Yakuza: Like a Dragon business management guide (2024)

Minigames are plentiful in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but if you’re looking to make money and even unlock a secret party member, get ready to spend some time with the Ichiban Confectionary business management minigame. Like other Yakuza minigames players will need to learn the ways of the trade to get to the top.

This Yakuza: Like a Dragon guide provides anything and everything you’ll need to know to make a successful business in no time, netting you millions of yen and a new party member. This includes a listing of the most profitable properties by Rank, a breakdown of the shareholder meetings mechanic, and best employees by Rank.

Table of contents

Most profitable properties by Rank

• Rank 200 - 151
• Rank 100 - 51
• Rank 50 - 21
• Rank 20 - 11
• Rank 10 - 1

Shareholder Meetings

• Make sure your employees are well taken care of
• Color attributes matter
• Pay attention to a unit’s charisma and action cost
• Level up your employees
• Hold out for the Big Apology

Best employees by Rank

• N
• R
• SR
• SSR
• UR

Most profitable properties by Rank

Rank 200 - 151

From Rank 200 - 151, you should invest in Ichiban Confectionery as much as you possibly can. This property can easily net you above 3 million yen every time you open your business, using the basic units you’re given at the start of the minigame. Invest in Ichiban Confectionery, and you will be rewarded with easy money and easy net gain. You won’t have to invest in other businesses and can save up for more profitable properties as well when you hit the next Rank.

Rank 100 - 51

The following three options will maximize your profit going forward into Rank 100 - 51. R and N employees will get you by for the most part, which means you can focus on investing in your business. Remember that upgrading your business is just as good, if not better, than employing SR characters in some cases. Focus on leveling up and increasing the Ranks of your employees to prepare them for Shareholder Meetings, since this is where you’ll want to focus your attention while climbing Ranks.

• Yokodo Bookstore — Maximum Profit 2,189,790 yen
• Mr. Brillio — Maximum Profit 1,624,330 yen
• Jibikia Picture Gallery — Maximum Profit 1,673,830 yen

Rank 50 - 21

Trade out as many of your previous properties as possible to invest in Cat’s Servant, Karaoke GonGon, and White Flag. These properties are great to keep, even in Rank 20 - 11 as you climb the ladder. This is where having some SR employees will matter, but R employees can still put in great work. Upgrading these facilities, similarly to how you upgraded employees for Rank 100 - 50 means you can keep labor costs low and slowly rake in that money. Remember, it isn’t about going fast. It’s about keeping consistent, keeping your employees happy, and excelling in Shareholder Meetings.

• Cat’s Servant — Maximum Profit 15,637,400 yen
• Karaoke GonGon — Maximum Profit 10,486,590 yen
• White Flag — Maximum Profit 7,863,420 yen

Rank 20 - 11

We’re hitting the endgame now! In our experience, we didn’t have to invest in any of these properties to make it successfully to Rank 10 — 1. What mattered was building up enough yen to grab SSR employees and SR employees, as they’ll start to show up more frequently. Just keep grinding at the wheel, and if you have enough money to upgrade without going into debt, feel free to do so. Just remember to keep your employees happy and have enough extra funds to snatch up any SSR units.

• Shokichi Camera — Maximum Profit 36,160,0020 yen
• Takumi Architectural Design — Maximum Profit 35,120,0020 yen
• Waipu Productions — Maximum Profit 42,800,570 yen
• PDCA Trading Company — Maximum Profit 40,152,740 yen

Rank 10 - 1

If you can, immediately purchase Dianthus. You’ll be making more yen than you’ll know what to do with at this point if you’ve been steadily accumulating your wealth. Invest in SSR employees that have high stats focused on what will keep your businesses afloat. However, SR units can work in a pinch as long as you upgrade your facilities.

That’s really the trick to the entire thing — upgrading your facilities. Doing so means that your businesses can practically run themselves. Keep grabbing SSR employees when they show up for Shareholder Meetings, but don’t overextend and empty your wallet just to have a shiny group of SSRs when SR and even Rs can do the trick if leveled up enough.

• Dianthus — Maximum Profit 55,237,830 yen
• Media Barter — Maximum Profit 44,843,470 yen
• Grande Blu Marino — Maximum Profit 41,903,930 yen
• Stonefish — Maximum Profit 40,752,680 yen
• Industrial Hall Building — Maximum Profit 34,450,960 yen

Shareholder Meetings

This is, without a doubt, the most important part of the Ichiban Confectionery business management. Without holding successful Shareholder Meetings, your crawl to the top will be a slow and somewhat unsuccessful one. Below we’ll outline the best strategies going in Shareholder Meetings and what to keep in mind when boss fights eventually begin to show up.

Make sure your employees are well taken care of

Never go into a Shareholder Meeting without your employees being in the green — make sure that the little icon in their profile is a green, smiling icon.

Happy employees mean that you’ll get a bonus to support during Shareholder Meetings and that can make or break an encounter if you’re not quick on the draw. You can tend to your employees needs in the Employees menu. Using the Auto Care function is fine, and you can always manually provide bonuses to your employees if you’re trying to save cash.

Color attributes matter

What do the red, green, and blue icons next to an employees rareness mean? That is an indication of what “type” of unit they are. If you’ve played gacha games, you probably know what this means. However, if you’re unfamiliar, this means that certain unit colors are more effective or weaker against other specific unit colors. Use the flowchart below help understand the strengths and weaknesses of each specific unit type.

Graphic: Kazuma Hashimoto

This is something to keep in mind when dealing damage to unhappy shareholders. Always take advantage of type weaknesses and strengths.

However, when confronting an angry shareholder, if their shield is of a specific color (either red, blue, or green), always use that color. Swap back to their type weakness once the shield is broken, and win them over with your charisma.

Pay attention to a unit’s charisma and action cost

There are plenty of different employees you can hire in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. However, when it comes to Shareholder Meetings, pay very close attention to a unit’s charisma stat and action cost. (You can find those marked on the screenshot below.)

Ideally, you should take units that have an extremely high charisma — upward of 500 charisma can net you easy wins in shareholder meetings, especially when the damage multipliers kick in — and low action cost.

Image: Ryu ga Gotoku Studio/Sega via Polygon

As you can see in the image above, Ikari is an SR unit with a charisma of 550 and an action cost of 5. This is great! The low action cost means you can knock some angry shareholders out in a single turn or break shields with a maximum of 15 Action Points.

Level up your employees

With any business, investment goes a long way and investing in your employees always pays off. Rarity isn’t as much of an issue as you might imagine, with some R employees capable of carrying you well into the endgame. However, they’re only capable of doing this with a fair bit of investment. Make sure to promote your employees and get them to level 30 before you reach Rank 20. This will make the meetings infinitely easier.

Hold out for the Big Apology

Apologizing to shareholders can easily turn the tide. Ideally, save Ichiban’s apology for when things get dire. This means holding out until you can use the Level 3 Apology, which will not only stun your unhappy shareholders and chunk down some of their hit points, but it will also restore Action Points if you’re running low.

Best employees by Rank

The list below is a compilation of some of the best employees in Yakuza: Like a Dragon sorted by rank for the Ichiban Confectionary business management minigame.

Most of the employees listed below are obtained at random. Keep around 3,000,000 yen or more in your reserves to immediately scout SR and SSR characters when they begin to appear at random around Rank 50 - 21. SSR characters will appear at a higher frequency from Rank 20 - 11.

The characters below will help you knock out the Ichiban Confectionary business management minigame within the first five chapters of the story. These employees may or may not work for you, depending on how much you enjoy min-maxing or at what pace you want to proceed. Completing the business management minigame took around 2.5 hours of consistent play with the characters listed below.

N

• Tome Kamataki
• Ai-san
• Omelette

R

• Hanayama (clear substory 18)
• Ryoma
• Jang
• Miyakuni

SR

• Da Silva
• Ikari (clear substory 11)
• Yun (Ijincho)
• Iroha Yanagi (clear substory 50)
• Manae Miyakoshi (clear substory 49)
• Sumire (clear substory 14)

SSR

• Kamiyama
• Techno Yuta
• Director Shouzu
• Gonzaemon

UR

• Eri Kamataki (Reach Rank 1 in the Ichiban Confectionery business management mini-game)