Would anyone want to offer some insight on strats for this? I submitted my garbage time to help out the boards but I'm interested to see what you guys did to speed things up. It's fantastic to see such good times so quick in this, awesome work guys!

As far as actual strats go, I think the big thing we could go into is strategising for bosses with regards to upgrade path etc. Right now my big strat is to make sure I get Power Surge 2 in every branch, whilst with Majima you've got the two extra attack nodes down the bottom of one of his paths (Breaker?) which are also good. Mostly my strats have been breaker for most battles (anything in a small enclosed space with lots of furnature to break enemies blocks etc etc) and Slugger for others (the stealth Majima sections where you need to do fights for example it's easy to do a square square triangle combo to do just enough to take out the enemies, bar larger ones, provided you've got the damage upgrades up till that point)

Initially I wanted to factor in Shakedown to get quick money, but the amount you get with the later chapters just makes it not worth it when Shakedown takes a couple of minutes. Maybe it'd be worth making him into a trust fund, but only if you went that route with the Shrine CP too and at that point you're just running out of stamina fast.

As far as speedtech goes I found that with Kiryu's first waiting around in chapter 5 (for the office to be cleaned up) by far the quickest way to speed that up is to go to Club Sega (i choose the one on Nakamachi as it feels closer, so i'm not sure if the one in Theater Avenue will also do the same) jump into Out Run and quit immediately as the mini game starts. As soon as you leave the Club Sega you'll get the pager that the office has been fully cleaned. Unfortunately i'm struggling to find a similar skip for his second waiting around segment in Chapter 13. I attempted the same thing (going to the explosion site, then going to the club sega and jumping onto Space Harrier and quitting) but unfortunately that didn't work.

As far as other stuff goes, I attempt to buy the alcohol for the Hobo's in the most optimal fashion. During Chapter 1 you need to buy the Malt and Shochu on Tenkaichi Street as if you do it in Chapter 2 you'll get some extra dialogue because of the friendship with the seller (she's still there in chapter 1, but substories don't trigger till chapter 2) and in Chapter 2 as soon as you come back to Kamurocho from home for the first time pick up the Sake from the shop infront of you. This same shop sells the Confection Gift Box that you need for chapter 5 so it's important you pick it up here at the same time. Then when you have to go to the hobos taxi down to Pink Street Entrance, pick up the Scotch Whiskey from the Poppo then waltz next door to Don Quijote and pick up the Champagne (doesn't matter which version, there's no extra dialogue.) then you can just go straight to the Hobos and hand over the alcohol immediately.

The thing that annoys me the most is that you can't skip either business for Kiryu or Majima. They are lengthy bits that unfortunatly there's no way to speed up. Heck for Majima's cabaret it's easiest to just wait 3 minutes because if you interact with it you lose time each time you do and the money return is so minimal that it really doesn't make sense to go ahead with it.

Don't forget to skip the "mandatory" Kareoke segments with Nishiki by skipping them as they begin with the touchpad.

Pretty much this. Im going to look further into if buying guns can save time in the enemy rush sections such as the last part of the game with Majima and Kiryu. Still haven't done any testing though.

I havent used the wait skip for Kiryu in chapter 5 and I didnt skip either of the Karaoke events but those save quite a bit of time each.

I stuck with Slugger for most of the game cause I feel its the safest method for someone who isn't a Yakuza Veteran and Brawler lets you stun lock most enemies making it quite easy to take out the grunts and some of the bosses.

Also one other thing to note is that it seems like the cutscenes at the end of the game count to IGT. Considering during the final fight you had an IGT of 6 hours 50 minutes. We still need to work on when RTA stops to make sure that it reflects accurately when compared against IGT. Considering your RTA is less than your IGT. Looks kinda weird on the leaderboards. I've approved your run as it stands since I can't get the IGT of your final quicktime event input. However your run is probably about 50 minutes faster IGT than is recorded.

One thing i'm very curious about with IGT - the reason IGT wasn't used for the previous Yakuza's was because it actually reset back to what it was before if you ever died in say a boss or one of the longish dungeon bits. Of course this being a different engine (checkpoints as well) etc etc might make it a lot more reliable, but it's probably something that should be tested...If the unfortunate occurs and we can't use IGT then we'll have to have something that says if we're using ps4/pro/hdd/ssd (For reference i'm on bog standard ps4 with the stock hdd so my load times are probably the slowest, obviously I'm hoping the IGT is consistent!!)

Yeah as far as Kiryu fights go, small enclosed space with weapons? Beast. Mobs? Usually Beast with exceptions of course. I feel like it's more about adapting on the fly, but there are certain fights that are better with one style than the other (breaker for Majima's Nishikiyama fight as hello Serena you have a lot of lovely furnature to break his guard!) The bringing weapons in might be a good idea. I definitely utilise some pistols/shotguns that enemies have in certain segments, but how much of the weapon crafter RNG do we need to go through? That's my only worry. Of course quick time saves can offset that.

And that's what excites me about this run. Different routes move and style wise, weapons etc. There's so many different variations that could really mix things up. It's exciting!

It is exciting.

I am also on a standard PS4 with a normal HDD, and I'm playing it using Remote Play which is basically just Remote Desktop for PS4. Works really well, no serious input lag.

I think for weapons, if there is no way to speed up the wait time for Kiryu in Sotenbori that might be a good opportunity to pick up a bunch of pistols/shotguns while waiting and since Majima has to go there anyway for story progression we could pick up the guns while in the shop since I don't think you need to send people out to get the basic pistols but I might be mistaken. I know when I did a casually playthrough for the game I filled my inventory with pistols for the last mission on both characters and from what I remember Shibusawa was a push over with guns.

For IGT if it only resets if you die and reload rather than die and retry then we can just say no loading savefiles. But that has issues in itself since there might be some wait time skips we can do by saving and reloading but again thats all conjecture. I think for now, RTA ending when we finish the last QTE thats fine, but we may want to expand that to cover until it says END since the IGT seems to count until then anyway, But I have no idea. More testing will be required I guess.

If I remember rightly when I was routing this I attempted to do the weapon merchant stuff, you do indeed have to send Fei Hu out on a "mandatory" mission. You can always just go straight back into the restaurant after the Slugger tutorial and get that sent off then come back later (there's one or two opportunities. When you go to get the Takoyaki for Makoto would make a good spot. Unfortunately even if you get Takoyaki that chapter you HAVE to go get it when the game requests it as Majima says he won't feed her cold food. Doesn't work like the booze or the confectionary gift box as it's a key item sadly! But this would be a good time to carry on and get some stuff!)

The nice thing with the wait in Chapter 13 for Kiryu in Sotenbori is that I believe you can use the Dragon and Tiger, you just can't send out Agents (which...If you did all you needed too at that point anyway what would be the point so that's good) Annoyingly you CANNOT do Karaoke, i've tried multiple times as I wanted to make up for cutting it out twice with Nishiki but alas the game just says nope! Your post has given me a very curious idea though. Go and visit the explosion site, save the game at the phone at Shofukucho South then load that save and see if it has an effect. I'll go and check this tomorrow when I get time and i'm not sure if going to the explosion site is necessary or not, but I have the bizarrest feeling that it might be.

If I ever do all substories (and I get the feeling that at some point I will) I think routing in the Dragon and Tiger stuff will make it necessary for quick Amon fights. Those count as substories so they gotta be done! The routing for that would be fascinating. You could send agents off between substories and come back. My only fear is that slight RNG factor so...Maybe saving outside the Dragon and Tiger would come into effect to load if you don't get gun blueprints, but again that would really skew the IGT. Either way i'm not doing all substories soon, but the weapon shop would 100% be something i'd factor into that run. The routing will be insane though trying to figure out the quickest ways to end the substories, the order to do them (considering some don't appear till some chapters, some don't appear till you've done others, some will take you to a different part of the map, some will require prebought items like the battery for the bag phone etc etc) would be monumentus but...It's kinda exciting

If deaths rolling back the IGT is how the game works, it simply becomes that dying in a speedrun nullifies the run. It's the case for almost all Silent Hill speedruns, especially since dying in any reasonable speedrun kind of... defeats the purpose? Just on record I have no qualms about either RTA or IGT. If there are strats where death skips anything then that'd also quickly change how timing works.

I have no idea what was up with the six minute discrepancy in RTA/IGT, it could be cutscenes before the ending or something.

Im nearly 100% sure that it is the cutscenes at the end. You pause the game to use healing items in the fight with Shibusawa and it shows an IGT of under 7 hours. Then you let the 50 or so minutes of cutscenes play. Which is totally fine it just means your IGT is a lot longer than you deserve.

Exciting times for this speedrun though. Hopefully the weapon shopping can help out.

My idea for saving then re-loading during the chapter 13 wait was unsuccessful sadly. I still feel like there will be a way to skip it like the earlier one, it's just figuring out how. Got some more ideas in mind, but i'm not too hopeful for those!

Tekkie if you're still interested in running we managed to figure out how to minimise the wait time on chapter 13 exponentially.

Once you've left the video site you need to go down to the explosion site where the van bomb a few chapters ago happens. Once you've done that, get up to Sega Hi-Tech and play Space Harrier. Quit immediately, play it again, quit immediately and then leave. You'll instantly get the pager notifcation, just like the one in chapter 5. It just 100% requires going to the explosion site and then doing 2 instances of Space Harrier. Neat little useful skip that!