Business Management
(click here to jump to "Top 50 and Beyond")
Once you have unlocked the Business Management minigame in chapter 5, you will be able to access (and even fully complete it) at any time. The following is a recap of the Top 100 Guide used in the story walkthrough. If you have already brought your Ichiban Confections into the top 100, then be sure to scroll down to the section marked "Top 50 and Beyond".
The Business Management minigame is by far the easiest way to farm money before you beat the game, which is especially important as weapon upgrades will get increasingly expensive in the later parts of the game.
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After reading a text box about how the Business Management minigame works, you will be taken to a menu and Eri will have a chat with you on how it works. For now, our only choice is to select "Open for Business", so please do so.
You will see an animation of a pixelated Kasuga running across the screen collecting money. To keep your sanity intact, hold 
to get through this quickly as a general rule, because you will be staring at this animation a lot moving forward. Your share price and ranking will noticeably drop, but do not worry; we are only going uphill from here!
Watch the scenes that inevitably follow. Remember the man who taught Kasuga how to use a smartphone in chapter 2? Yes that's right, our mysterious friend Nick Ogata is here to save the day. He will give you a small loan of 5 million yen. Talk about a fateful encounter! He does have a condition for you: Reach top 100 Share Price Ranking within 5 business periods. Let's prove to our generous friend that we are competent at managing a successful business. Talk to Eri again to continue.
Now, it's time for a "proper" tutorial on business management. From this menu, select "Properties", then "Assign". Follow these steps:
- Select Ichiban Holdings, and read the boxes that pop up on ability requirements and switching around your assigned employees.
- Select Ai-san (the current leader of the company). Select Tome Kamataki to make her the new leader.
- Select Old Man Hiro (the first member of the company). Swap him out for Ai-san.
- Select Furuya (the second member of the company). Swap him out for Omelette.
When you are finished, your screen should look like this (Eri will start talking to you automatically if you assigned the employees correctly):
You should be taken back to the main menu of the Business Management. Select "Employees", followed by "Employees" again. You will see that two out of the five current employees are highlighted, and we have no choice but to fire them for now. To do this, select an employee with 
and select "Termination" (the rightmost option). Confirm your choice for both employees.
Eri will urge you to open the business, but first let's make use of our loan and upgrade Ichiban Confections. To do this, go to "Properties" then "Upgrade". Select Ichiban Confections, then upgrade the following:
- Sales Volume to level 4
- Product Development to level 3
- Service to level 4
- Notability to level 3
When you are finished, your screen should look like this:
Back out to the main menu Business Management, then select "Open for Business". Watch your sales report be a positive result this time.
After some more scenes with Eri & co., you will automatically complete Substory 15: Ijincho's Safety Net. Hooray! And as a bonus, Omelette will become your newest Poundmate.
In order to continue the Business Management minigame, we will have to leave the room and re-enter it. If this is your first time leaving the room, then you will watch some story-related scenes and be required to walk back to Ichiban Confections:
Walk inside and talk to Eri; she will let you know that you have a shareholders' meeting coming up and give you a brief explanation on it. Also, when you enter the Business Management menu, you will be notified that you can now manage your properties, employees, and board room.
From the menu, select Board Room and read the explanation on Preparing for Shareholder Meetings if you'd like. However, the explanation is a little more complicated than it needs to be, so let's break this down in a way that makes sense.
While in the Board Room, press to Select Team. Notice that there are four slots to your team, and an employee can be assigned to each slot (the first three slots should automatically be filled for you). So, how do we decide on our team members? There are a few factors that you will want to pay attention to here:
- Icon colour. Every employee has an icon at the top left corner of their picture. There are three possible icon colours: Green, Blue, and Red. This is important because you will want at least one of each colour in your team of Board Members (so one employee with a green icon, one with a red icon, and one with a blue icon; the fourth employee can be any colour). It is important to keep your team balanced in this way.
- Charisma. This will determine the amount of damage that your employee can deal in a battle against a shareholder. A higher charisma is better.
- Command Cost. This will determine the cost, in points, for your character to launch an attack against a shareholder. A lower command cost is better.
Let's have a look at our first employee, Tome Kamataki:
As shown in this picture, she has a green icon. Her Charisma is 111, which is pretty high for this early part of the game! Her Command Cost is a mere 7, so she will be an ideal candidate to have on the team. Let's look at Omelette:
Our little chicken friend has a blue icon, making her unique from Tome and will help to balance out your team. Her Charisma is a little lower than Tome's, but her Command Cost is also lower, so you will be able to spam her attacks more freely. Omelette is equally a good employee for these early game shareholder meetings, so please hold onto her!
Unfortunately, Ai-san has a green icon, so our team is still missing a person with a red icon. Let's fix that now. Back out of the Board Room for now and select "Employees" in the main menu. Select "Recruit". Look for recruits that have red icons (there should be at least two of them). Hire Nishio (the one in the below screenshot):
His command cost is a little high, but he has great charisma to make up for it. In terms of red employees, he is the best one we can ask for right now.
Back out once and select "Employees". You might notice that each employee has a coloured smiley face on the bottom-right of their respective icons:
In the above screenshot, we have one employee with a green face, one with a grey face, and two with yellow face. Before every shareholder meeting, you will want to be sure that all of your employees have green smiley faces. To do this, simply press 
on this screen to perform "Auto Care". This will cost a little bit of your funds but it's worth keeping all of your employees happy. An employee who does not receive regular care can leave your company without much warning, so try to get into the habit of performing Auto Care before each meeting.
Now that everybody is happy, back out to the main menu and select "Board Room", then "Select Team". Go to the fourth slot on your team and add Nishio to it.
Back out once, and take a look at both your team and the Attending Shareholders for Next Meeting:
You may notice that the shareholders also have their own coloured icons and smiley faces (one is noticeably angry here). You don't have to memorize these because they will always be visible during the meetings; just know that they exist.
Speaking of memorization though, there are three things that you should remember no matter what. They are as follows:
- Red defeats Green.
- Green defeats Blue.
- Blue defeats Red.
If you have red-green color-blindness, you can also memorize it by the pictures on the icons: Person defeats Money. Money defeats Building. Building defeats Person. You can also use the following picture here as a reference if it helps (each icon points to the icon that they defeat):
Once you have this rock-paper-scissors-esque formula memorized, back out to the main menu and select Shareholder Meeting. You will have one last chance to confirm everything. Let's proceed. You will be introduced to the controls; make use of the 
button if you need to pause the meeting. Feel free to skim through the 8 pages of tips regarding the Shareholder Meetings if you'd like, but be assured that this will be a lot simpler than it looks.
The meeting will begin with a financial report; yours may look something like this:
The Support % (bottom circle) is the only thing you need to care about here. Starting off with a higher Support % is ideal, but it's not always possible, and you can still easily succeed at a shareholder meeting even if you start off with a low Support %. What truly matters is the Support % at the end of a meeting rather than the beginning. Ultimately, your goal is to end each meeting with at least 80% Support, and we will increase it by engaging in "combat" with the shareholders. Let's proceed so that we can see how this works.
You will see the the shareholders sitting in front of you. Select any one of the three (but you should probably target the angriest one first). He will begin speaking to you:
Notice the speech bubble that pops up. Do not pay attention to the words inside it; just focus on the colour. In this case, the speech bubble is red, so pick your employee that can defeat the colour red. In this case, it's your blue employee, Omelette. Select her once, and the speech bubble should now disappear. Now, let's look at the shareholder's icon colour:
In this case, the icon is blue, so finish him off by selecting one of your green employees. Continue selecting your green employee until his "health bar" depletes all the way and he sits down. When you defeat a shareholder, your Support % (bottom left) will increase, and there will be hearts flying out of the shareholder. Repeat this same tactic with the other shareholders until they are all defeated.
So, to summarize what you want to do:
- Select the colour employee that defeats the colour of the shareholder's speech bubble, then
- Select the colour employee that defeats the colour of the shareholder's icon.
Aside from that, here are some other tips to remember for your convenience.
You might notice a large number at the bottom of the screen:
Each time you use an employee (to "attack" a shareholder), their command cost will be subtracted from this number. However, this number will also slowly recover over the course of the meeting, so you can also wait a few seconds for it to refill. Just be sure to keep an eye on your shareholders' moods because they can become angry if you are too complacent about this.
Finally, you can also get Kasuga to issue an apology by pressing 
:
This deals a small amount of damage to every shareholder and even stuns them temporarily, and this also helps to refill your command points if you are running low.
Once you defeat all of the shareholders or the timer runs out, the meeting will end. If you are unable to defeat them all in time, take note in that you will still "succeed" with the meeting if your Support % at the bottom-left is at least 80%. Kasuga will also receive some money for himself at the end.
Congratulations! You have completed your first shareholder meeting. Over time, you will want to make improvements to your team, but this current setup can easily catapult you to the top 100 without any changes necessary. Let's continue to manage our business and reach the top 100 quickly.
Upon accessing the main menu, you will notice that debts can now be accessed. We actually do want to take out a loan for this next section, so go to "Debts" and read the explanation on Debts. Generally speaking, it's not recommended to take out loans due to the interest that needs to be paid back. However, we will be taking out just one loan, which should be both our first and last. Select "Bank" then "Smart Plan: 1,050,000 Yen Course". Confirm.
Now, in the main menu, go to Properties, then Upgrade. We are going to want to use about half of our loan to upgrade Ichiban Confections. Please upgrade the following parameters:
- Sales Volume to level 6
- Product Development to level 5
- Service to level 5
- Notability to level 4
When you are finished, Ichiban Confections should look like this:
If done correctly, you should have at least 5 million yen in funds right now, or be very close to it. Now, in the main menu, select Open for Business. From here on, you will receive random events after each run. Up until we reach the top 100, we're going to want to follow some strict guidelines on these, so in the meantime:
- If there's an opportunity to hire a new employee, do not hire them.
- Decline all investment opportunities except the ones that say "Increase notability/Promote goods and services" (they cost 5 million yen). More on this in a bit.
- If one of your current employees asks for a raise, give it to them.
- Omelette may appear on the TV, which will automatically give you 5 million yen in funds. This is extremely helpful! Go Omelette!
After this run ends, you are guaranteed to receive this opportunity:
Advertising is always a good thing. It will double your sales for the entirety of this period, up until the next shareholder's meeting. We wanted the loan in order to cover the costs of this, so please purchase the commercial timeslot. Open for Business when you are ready.
In the main menu, select "Employees", then "Employees" again. Press to perform auto-care on everyone. Then, return to the main menu and select "Open for Business". After this run ends, run the business again.
Be sure to perform auto-care on your employees immediately before the Shareholder Meeting. Use the tips mentioned in the previous meeting to complete this shareholder meeting (make sure to save beforehand if you are not feeling confident). You will want to have at least an 80% approval rating by the end of the meeting.
Now, continue to run the business, and be sure to perform auto-care on your employees every two business runs or immediately before a shareholder meeting. This period will be a little slower than the last due to the loan that we need to finish paying back, but you should still be making a net profit for each run. If you do happen to get the Omelette event (though it's random), you can invest some of it into Ichiban Confections.
After your next Shareholder Meeting, you will finally be among the top 100! This calls for a celebration! Nick Ogata will contact you and offer you another loan of 50 million yen, and a promise to make it into the top 50. This next step of the game opens up so many new doors for us. You will now have the ability to own 4 properties and 25 employees. Kasuga will also unlock a new battle skill called Stack Slap, which is a... pretty interesting attack, certainly not the best, but it deals a decent amount of blunt damage.
Top 50 and Beyond
Once you have returned to Ichiban Confections, talk to Eri to get started.
It's important that the first thing you do is use Nick's funds to maximize the sales volume of Ichiban Confections (you will still have plenty of money left over):
That aside, the rest of the minigame is fairly straightforward from here on. Here are a few tips to assist you:
- Next time you leave the minigame, you may notice that there are some people on the Yokohama streets with money symbols above their heads. Talk to them to recruit them to your company (some may have extra requirements that they want you to meet, but most of them will join immediately).
- Try to always have at least 5 million yen in your Management Funds by the end of each period so that you will always be able to cover the cost of advertising when it shows up. Never reject advertising!
- Investment opportunities (in anything besides advertising) are entirely up to your discretion. Personally, I waited until the late game before taking any chances with them.
- It is now a wise idea to hire new people, and as many people as possible. Basically, what happens is that if you choose not to hire someone immediately, there's a chance that you won't have the opportunity to hire them again for a long time. However, what you can do instead is hire and then immediately fire them so that they will always be available to re-hire any time you need them. You do lose some of your funds from doing this, but it makes the game much faster and more convenient.
- If the affinity icon of the employee matches the affinity icon of the company, then that employee will be able to more effectively manage that company. As an example of an employee and a company that have a matching affinity:
- Buy new properties (that you can afford to invest money into), and let them carry you until you can eventually replace them with more profitable companies. When this happens, you can then sell your old properties. You will have plenty of time to buy 10 properties over the course of your business career, which will earn you the following achievement:
- Aggressive Executive
Bought up over 10 companies.
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- Start promoting your employees! This will make shareholder meetings much easier as a levelled up employee will deal more damage to the shareholders. To promote an employee, from the main menu, select Employees -> Employees -> Choose the employee you want to promote -> Notice. This will allow you to increase your employee's level cap from 5 to 10:
- After this, level up your employees faster by training them. From the main menu, select Employees -> Employees -> Choose the employee you want to train -> Training Course:
- There is no longer a reason to continue taking out loans. You won't have to visit that section ever again as long as you spend your management funds carefully.
- Be sure to continue performing Auto-care on your employees! Eri will warn you if an unhappy employee is thinking about quitting, but it's still a good idea to get into the habit of caring for them yourself.
- If you speak to Omelette exactly twenty-one times, she will lay an egg for you. Good birb! :)
When you defeat Nakanowatari in the shareholder meetings and reach the top 50, you will unlock the following achievement:
- New Digs!
Moved Kasuga's company into a new office.
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Defeating Saiki in the shareholder meetings will push you into the top 20. Kasuga will also learn the skill "Fat Stack Slap".
Defeating Misono in the shareholder meetings will push you into the top 10. Kasuga will also learn the skill "Ultimate Stack Slap".
Defeating Chairman Hosho in the shareholder meetings will earn you the following achievement:
- Presidential Power
Raised Kasuga's company into the top company in Yokohama.
Kasuga will also learn the skill "Essence of Orbital Laser". This is an incredibly powerful Magic Electric skill that heavily damages all enemies, and is without a doubt the strongest Electric skill in the whole game (offset by its high MP cost). Regardless, it's well worth using!
Reaching number 1 in Business Management will also max out Eri's bond level, and she will learn the skill "Tag Team: Twin Fists". The following achievement will unlock:
- Friends From Work
Maxed Eri's Bond Level.
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Eri can also be hired in Business Management; she is a UR ranked employee.
For the final achievement, Kasuga will need to have a total of 10 billion yen in management funds. It's not all doom and gloom, however; each Shareholder Meeting from here on will give you 3 million yen in pocket change, so there's still an incentive to work towards this achievement:
- Make That Money
Exceed 10 billion yen in capital for Kasuga's company.
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Congratulations! You have unlocked all of the Business Management achievements, and made Kasuga a successful president. Well done!
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7. Bonds (Drink Links)
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