Yakuza 4’s version of cabaret management is much the same as in Yakuza 3. In some ways, it’s easier, and in others, it’s harder. Nevertheless, much of the content of our Yakuza 3 hostess guide applies here too. Finding, customising, and training a hostess to reach No.1 in the club is the name of the game.
Yakuza 4’s multiple protagonists might have you wondering who gets the honours this time around. Rather than Kiryu, it’s Akiyama, the first character you control, who will be dealing with the club management, meaning that you can get this sidequest started pretty early in the game.
How To Start The Cabaret Sidequest
Unlike the last game, Yakuza 4’s cabaret minigame isn’t attached to a specific substory. Rather, it’s unlocked as its own unique sidequest during the main story. At the start of the game, Akiyama already owns a cabaret club, Club Elise, and it’s located opposite the Millennium Tower entrance in the centre of Kamurocho.
During Chapter 3 and 4, Akiyama will carry out “Lily’s Test,” which will introduce you to hostess customisation and running Club Elise. While you start with her, Lily won’t be your main hostess.
After speaking to Lily on top of the Millennium Tower during Chapter 4, you’ll get a phone call from the club’s manager wanting to discuss finances. Head there and the quest will start.
Finding Hostesses For The Club
The setup for the quest is pretty similar to Yakuza 3’s version — the club’s struggling and needs more talent. Good guy/cheapskate Akiyama volunteers to find a new hostess himself rather than hire anyone else to do it. Select “I’ll take care of this myself” during the conversation with the manager and you’re good to go.
You’ll be taken back outside to scout for hostesses, and the main story/substory progression will be locked until you find someone (or cancel scouting by returning to Club Elise). There are three options, but you can only pick one.
The closest hostess to the club is directly opposite, in front of the Millennium Tower. Interact with the two people and she’ll run off, but you can find and recruit her to the west, on the corner of Theater Avenue. Alternatively, the second hostess is in Bantam, on East Millennium Tower Street, and the third is inside Cuez Bar, in the Kamurocho Underground Mall at the south end of the map. Pick your favourite and you’ll be introduced and taken back to Club Elise.
Running The Cabaret Club
Again, running the club is pretty much exactly the same as Yakuza 3’s, so if you’ve played that version, you’ll be familiar with the basics here. The main goal of running the club is to get your hostess to No.1, which translates to reaching ¥150,000 in sales in one shift. Each club shift is split into four periods of walking the club and seeing what your customers want, and three break periods where you can customise and train to oblige them.
Your hostess has a stats screen, which displays her rank at the top, alongside her three main attributes — Looks, Smarts, and Charisma. These start at D rank but through training will go up to S. Next, there are the Motivation and Stress Bars – these will go up and down with training/customisation. Keep the former high and the latter middling to low. Lastly, there’s the pie chart, showing how Cute, Refined, Flashy, and Gorgeous your hostess is in the eyes of customers. This will change every time you customise your hostess’ style.
Your hostess’ three attributes can go down a rank if your hostess is stressed, but once they reach S rank they will stay put.
Akiyama Vs. The Pie Chart
Each shift, you’ll start by walking around the club and reading customer quotes. They’ll say exactly what they want to see in your hostess, relating to specific stats and attributes. I.e. “I only want to get drunk with a gorgeous girl”; “I find charisma to be the most attractive quality in a woman.” Akiyama will let you know when you’ve walked around enough.
Between walking the floor, you can customise and train your hostess. Customising relates to the pie chart stats, and training to the three ranked attributes. For customising, experimentation is key — the game doesn’t directly tell you which stats will be boosted by any change until it’s paid for. Item descriptions and names will give you hints, however. In Yakuza 3, manipulating the pie chart to give you a well-rounded hostess was far easier, but this time around, just hitting two of the four stats at once can be a challenge.
The customisation menu allows you to save outfits for later use, and this is something you should take serious advantage of. Sometimes you only need to hit one stat, but other times customers will want two different stats from your hostess, so experiment with outfits to try and find combinations that cover two. Save them for later use (and name them accordingly, unless your memory is spectacular — for example, “Cute and Refined”, “Flashy and Gorgeous”).
Customisation can increase motivation or stress, depending on whether your hostess likes the ensemble. Again, experimentation is key. You’ll unlock more items and options over time.
For the Fashionista trophy, buy one of each type of outfit for your hostess.
The Art Of Conversation
As well as customising each break period, you can also train your hostess. The training options, again, are the same as Yakuza 3’s. At first, you have three options: Looks 101, Trivia Drills, and Talking Tips; which are for Looks, Smarts, and Charisma, respectively. There’s also Free Time, which you should use if your hostess’ stress bar is looking too high (it also has a chance of increasing an attribute). Any option can fail, even Free Time, but varying up your training can help.
If your hostess is too stressed, she can skip shifts, decreasing her club ranking. If you’re playing in Premium Adventure, you’ll need to go to New Serena and skip time to have her return. However, if you’re in Akiyama’s chapter, you can just walk back in like after any other shift.
After a few shifts, you’ll unlock three more training options: Lecture, Relax, and Encourage. These all relate to Motivation and Stress. Lecture increases motivation, and can increase all of the attributes, but it will also increase stress significantly. Relax will lower both stress and motivation while Encourage will increase motivation.
Satisfying customer wants relating to attributes is harder in the early game when your hostess is low-ranked, but with training and S ranks, it becomes much easier. You might not need to train much towards the end, meaning you can focus primarily on customisation.
Get To The Top!
With all of that out of the way, now it just comes down to doing shift after shift, increasing stats, and finding good outfit combinations.
Around rank No.15, the club manager will tell you the hostess has disappeared. You can find them where you first recruited them, and after a motivational chat, they’ll return to the club.
You’ll be given the mission of getting ‘Super Service’ five times. Other than the one that opens a shift, Super Service can occur during any walking period — it’s a short, flashy cutscene more likely to happen with high hostess motivation and attributes, and delivering what the customers want.
To reach No.1, you’ll need three S-ranked attributes and frequent Super Services. Again, for convenience’s sake, you should have multiple saved outfits, with at least a couple that cover two different stats on the pie chart. The more bases you cover, the easier it’ll be.
As you get closer to your objective, progress can seem incremental, and you might have a bad shift every now and then, decreasing your rank — this can be reversed quickly, so don’t get discouraged. Keep messing around with outfit combinations if you hit a sales plateau and your hostess’ stats could be stronger.
Once you hit ¥150,000, your hostess will be No.1 and you’ve completed the quest. Your hostess will now be at the club for the other playable characters to visit, and you’ll get a coin you can pawn from the manager.
