapon - so it actually is possible that, with a good weapon, you might pull off a spring harvest victory.
I juggled an online invader once using Kyoji Style in Spring Harvest mode. Poor invader didn't hit the ground until death. To be fair, Kyoji Style covers a ton of distance with its swings, and was one of my favorite movesets in Way of the Samurai 2 (where it was used by the oh-so-psychopathic yakuza, Kyojiro Kagenuma; her sword Biteikotsu is also in the game, translated as Tailbwnd) ... the original version of the forward + Square -> forward + Triangle combo was absolutely devastating (and really easy to get caught in, as the second hit of the combo was the guardbreaker, IIRC). Can't find any good YouTube vids of it in action, though. It's been toned down quite a bit in WotS 4, but it's still a very solid move. It also helps that her style looks pretty damn cool with a knife, and kind of reminds me of Majima's knife-fighting style.
To be honest, I have no idea what style you're referring to there (where did they translate these newfangled style names from?) but I can kinda guess from your description. Is this from one of the Kinugawa sisters?
Nope... it's from Kinugawa's body double. And yeah, I wasn't entirely sure what that one would be called in the original Japanese (and you'd need to take XSEED up on the translations... there's a few that make me wonder, too...), but as I stated in my prior post, it's a less broken version of Kyojiro's style from Way of the Samurai 2.
Not sure how much credit one gives a GameFAQs post but this seems to indicate that dropped weapon strength is determined by the difficulty, even when you get it from a phantom. http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/611500-way-of-the-samurai-4/65196108 Also can someone who has Kasshin Iai tell me what the base move is so I can unlock the final move in this combo? I thought it was just the previous move but I've been unable to get that to unlock it or via any of my moves.
Funny, it should indeed be Target Chest. Are you sure you're at the right level to unlock it, or that there aren't any other qualifiers? I'd test this myself, but I've already got Kasshin Iai maxed (in fact, I'm pretty sure I've maxed all the Iai styles in the game - they've always been one of my favorites)
Well, it's X in the US version, but yeah, it should. Also, Pheriannath, I have a question. Since you seem to be a rather large fan of the WotS games... would you happen to know if the soundtracks of the series are available anywhere? Ideally, US vendors would be preferred, but... I've always adored Noriyuki Asakura's work on the WotS soundtracks, much like I adore his work in the Tenchu games... but at least with the Tenchu soundtracks, I can get them from an English distributor. I've had no such luck with WotS.
All it says is "When style is Fourth or higher, hit an enemy with a base move when HP is lower than 500" and I'm Fifth
Ahh. That would be the problem. You'll need to hit an enemy with the Target Chest attack when your HP is lower than 500. There's another set of conditions that require your health be below 250... that one's the real pain.
Alas, soundtracks are exceedingly hard to find. About the only one I could find sold online was the WotS2 soundtrack, notably on the sony music shop and other sites. No sign of the rest, although you could try searching for 侍道 音楽 (Samuraidou music) or 侍道 オリジナル・サウンドトラック (Samuraidou original soundtrack) and see what you can find. I expect the chance of finding an English-speaking vendor stocking up on this to be quite low :(
have you try using move scroll or legendary move scrolls? I managed to unlock the 90% damage reduction from gun by using legendary scroll... after beating hard mode, I started a female character with sensai's face and madara's cloth + mask(not naked!, yeah).. I got to the dock, kill the first guy, beg for my life on the 2nd fight, 3 guys tied me up and left me on the rail road track.. then a horse carriage ran me over for a game over screen 1 minute after I start the game..
Wait. The term "base move" leaves me a little suspicious. Is this a term you see often in your localised version? Could this possibly be another translation goof? As I recall, there are certain moves in WotS4 with crazy requirements, one of which is to hit an enemy while the player is on the ground, when the enemy's HP is below a certain threshold. The kick-to-the-shin (while your player is lying on his back) is one example of such an attack. I've already completed that particular tree so I can't see the requirements on my version anymore, but I suspect this is what the game is really asking. You might want to give it a try.
