Yakuza Abilities You Won't Realise Are Bad 

isn't realise spelt with a z?

If you think about it, Judgment's smoking is excellent anti-smoking propaganda

I kinda like the smoking in Judgement, you got to hear random npc conversations and you can always just skip the smoking animation

In my opinion, the EX Drunken Fist actually has good uses in LJ but mainly for one single reason that is the girl’s bar since it makes it WAY faster to sober up

Every single time a Sega game doesn't properly inform you of something that turns out to be pretty important, I keep hearing the Carnival Night Zone music. You know if you know.

I like to use the smoke skills in judgment when you buy all the upgrades for the cigarettes you get like a full heat bar

I personally thought shinadas grab at the end of the combo wasn't great, because he had decent heat actions and I would acidently waist heat on that

You forgot tiger drop

i like the yagami smoke breaks cuz i use it as a smoke break when i’m playing judgment or lost judgment

dang, majima's counter as thug was bugged? i thought i just sucked.

Honestly, I feel like the Mad Dog style in Zero is pretty garbo. You have only one heat attack that can be used only on 3 enemies, the attack chains are long and deal rather low damage. After all the effort to unlock it, I don't even use it.

Tbf if you're playing Yakuza on a keyboard or mouse that's on you. Should be common knowledge that 3rd person action games are designed solely for controller to begin with. Literally every single game in the series opens by telling you to use a controller.

You forgot

Really? Complaining about not having vibrations when using a keyboard? Real yakuza use a gamepad…

Vibrate skill should make your computer rattle violently for PC users

not necessarily a "bad ability" outright, but the fact yakuza kiwami requires you to buy the extreme heat actions for different styles without telling you that you basically need them to do boss fights always felt like bad design. the tutorial for it just gives you the heat action and the game never tells you that weapon based heat actions can be used as a substitute instead, so you might spend early portions of the game dealing with bosses who just unstoppably recover big chunks of health because you didn't realize that it was possible to build wrong in a game that lets you somewhat freely build your character.

Counterpoint, Ykauza uses smoking as a limiter to the lads' superhuman abilities. Imagine if Akiyama quit smoking after 5 Kiryu would never leave with that bloody baby lmao

i gave yagami liver cancer when I did the girls bite story, id drink as much as i could, then use ex drunken fist outside the bar to go completely sober then repeat

I think the smoking ability has to do more with characterization, rather than it actually being a useful tool. It's meant to represent Yagami's tendency for unhealthy habits, especially considering his mental state at the start of Judgment. It is true that other than that it's useless. I think the better way to do it would have been to just make the ability innate and not require SP to unlock. I think that would've made sense.

Its also noteworthy that smoking once uses an entire pack, because Yagami apparently inhales these things for breakfast.

Attack speed shouldn’t be an upgrade imo, all it does it make combat sluggish and unfun until you grind for a decent speed. Crane style in Judgment wasnt viable for me until i got the final speed upgrade, then it kicked ass. Yakuza 0’s 3 gear system was fun though IDK if it’d be a good video idea but i wonder what abilities should be fundamental instead of upgrades

You forgot how most of Majima's slugger style abilities feel wasted since they just unlock weapons which should already have been unlocked to begin with.

The series has quite a plethora of abilities that feel like they could've been properly tuned but have remained the same regardless but I think the one that hit's me the most are Shinada's grapples. The fact that literally half the dude's kit is invalidated due to the enemy counter grab mechanics really sucks and makes me wonder why they didn't do anything to make it more nuanced to allow for more variety with him.

I think the drunken fist EX move was pretty useful in Lost Judgment cause it hit multiple enemies at once and I’d just like to see yagami flail around

Bruh the EX Drunken Fist is pretty lit, but it’s so frustrating whenever I use it without meaning too. Like I usually try to save it for a big enemy when I’m about to drop below level 6 drunkenness, but it’s so easy to mess up. And lol that you use flux fissure to generate heat because I literally do the same thing

The absolute worst ability in this series imo are all the ones that increase the healing effects of food, for a couple reasons. 1) Getting money is easy as hell, and saving money on a meal is trivial 2) Don't you actually want to heal less so you can eat more food and get closer to menu completion + experience each time you visit a restaurant?

2:46 love how the cashier seems worried about how many packs Yagami is buying

Amusingly, EX Drunken Fist's ability to instantly sober you up does have one use in Lost Judgment when you're trying to go through Girl's Bite.

Shinada's grab counter in y5 is just only good with just basic enemies if they're not the main enemy in the fight, even though you can just dodge and grab and not worry about messing up the timing with it, to this day i still don't know why the grab counter had at least something like the kiryu's grab parry

I'm absolutely loving your narrated videos as of recent. I dare say you're my new favorite Yakuza channel!

@4:47 They did actually do something about it. They added the “REAL DETECTIVES USE A GAMEPAD” screen when the game boots :)

Thug Style has its own equivalent to the Brawler resolute counter where you can attack right after being hit but its kind of worthless. Thug style is all about dodging so having a counter for when you get hit goes against the point of the style and is also an active detriment since it’s drains heat. I spam buttons when trying combos but if I mess up and get hit I just waste heat on shit damage and that’s only if it lands since the attack can be so slow that you just get hit again, losing even more heat. Also Akiyama’s air attacks aren’t useless but I generally dislike using them since I find the normal combos way more satisfying so I kind of have to control my rush combos a lot more than I usually would

as a console user i found that vibrate was the most useful skill for me. since i am very prone to motion sickness, the active search sections become a nightmare for me , but the vibrate saves me all the time from getting a headache because if not i end up searching for too long way past my limit... wish they could have added it into lost judgment + implemented a similar accessibility function into PC for fellow motion sickness havers

Kinda off-topic, but one thing that bugged me about Lost Judgment's Drunken Fist EX action is that Yagami's face is completely static throughout the whole thing. In Judgment, he had this funny "I'm so wasted" grin on his face before getting plastered and then kinda recovered afterward. In LJ, he's just stone-faced the whole way through. Same thing happens with the Yagami/Kaito tag team move, too.

The Brawler Heavy Attack Combo (Trianglex3) from Zero and Kiwami (especially Kiwami) Its the absolute worst abillity because: Its really slow so it sucks as a follow up. It consumes Heat While dealing pitiful damage. And it eats your triangle input which is otherwise used for the chat brawler Kick or the stomp- both much more useful than the Heavy Attack Combo. I hate it so much

Brawlers heavy attack combo in zero is worthless, like I can’t think of a single use where it’d be optimal

Personally, i think all upgrades that increase health gain on dining pretty much makes completion runs longer unless i missed out on an item that lets me eat at max hp

The main complaint I have about the latest entries is that by the end of the game you are so OP that you slaughter the final bosses like nothing, so anticlimactic Edit: I’m currently playing kiwami 2s story mode while keeping the attack below 140 😐 lets hope ryuji puts up a good fight

4:45 Niiiice

in judgment (not sure if its only on pc or not, only played on pc) one ability has the description "prevents being stunned by enemies when at low hp" or something like that but it actually makes your dodge attacks stun enemies im pretty sure

9:03 you forgot the part where i want you to come to my house for an IRL long fight

Nice, pretty instructive, as I am a birdbrain individual, I tend to always forget most of the abilities I unlock in those games, I had no idea about the smokes in Judgment and Lost Judgment, and the almighty power that is Flux Fissure. That will teach me to pay more attention. Good video!

I actually like EX druken fist in LJ. Makes one of the school stories much easier since you don't need to stock up on drinks to lower drunk state.

I think one of. my biggest issues with LAD skills is just the status effects one. In this game compared to Persona for example, putting your enemies to certain statuses is actually really good. It gives you a huge moment to abuse certain things but most of the time they're 50/50 or even worse a 30/70 chance to beat your enemies with it. Edit: Even better that I feel weird on this game's blunt skill balancing, like Joon Gi Han's Combo Beat can do better damage than any of his other blunt skill that costs like 2x-4x above it. Same goes to his stun smash. Also the fact Essence of Mayhem can do more damage than Orbital Laser is weird lmao.

Another example of the game lying is in 7, a tip says restaurants give exp and combos give exp bonuses, which seems to be an oversight. Also in a benefit, Majima's stab counter doesn't require 3rd heat, it just drains all of it.

You forgot to kiss the homies goodnight.

This series has an issue with giving characters abilities that could be useful except they only work against basic enemies where you don't need them, essentially making them superfluous. The most glaring examples are the various Red Heat abilities in 5 (not Extreme Heat Actions). Kiryu's is the only one where it's always usable. Bosses and difficult enemies won't let you use Tiger Puppetry on them because they refuse to be knocked down, or kick out of your down grab. Slash kick is only useful for tacking on damage on downed bosses since they refuse to be launched/will roll out of your air combo instantly. And bosses just perform a reversal on My Meteor Tackle if you don't slam them into a wall frame 1. Now that I think about it, Extreme Heat in 5 is also really poopy considering how easy it is to use it when you don't want it. As soon as you build full extreme heat, you have to dance around not accidentally wasting it if you want to save it for a boss. Not to mention how you have to go out of your way to be in a situation to use some of them. Like Ultimate Essence is basically unusable since you're spending the entire game with 2 health bars.

I always wondered why the majima counter didn't work. I thought I was getting the timing wrong but it's bc i used wrong button...i feel sadness

You forgot majimas thug sight me nor any of my friends ever once had any use for it because the likely hood of a enemy having a concealed weapon compared to a weapon out in the open is low

An enemy dropped a pack of smokes once in my 30 hours of judgement

you forgot about dog

4:35 But Real yakuza do use a gamepad

I'll always consider Akiyama's backflip launcher from 5 the worst, it completely ruins the flow of heavier strikes and just makes him even harder to deal with multiple enemy groups, which he gets a lot.

(9:00) You forgot...to have a great day 😁 But also (I apologize in advance for improper terminology since it's been years) for the later parts I would say the dragon mode in yakuza5 because I'm constantly either holding down the L2 (PS controller) to avoid going into it or I'm using up heat when I don't want to.

I think the Judgment vibration skill is really good actually, mainly because I play on console. It was super helpful for finding stuff, so I wouldn't call it useless. It's only like that due to an oversight on PC. Shout out to Tiger Dances with Crane, for on average doing slightly higher damage than Tiger's triangle combo EX action for your ENTIRE EX guage.

Psywave is definitely a bad move, but Magnitude isn't that bad of a move. Sure, the damage varies, but it's still 100 percent accurate and can still do solid damage early on when you don't have access to Earthquake. Earthquake will always be the better move, but don't sleep on Magnitude in the early game. Great video, btw.

The Skewer ability for the Bodyguard job is absolute shit since it makes you take unnecessary damage. Plus it’s the only Blade skill that carries over to other classes unless you buy the Demon Rocker class

That fucking QR code tracker in Judgment. :*)

CHICKEN wing CHICKEN wing HOTDOG and BALONEY chicken AND macaroni CHILLING with MY homies. :)

You forgor hey good video, even though I love y7 it's got so many useless and redundant skills it's insane, and most fights lategame boil down to the same two or three skills and a kiwami move that gets spammed every free turn. Love the game, like I said, but man do I hope y8 (sorry, "Like A Dragon 8" 🤡) is better balanced

You're legitimately one of my favorite content creators on RU-vid. I unironically get excited when you upload a new video.

4:25 Don't you know that real yakuza use gamepads? Like, duuuh XD

Essence of jumping was pretty useless in yakuza 3

Making smoking pretty bad gameplay wise perhaps is an intentional way to discourage people from doing it irl

the roll that replaces fordward dodging while running in yk2, i recall getting use out of it once and it more often than not screwed me over since i was trying to do a normal dodge

You forgot to pay your taxes. They're coming.

The smoking one is exactly why I never do anything with the cigarettes because it’s such a pain in the ass.

You forgot to finish your sentence at the end of the video:)

Honestly Like a Dragon could have it's own separate video on bad/weird/random abilities and mechanics.

cute dog

I actually got use out of Judgment's smoking abilities, believe it or not. Free Heat (or in this case, EX Meter) is always sweet.

I’m suddenly in the mood for soba for some reason 🤔

The only thing I like about smoking in Judgment is going to the smoking area next to the batting cages and watch the dialogue between the teen baseball player and his girlfriend

I dont see an issue with the ishin special charged finisher I find it pretty useful especially considering heat actions dont do alot of damage in the game

Sometimes I wish moves would get replaced by their stronger counterparts instead of just cluttering the action menú but then you have moves like drop kick.

Some of the most worthless abilities in the franchise are, in my opinion, a handful of ones related to the tailing in Judgment. Now, don’t get me wrong, tailing in Judgment benefits from any help you can get, but there is one in particular that just isn’t useful, that being the one that makes breaking objects cause the suspicion meter to rise less. That might SOUND useful on paper, but think about the context surrounding Tailing sections: you’re generally going pretty slow and aren’t running around like a fool. Therefore, if you’re actually trying to succeed in them, breaking objects is a complete non-issue, and if you are constantly breaking objects during them, chances are that you’re doing something else that’s going to get you spotted anyways. Another one from Judgment that really isn’t that useful is Key to Success, which makes it so that if you already unlocked a door with a key, you automatically choose the correct key to unlock it next time. It’s one of the cheaper ones, running at only 100 SP, but it’s less of a useful ability and more something that will save you maybe 3-10 seconds at a time. Convenient, but not really useful, and especially not worth getting when you consider all the other useful abilities that run for the same price, like a lot of the EX Actions, the Thumb-turn bypass upgrades, etc.

Then in Gaiden smoking was really OP for the coliseum because you could just skip the smoking animation and go back in with full heat after about 4 cigs.

The smoking thing works for the early hours of judgment, I remember starting that game and with how slow yagami hits without upgrades, ex moves were vital on hard and legend difficulty so having an extra bar helped. But after a couple of upgrades (ignoring flux fissure) it's pointless to smoke.

Before playing Judgment myself I didn't see the point of drunken ex skill full sover effect, but the fact that it sobers you up makes it easier for me to complete drinks in kamurocho, so I'm kinda glad it works that way?

1:40 majima with his wife moment

While it's not for normal combat, IMHO, Haruka's heat action that lowers the enemy's heat gauge is just like... completely and utterly useless in almost every possible situation because you could just, y'know, either heal yourself or damage the enemy instead to do the EXACT same thing you're trying to do by lowering their heat gauge, but more directly. There's also just a large amount of heat actions that are so ridiculously situational (be in red flashing health with 3 enemies near you while standing next to this specific thing that only appears in like 3 areas of the game) that they're just not worth unlocking, because you'll never end up using them. Additionally, the weapon training (and I'd even go so far as to argue half of Kiryu's training...) in the earlier games just like... don't provide anything that makes them worth the time investment to get them outside of being required for 100%. Like after unlocking Tonfas, I literally never used them in 0, 1 or 2. And like, the ENTIRETY of Kiryu's training in 1 is just such an insane time investment for how late in the story you gain access to it that it's just like "Ah, yes, let me go grind for 4 hours to use Tiger Drop on the last 2-3 bosses of the game!" (Same with the IFR training in half the games that feature it.) I'd also argue that like, 90% of upgrades in 0 are technically useless. Like, for Majima, you're just best off using breaker style for literally everything, so any non-health upgrade in any other style is utterly useless aside from the legend style upgrades. And while Kiryu DOES get more use out of his styles, almost none of the situational stuff ends up actually being used. K2's also got a TON of utterly Useless upgrades due to the simple fact that you can get unbreakable weapons fairly early on that completely and utterly destroy everything in the game, and become even more ridiculously stupid once you get the high-end katanas. Like, I literally beat both the final boss of K2 and the final non-bouncer-mission Amon fight in 30 seconds each by just wailing on them with the best Katana. And that was on Hard, lul. Also while they're not really something you invest in as you just get them for free for completing the side story, like half of Saeijima's skills in Hunter Killer are like... actually useless.

All of crane style in both judgment games. It's kinda fun, but it's absolutely outclassed by Tiger, and the few advantages it provides are eclipsed by Snake in LJ. Also, all of Tanimura's style. I know he's the tortoise and all, but playing Yakuza defensively sucks.

You forgot... to tell everyone to have a good day :)

Seriously though, screw that Thug counter. Drains your heat, does fuck all in terms of damage and is absolutely outclassed by that rolling 2nd heat bar Breaker move (which GIVES you heat, by the way). Oh, and maybe it's just me, but the timing on the thing felt like a bitch to get right.

4:47 didn't they say at the beginning of each games "real yakuza/detective use a controller"? They do not recommend using keyboard at all, so no surprise there's no keyboard exclusive features...

Actually smoking lets you to listen some short stories and it's fun. First time for each smoking place. Then it's worthless

I was conned by Majima counter 3 years ago, and when I revisit the game yesterday, the same shit happened… ffs

I NEVER knew that you could prevent heat actions by holding down the camera reset button.🤦‍♂

Realize is spelt with a z. do it, i'm calling your bluff. you won't find me and slap me.

Drunken Fist in LJ is actually really good though if you wanna grind out the Girls Bite side quests without having to wait to sober up.

You'd think that, for how much Yagami apparently loves to smoke, the devs would've given him Kiryu's smoking taunt and the Heat move off it, where Kiryu spits a lit cigaratte into a charging enemy's eye before punching him really hard. I always liked that taunt, and since every dude in the series smokes like a 60 year old grandma with no abandon, everyone should just have that Heat move for free.

So let me get this straight if i write "you forgot..." in the comments i get a free visit from the man, the myth, the legend, snowiest angeman for free!? I don't get why nobody would do that.

the union 5.56 can reach pretty high concealment while maintaining max stability and near max accuracy and its speedpull mag makes it a pretty comfortable weapon mayhem and below

Smoking barely costs sp to unlock and gives u another easy way to fill up ex. Once u have friends and the food and drink ex abilities u can have full ex bar all the time

Tiger drop... solely because it lead to the stupid "TiGeR dRoP nEgAtEs AlL dAmAgE" meme

Majima's thug cunning: counterattack from 0, way too easy to trigger for piss poor damage and heat drain, Kiryu's version is also not that good, but it gets better with upgrades and you can use grab instead of light/heavy attack.

you guys don’t just hold left trigger down like all the damn time in the judgment games or what? because real shit, heat actions are more of a hindrance in those games when i can just spend heat to use EX boost to do tekken juggle combos that do more damage and are more engaging

Real Detectives use gamepad

there's other bullshit like in yakuza 0 when training thug style one of the prompts says to hold LB while at 1 bar or heat but you actually have to do it at 0 bars of heat it doesn't work if you have a bar at all

The smoking mechanic I loved in judgement Because the long animation allowed me to smoke in real life also taking a 2 min break from all the action