Yakuza: Like a Dragon - Low Level Part 6: Goro Majima & Taiga Saejima

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Published on April 7, 2024 1:48:58 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7DI8nmxyk

Game:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020)

Duration: 17:15

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17

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lv. 50 Maejima & Saejima vs. our lv. 26-32 party - the showdown!

Up there with the endgame battle against Tendo, this is one of the boss fights everyone's eagerly anticipating from this challenge, and for good reason. After the countless mook fights and forgettable bosses, some of them fought multiple times during the course of the run, we finally have a worthy opponent to face. For resetting, this isn't really one of the player-friendly battles, as you have to drive and then progress a couple floors in a "dungeon", where luckily potential enemies can be avoided with some effort. The boss battle is also preceded by a quick mook battle, which does imply there's no way to benefit from a cooking bonus to one of the stats (I imagine a defence boost would be most beneficial here), as the restaurant meals bonuses appear to run out after a single fight.

The structure here is somewhat simple. We fight Majima solo until he summons three doppelgangers after having lost a sufficient amount of health, and when the doppelgangers are killed off and Majima has a half of his HP depleted Saejima steps in to assist him with some really vicious attacks. Because the boss battle starts immediately after the mook fight, there's no way to rearrange the party members or heal up. This is a lowest level challenge, meaning Ichiban is the only one surviving that simplistic fight prior to this. Nanba is the only one who levels up as a result of the fight, so his health is restored. Everybody else starts the crucial boss fight at 1 HP, so we want to use the opening turn to restore everybody back to full health ASAP. I prepared well for this fight, having made several lunch boxes to restore the party's HP and MP to max (and will make more after this, having almost run out after extensive use). Another way of preparing was trading some of the Tojo Clan Crests for superior items, like giving Adachi armour boosting elemental damage (not sure how potent it is exactly, or whether it stacks at all) and all active party members +100 max HP.

Majima is fire-weak, which is not a weakness we're all that good at exploiting, much like an elemental weakness of any other sort. Nanba does penetrate it with just about all of his offensive kit in his unique class, but he's not coming in until much later. Crucially, Eri's OP Darts Airstrike is resisted and I substitute her with an alternative party member in Joon-gi but forget about my decision and switch in her regardless. Her damage is still fine with Jackpot Chip, but she will falter in the HP department compared to Joon-gi. Darts Airstrike is, however, superior to Joon-gi's single-target options when Majima isn't alone, rivalling our top means of dealing damage. Adachi has a field day using Paralysis Prongs against Majima and his clones, dealing more damage than anybody else to a single enemy. His main tool is resisted by Saejima, though.

I thought about my team mate choice for quite a while. Saeko is useless when nobody needs healing (a rarity!) but can restore everyone's health without consuming a lunch box, which is handy in a lengthy fight such as this one, and she is the only one who can currently heal off both paralysis and bleeding, relevant status ailments in this fight, with the former being especially debilitating when inflicted. Adachi is poor against Saejima only, Eri is underwhelming against Majima, and Joon-gi just offers good ST damage at low MP cost, but that's irrelevant when we're recovering MP on a regular basis when the others are spamming their costly specials.

Ichiban dying ends this challenging battle, so keeping him alive is a priority. I use Peerless Resolve, which basically grants Auto-Life, on my very first turn, and, curiously, Ichiban ends up taking 400+ damage from Majima early on, which would have sent him to an early grave if the measure hadn't been taken. When the clones come in, we have many more enemies inflicting damage and spreading it across the whole party, so an effort to reduce the enemy party is most sensible. Majima won't summon new clones, but not taking them all out also causes Saejima to never appear and even to Majima's HP bar depleting at some point.

Using Ichi's Essence of Orbital Laser, which we got many chapters back thanks to the Management minigame, is the easiest way to deal with the clones (and packs a punch against Majima himself), while Adachi will have to use his shield techniques if he's attacking at all (at this point, having two party members running support isn't unwise if we don't want to see Ichiban be the only one not KO'd rather quickly). This is a damage-intense portion of the fight for both the parties and so it ends quickly.

(out of space; continued in the comments section)

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