Let's face it, this game ain't no Final Fantasy V and we have enough guides on how to optimize stuff.

I personally always try to make my runs unique, or go all-in on a particular idea, and games like Yakuza LAD allow for such creative endeavors. I had a lot of fun making "themed" runs for the game LISA: The Painful, for example, choosing party members based on an idea rather than utility, so I was thinking of doing something similar here.

In this guide, perhaps not in the most unique iteration ever of this trend of mine, I want to go over what the "worst" jobs and "worst" possible party members to have are, sticking to a couple of criteria and definitions that I arbitrarily settled on after pulling them out of my ass.

This is not meant to be a challenge run or a way to make the game "hard" necessarily, as you can find way more challenging setups (e.g.: Walk around with no items, never heal, only use one party member, never upgrade etc.), but you can call it whatever you want. I'm going more for a cross between that and a "theme".

In short, just for fun, let's try to take the worst setup for every character and play with it however we want, including optimally. Get that Freelancer Ichiban (spoilers) the best armor in the game, if you want; you'll probably need it.

The ground rules for a run with these character, or to make this "setup" make sense, would ideally be:
- Stick to these jobs only, without leveling up others (save for before you can get access to the respective job on the respective character, that is, or if you want to try this out in NG+ or Premium, I'm not your mom)
- Stick to the four characters that will be listed, and never use the "Tag Out" function
- Deny yourself the option to equip weapons with an elemental damage type you do not already have access to as that character, but allow yourself to upgrade what's upgradable within that realm

It means five things:

• Least fitting job for a character's base stats (as in: not influenced by any other levelled-up job.)
  
• Least utility of a job on its own demerit
  
• Least useful party member on their own demerit
  
• Funny
  
• All of the above consistently for all scenarios, including a hypothetical NG run aiming for this setup, NG+, Premium, and maybe TFMT (haven't tried my luck yet, don't ask, but I suspect it wouldn't work)

Also:

• I spent some time researching stats & numbers partly gathered by other people, and also reviewing opinions of people and their individual runs in the game. Impossible to credit them all or measure exactly how much I was influenced by these, but naturally worth mentioning. EDIT: I unlazied myself and credited people at the end. Hurray for grey areas intermittent morality.
  
  
• No, I won't be covering the Bodyguard job, which is regarded as the worst job in the game overall, particularly in-depth. I think the job does suck on its own merit and would probably be horrible on some characters, but since the job works like a Berskerer-type class, there is always the off-chance that on any character it will accidentally turn out useful when on low HP.
  
  While it probably sucks for the majority of the time contextually speaking, just because the above technicality is true on paper, because of damage type coverage issues, and for originality's sake too I admit, I won't be including it for anyone. I'd rather go for a job that is just "consistently sucking" than something that is "abysmal but sometimes very good", and besides the job's terribleness is debatable.
  
  As a side note, when actively thinking about it, I believe only two characters can make Bodyguard "as bad as possible", and they have slightly more appealing options for s**tposting purposes.

Why: Can't get rid of him. Luckily for us, this will prove to be good(bad).



Why: Because he is very squishy and that gives him an advantage(disadvantage) over anyone else trying to (reverse-)minmax themselves.

We definitely want someone who dies a lot on this team.



Why: Beholder of possibly the worst unique Job in the game which, get this, also happens to not synergize well with its respective character. Gets a free entry pass.



Why: This one is more complicated. You could argue he has very good defense under all circumstances and therefore, opposite to Nanba, no matter which job he picks, he will always have at least one consistent advantage... I mean, disadvantage. (this is getting old, I'm just gonna stop talking like it's opposite day for now)

However, at higher levels (Premium Adventure/NG+), getting killed is way easier, and this gives Adachi the possibility to specialize in something he's really bad at while his advantage gets overshadowed in the long run. I think.

There's also damage type coverage-related reasons for picking him that will be specified later.



Why: Forget for a second that he's kinda good at everything, very good at what he does as Hitman, has great coverage, and gets to attack more than the others on average, which already disqualifies him.

The real reason for not picking him is that he's too cool for us. If high school has taught me anything at all, it's to never associate with attractive people.


Why: I've thought about this guy a bit, regardless of the 1000th person shouting in my ear "Did you know that he has the highest attack stat in the g-" yeah whatever shut up. On a more relevant note: to me, it seems like he doesn't particularly suck at anything.

Also I don't like him.


Why: Believe it or not, her max stats are not particularly bad at anything. This is no country for all rounders.

For reference, looking at all characters at level 99 with job level 99 in every job and comparing their base jobs, Eri ends up at a whopping 684 Healing, in a game where the designated healer is usually Saeko, at 643 Healing. Eri also reaches 676 attack and 688 Agility, respectively "more than" and "almost as much as" freaking Hitman Joon-gi Han.

She does have worse Magic and MP than anyone else, including Adachi, but in the case of Eri VS Adachi we are talking about 4 negligible Magic stat points, versus a sea of advantages for Eri and less access to some jobs that would make her as potentially bad as Adachi.

Still, Host Eri is a legit contender, but more about why we won't go for that that in the jobs section. Also, more about why we might actually have to use her in the BONUS ROUND section.


It seems we will be using the four OGs of the story. If you think that's poetic, just wait until you hear about Adachi's role in this party.

Job: Freelancer*

Why: "Did you know that Freelancer is the worst job because Ichiban cannot equip any wea-" yeah yeah shut up, we get it, but there's more to it.

Mostly, the coverage part: it's a pretty redundant job that only has Blunt damage. This earns it extra "badness" points.

Ichiban happens to be one of those pesky "all rounders", capable of being good or decent at everything; this means that restricting his arsenal and literally removing his main weapon is a blessing when it comes to making the only mandatory character as bad as possible.

Some of the skills are not even that bad (Suplex is goated), but again, we are not here to do a 1HP challenge run necessarily. We take what's good about what's bad. We are going for "meme", not "fried meme".

You might have noticed I put a little asterisk next to the job; this is because, as you know, our boi Ichiban is a special character, and gets skills through two other means other than jobs: Personality Traits, and the Business Management Minigame.

I won't ask you to slalom between substories and achievements in a way that avoids raising Ichiban's personality stats, as it is literally inevitable (walking gives you progress on one of these, for crying out loud) and would make the game unwieldy and not fun; I will however strongly advise to either not pursue the Business minigame, as Essence of Orbital Strike is very good and gives damage type coverage to a character with decent MP, or to manually restrict yourself from using the skills related to the Business minigame, even though I find that to not be a particularly elegant solution.

Still, in my mind, those business skills are perfectly avoidable gameplay-wise, whereas the personality-bound ones are more of a headache to think about in this sense, so the above mentioned inelegant solution doesn't bother my OCD as much.

As a side note, I personally love the attack animations on this job, so I'm glad it gets to be included in this idiot plan.


Job: Barmaid

Why: Because it sucks in the "unremarkable" kind of way. There is not much to it, really: does not get too many types of damage, and is essentially a physical/debuff oriented job on a character with low Attack (lowest in the game, actually) who should otherwise be thinking of Magic and Healing and breaking the game as Idol.

One interesting factor to think about and to keep in mind, not just for Saeko but for everyone else in this list, is how being more melee-oriented essentially increases the odds to get you (the character) in trouble during fights, as enemies will more gladly target you if you are within reach save for some targetting quirks of some enemies.


Job: Musician and then Foreman as soon as available

Why: There's a lot of cases you could make for Nanba's worst job.

One such case could be "make him an Enforcer, because he sucks at tanking", but why mitigate how bad one aspect of Nanba is, when you can maximize the amount of bad both stats-wise and contextually?

Besides, you will have to actively play the game and try to win, which means as a player you will simply avoid playing Nanba as a tank to mitigate this problem. This will still mean you will have a mediocre attacker (with Paralysis Prongs, which is one of the best skills in the game, you coward), but it can be made much worse.

Another thing I have highly debated between me and myself is, of course, Nanba as a Bodyguard. There's a lot to say about this and that will be said in later sections too, and I would almost go as far as to say it might be the second-best s**tpost option, but it has one dealbreaker in my opinion: unlike the proposed alternatives, Bodyguard actively improves itself by adding Attack to Nanba the more it's ranked up. We can do worse.

Nanba seems to have the lowest HP, and Defense out of the seven available party members, and the second-lowest attack only by a meager 6 points (that award goes to Saeko). So, why not give him the job that:
- Wants to mitigate Nanba's problem, like the Enforcer, but not as optimally, by adding HP and MP instead of HP and Defense as the job levels go up, and requiring Nanba to buff his defense with skills, wasting turns instead.
- Does NOT allow Nanba to sacrifice his nonexistent defense and increase an ally's.
- Requries Nanba to get up close, increasing the odds he will die.
- Has a number of damaging skills (once again, with poor damage type coverage) that require Nanba to charge up for one turn, drastically increasing the odds that he will die without contributing to the fight.
- Can only resort to throwing explosives for fire damage, likely turning out to be redundant as Nanba's Homeless Guy job already grants a fire spell at relatively low levels (if you happened to get there).

Admittedly, this idea I read from somewhere on reddit, but the more I thought about it, the more I found more flaws(GOOD) in it. Truly highly (not)recommended for Nanba. Love how it fits with the fact that he's the one party member who's the least athletic in the story, too.

There is one thing that throws a wrench into our plans here: Megaton Throw (on a character with plenty of MP, too). This is a surprisingly good spell stapled on Foreman, not only providing utility in most circumstances, but also benefitting from Nanba's Magic stat unfortunately. This might not make it the "consistently worse" option, but we'll see if we can find something worse (leave a comment!). Do keep in mind that if this is all done correctly, we won't get too many bonus Magic points through other jobs, at the very least.

Finally, keep in mind that during NG, Nanba does not get access to Foreman up until way later in the game, due to his Drink Link progression being locked behind a certain story chapter. More about this in later sections.


Job: Fortuneteller

Why: Fortuneteller is by no means a bad job. If you have tried to play this game casually or optimally, you might have stumbled upon the idea that it's always good to level it up on at least one of your buddies, to get access to lightning damage and a very reliable resurrection spell.

The debuffing aspect of the job is not bad either, and it offers some decent support. Surely, it is not a bad idea to have this role on a tanky character, right?

That is somewhat correct, as the Adachi-Fortuneteller combination is not bad, but if you start thinking about some details, it is worse than how it might appear on paper:
- Your tankiest character will be the most ranged character of all, essentially minimizing the odds that he will be taking damage in someone else's stead, wasting most of his own potential unless choosing to strategically use the basic attack, of all things, as a Fortuneteller.
- Adachi has the second lowest Magic and the worst Healing in the game, both essential stats for this job.
- Adachi has the lowest MP in the game, minimizing the amount of times you'll be able to use those few things that shine about the Fortuneteller job.
- As stated before, the whole "tanky" business might have diminishing returns when fights in the game get to very high levels.

My favorite thing about this combination, and what sways me towards keeping him with such a "overall good" job (in a vacuum), however, is how Adachi fails as a Fortuneteller even outside of the job aspect:


EDIT: One unfortunate thing I didn't think about is that Adachi sadly gets his taunting ability immediately, and it is shared with all jobs by default. This makes him kinda convenient in any case and throws a wrench into the whole "he won't tank" plan, but at least he will tank worse via getting awful stat gains from Fortuneteller.

This section is a work in progress, these are all worse(better) imo so for now I'm just throwing out some ideas to see what sticks:



I know I said I wouldn't cover Bodyguard, but for Nanba in particular, this one begs the question of what's the worst approach:
- Foreman even though it gets a very good magic spell, while not allowing Nanba to grow with extra stats but still allowing his highest stat to sort of shine.
- Bodyguard even though it starts increasing Nanba's attack, but at least his magic stat never gets to shine, and we unfortunately also add the Blade damage type to the party's arsenal.


I've seen multiple people diss this job; understandable. I personally always found it alright; it might be one of the worse ones when compared to others, and especially when fitting it in our idiot plan and realizing it removes our only access to Lightning damage (disregarding Orbital Laser, see above); however, this job still at the very least underlines some of Adachi's strong points by using his Attack stat and giving him a toolset to take advantage of his tankiness by taunting enemies and whatnot. This is all stuff we do not want, imo.


Just leaving this here because it's worth considering that Ichiban's death, unlike other characters, means Game Over, and a bad job based on low HP gimmicks might just be a worthy s**tpost idea. Still, I think it would take way too much advantage of his high damage stat, and add the Blade damage type to the party, which we somehow avoided.

It's honestly very tempting; aside from Attack, Ichiban also gets no further HP and MP to abuse the only good things he would otherwise get out of Foreman, while getting some relatively pointless Dexterity point and, something we never stopped to consider, losing "Enemy Area" or "All Enemy" attacks altogether.

Damn, I guess I really should have considered this after all.

Still: one entire new damage category, the arguments from my premise to this guide, and also (technically) the utility of the higher tier weapons that cause status effects are still driving me towards "no" on this one, even though you could say the same of Fortuneteller Adachi.


This is actually, chronologically, the last thing I'm writing on this guide, since it came to me at random when re-reading this whole thing: I suppose Adachi has terrible healing, and exactly in the same way Musician does for Nanba, ranking up this job will only give Adachi marginally useless stats.

Still, this would probably be way better support than Fortuneteller while also giving Adachi some CDs (Blade) to throw and guitars to smash using his not-the-worst-more-like-middle-of-the-pack Attack stat. An interesting option imo, but I admit I like the theming of the other one better.



I'm very wary of giving this team any sort of Ice Damage, but to be fair, this would have less utility than Fortuneteller (resurrecting party members), while still focusing mostly on Adachi's poor magic damage. Something to consider.


As said before, this is a tempting choice due to Eri being the worst at Magic in the game; however, the Host job is pretty good and it offers Ice and Fire damage coverage to the character, not to mention it can still somewhat benefit from Eri's high attack for some specific skills.


I have done zero research on this, but isn't it the case that Dealer depends on the Attack stat, and Saeko has access to it with the lowest attack in the game? Still, too much damage type variety imo. Not enough of a s**tpost, but some might disagree.


Go wild, there's a million ways to die; I made my case for Foreman, but it's not entirely stats-based and is more like for the potential to be a sitting duck the job itself gives you, but I guess you could argue a player can actively avoid using those specific attacks, so...?


You might be thinking that this is something some people might even want to do for the True Final Millennium Tower or something, so how can it be bad?

But remember: we are going off of "least stat upgrades possible" too, giving this a different meaning altogether.

This one I think is a solid contender for memes. If the whole thing about Foreman Nanba is redundancy and maximizing the amount of idle turns on paper (less in practice, but still), then it just follows that having everyone in the party be a Foreman and picking the three party members with the three lowest Attack stats would be dumb enough to (not)work, right?

Saeko can't be a Foreman but she stays in this scenario to keep the damage types to a minimum (Joon-gi Han and Eri might ruin this), and to keep company to our lowest Attack stat characters as the literal lowest one, (Zhao would ESPECIALLY ruin this)

Still, to be fair, I think Ichiban and Adachi benefit too much from this role despite everything, especially since it adds HP to the two characters that need it the most (while instead trapping Nanba into a constant pointless improvement of HP and MP that won't save him from impending doom).

(Short sidenote: Adachi and Joon-gi Han are actually tied for the attack stat; however, in practice, Joon-gi Han is way better and we all know how and why; just leaving this note here in case a knowitall shows up to tell me how I could have replaced Saeko or Adachi with Fore-gi Man).

Another thing that deters me from actually considering this setup is how I have actually seen some people beat the True Final Millennium Tower with it (including Nanba in it!); now, this is not necessarily a point in its favor, as we are talking about something different than training in all relevant jobs and then picking Foreman, we are talking about keeping everything else relevant to a minimum too, but it still shows the class has some utility, especially with Megaton Throw, which even benefits from Nanba's Magic stat, but that's something we already discussed.


The official meme setup that I don't wanna go into because it's a bit boring, but must be considered as a solid alternative, with its poor damage coverage and conditional (yet, actual) advantages.

aka: "What is the BEST weapon for the WORST job that avoids adding damage type coverage to a character?"


As it turns out, for these specific four jobs, there is no need to avoid "the best weapon" in the arsenal, as none of them give us extra coverage which, as per my arbitrary ruleset, I would have preferred to avoid.

Sick.

This is also a big reason to go with this specific four-man setup and not with the lesser recommended options; some of them will force you to stop at a sub-optimal weapon, making the run go from meme to borderd the frustrating at higher levels, which again is not what we want.

Also, speaking of those lesser recommended options, for good measure:


So, turns out, most if not all jobs don't really have a "best weapon that also happens to give them a new damage type they did not have before"...

...although, and imma be real with you, I spent a long time trying to figure out what the hell "Magic Damage" is in this game, as it is directly mentioned in the Elegant Pouch description, its existence is maybe hinted at by the fact that non-elemental magic attacks exist (e.g.: Pigeon Raid), and there is no explanation about this anywhere nor does it appear on Sujidex data anywhere for reference. It seems, according to some sources, it might simply be physical attacks (which of the three though?!) that scale off of the magic stat, or maybe attacks that assume the damage type of your equipped weapon.

If anyone knows, please share the knowledge; until then, the Elegant Pouch item should be considered as pending for review.

So, to recap, these are pretty much the damage types we get with our party of dumbasses:

Available:

• Blunt (Freelancer, Freelancer*, Barmaid, Fortuneteller, Foreman)
  
• Fire (Barmaid, Foreman)
  
• Lightning (Freelancer*, Fortuneteller)

Missing:

• Blade
  
• Gun
  
• Ice

What the ♥♥♥♥ is this even:

• Magic

This is how many Sujimon are weak to the elements that we will have available:

• Blunt: 63/252
  
• Fire: 91/252
  
• Lightning: 104/252

This is how many Sujimon are weak to the elements that won't be available to us:

• Blade: 73/252
  
• Gun: 24/252
  
• Ice: 107/252

There's a lot of overlap between these numbers that is unaccounted for, but it's difficult to go in-depth about the overall utility of these. Not just because of the overlap (enemies with multiple weaknesses), but in general, because Sujimon are not evenly distributed throughout the game.

So, even though our numbers might be looking "good", and even though the utility of Lightning damage is undeniable:

• To reduce the variety of damage types that one can access with these characters, some compromises have to be made; we can't exactly replace "Blunt" with "Gun", as characters with access to "Gun" damage will also have Blunt, etc. etc.
  
  
• The numbers are pretty close.
  
  
• Ice is an interesting case; at least in my personal experience, it seems to be the weakness of particularly powerful Sujimon (and no, I'm not talking about you-know-who). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, as this is just my impression, reinforced by skimming through the list of all those Sujimon that are week to Ice as of 5 minutes before I typed this sentence. Might be confirmation b-ice.
  
• Always speaking from personal experience, Blunt damage seems to become annoyingly resisted to the more you progress through the game, and it will be the most used type of damage in this party.

By having these four characters in our party, we will have the following resistances across all characters:

• Rage (Adachi)
  
• Fear (Adachi, Saeko)
  
• Sleep (Adachi)
  
• Cold (Nanba)
  
• Poison (Nanba)
  
• Silence (Saeko)
  
• Drunk (Saeko if we don't count recklessly drinking in pubs and restaurants)

Missing resistances from the party:

• Stun
  
• Burn
  
• Paralysis
  
• Charm (Joon-gi Han)
  
• Brainwash (Joon-gi Han)
  
• Bleeding (Zhao)

As the most debilitating statuses are the ones that remove agency from your character, it is worth noting that:

• By default, it is always possible for a worst-case scenario where everyone is affected by Stun or Paralysis.
  
• Ichiban and Nanba have a high chance to be affected by the mind-altering statuses as they resist none of them, increasing the odds that 50% of the team can get disabled.
  
• Charm and Brainwash, like Stun, are unresisted by our entire party setup thanks to the exclusion of Joon-gi Han, increasing the odds of full party disables

If you want to make the worst best combination of jobs and characters:

• Don't change your party members
  
  
• Don't use Tag Out
  
  
• Don't use Business Management skills with Ichiban
  
  
• Don't level up any Jobs other than the ones specified below
  
  
• Don't give your characters weapons that add a damage type they do not already have access to, even though you will quickly realize you will not want to do that in any case
  
  
• Ichiban should be Freelancer because not having a weapon sucks ass: at least you get unblockables and cool animations.
  
  
• Adachi should be Fortuneteller because it keeps him as a ranged character when he shouldn't be, and focuses on his worst attributes: at least you have limited access to Lightning damage and reliable resurrection.
  
  
• Saeko should be Barmaid because it capitalizes on her worst stats and gets limited utility and damage type coverage. At least she can provide some support.
  
  
• Nanba should be Foreman because fire damage on him is redundant, physical damage on him is the second most terrible, and charging attacks increase the odds he will die in the least useful way as he is the squishiest character.
  
  
• Nanba should be some other awful job up until the point he gets access to Foreman if you're on NG. You can pick Musician for worse long term stat gains or Bodyguard for short term terribleness.
  
  
• You are free to minmax anything else, these are not meant for an extreme challenge run or an impossible meme run.

You will never believe this, but Foreman is actually the last unlockable job for Nanba (LMOA), and Fortuneteller is Adachi's last unlockable job (SBLOMOA). It's like the devs knew something.

This creates some problems if you want to make a "pure" run with this setup; you will have to wait a long time before Adachi and Nanba will be able to really shine.

There's also the opposite problem: by the time you are in Premium Adventure or NG+, you are already very likely to have at least gained some undesirable stats or skills with your characters.

This doesn't really need to be perfect, do whatever the hell you want, but if you want to be anal about it:

• Make sure to minimize relevant stat gains for Nanba. His job/character combo is probably going to be the worst one, so I'd say prioritize him not getting any beefier than he has to.
  
  For example, I think keeping him as Musician is the thing that does less damage in the long run, as it will not give him any permanent damaging spells of a new type, and will increase his MP and Dexterity which are not going to make too much of a difference in the long run.
  
  I know, I know: this sounds like a great opportunity to have Nanba have both of the meme jobs, meaning turning him into a Bodyguard until we get him up to Foreman. It would even be rather fitting that he'd get yet another cross-job skill that forces him to charge up for a turn just to scrounge up some more bonus attack!
  
  However, keep in mind he will need to stay Bodyguard for quite some time in that case, which might end up giving him a Blade type skill, increasing the party's type coverage. This is because Nanba's Drink Link won't progress past Bond Level 2 until the part of the story where he leaves the party and comes back.
  
  More importantly, however, as already discussed, Bodyguard is really tempting but can in fact turn out to be useful at times, and will in fact increase Nanba's attack with its stats gain. My idea of "worst possible job" takes this into account: all the jobs Nanba should get must ensure that the correct stats (aka: Attack) do NOT grow. HP, MP and Dexterity can sound nice at first, but won't help in the long run to make him a more useful party member, so... I leave the choice up to the reader, but I recommend not going Bodyguard.
  
  
• For Adachi, I think you are free to go the "Detective kinda sucks" route until you get access to Fortuneteller.
  
  As a side note, this can be done immediately in Chapter 5: you will be able to max out his Drink Link by walking back and forth between Survive Bar and Harbor Light, and stuff yourself with 200-yen pickles until he's maxed out.
  
  As for alternatives, Host would kinda suck too, as discussed before, but it would also buff his Magic, and possibly end up giving him Ice Spreader for coverage. Focusing on his defense will be good for his character but, as discussed before, as Fortuneteller it will become a bit less relevant.
  
  Another problem here, however, is that Host is not immediately available for Adachi. He seems to get Foreman early, so I'd recommend that for the worst stat gains possible, or if you really want you could keep switching so he gets a middle-of-the-road amount of stats in all of them, which is definitely bad.
  
  Perhaps another route here would be going Host asap and then back to Detective or whatever right before getting access to Ice Spreader, doubling as a strategy for minimal stats/skills gained from jobs, but ultimately allowing too much room for human error while also not being particularly important or as bad as we want to be.
  
  
• For Premium/NG+, inelegant self imposed restrictions will be the thing I guess. (such as the ones you'll likely be thinking of when avoiding Fat Stack/Orbital even though it's in your skills list)
  
  Although, I think you have to re-obtain access and try out certain jobs in NG+ if you want those permanent skills to come back to your character? I haven't tested this, but I guess it'd be a good way to actually get rid of skills (by never trying out the respective jobs). For stats, you keep them.

"Hold on a second," I hear you shout.

"I have been trying to follow this as closely as possible during either NG or NG+, but Nanba decided to temporarily ditch the party to artificially create tension in the story! Now what?!"

True that. At that point in the story, you are essentially forced to ditch Nanba. This creates a couple of problems.

• If you have recruited Eri, she will automatically be there in place of Nanba, forcing us to come up with a "worst setup" for her too. On the bright side, once Joon-gi joins the party, since he's too good for us, you will at least be able to ignore him and keep Eri on the team instead.
  
  
• If you haven't recruited Eri, your party will be short one member. This is the best case scenario on paper, as having one less party member is obviously the s**tpost option. However, this will cause you to have to let Joon-gi Han join the party without a chance to appeal this decision, and we do not want him in the party in any capacity.

What to do?


Just don't care about it. This is only a problem for a brief portion of the story, so just roll with it and pretend it's one of those mandatory double battle sections from Pokemon D/P/Pt, I dunno. Hell, have fun trying to come up with cringe builds for Eri/Joon-gi.

• Get up to the point in the Business Management Minigame right before Eri joins your party.
  
• Progress through the story up until the point Joon-gi Han joins the party.
  
• Taxi to Survive Bar. Avoid encounters between Taxi and bar door.
  
• Talk to Eri and let her join the Party.
  
• Taxi to Ichiban Confections. Avoid encounters between Taxi and Ichiban Confections entrance.
  
• Time to play the damn minigame up until you can reach Bond Level 2 with Eri. You are officially trapped here until this happens. F**k you.
  
• Taxi to Hello Work. Avoid encounters between Taxi and Hello Work entrance.
  
• Switch Eri to Hostess.
  
• Enjoy extra damage coverage and pointless reverse-minmaxing for like, half a chapter of the story. You have now maximized your three-members-only time while avoiding Joon-gi Han.

I'm kidding by the way, you don't have to do this. Unless.........................

The problem here is that I didn't buy the DLC so I have no idea what they are or do LOL.

This is not really a problem, more like a sidenote and cautionary tale.

As you progress through a potential NG run where trying to go this "worst jobs" route, you will soon realize you will need a certain strategy that is both emergent common sense and something employed by speedrunners: fight the least possible amount of fights until you get everyone to the job you actually want to level up.

This has led to something that I unfortunately did not think about: even though it's not strictly necessary to farm Bond Lvl.5 with Adachi right off the bat (as Fortuneteller also has a base level requirement of 25), I still wanted to get all this stuff out of the way and did so as soon as possible in Chapter 5.

However, you might recall you have to fight a certain scammer as part of the final Bond sub-story with Adachi: some random cromangon by the name of Hasegawa.

Unsurprisingly, this fight is not designed for levels 14/15.

Surprisingly, though, Hasegawa is quite weak, so it is absolutely possible to win: if you end up in the same situation I did, you'll notice his damage is good but not great, and that you have enough time to beat the s**t out of him before he KOs your party (Ichi).

Just make sure to bring at least some healing items, or he will win the battle of attrition. (almost did, by a slight margin, for me, with both Freelancer Ichi and Detective Adachi at Level 14, but I frist-tried it)

• Le Epic Reddit Posts:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/13dbjl5/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥/ - This guy, for having basically figured out the coolest setup before me and having retroactively validated my opinion (and life).
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/shbkoe/worst_jobs_in_yakuza_7/ - More discussion about worst jobs
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/1bxld8w/what_is_the_worst_job_in_lad_7_8/ - More discussion about worst jobs
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/k2ydd8/yakuza_7_jobs_tierlist/ - More discussion about worst jobs
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/s4vv7a/i_grinded_all_my_party_members_jobs_to_level_99/ - Mad person who 99'd all jobs and posted screens, very useful resource for checking stats
  
  
• Guides:
  https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/272324-yakuza-like-a-dragon/faqs/78735/weapons - To double-check best weapons and their associated elements
  https://www.trueachievements.com/game/Yakuza-Like-a-Dragon/walkthrough/14 - Sujimon list in actual text form so that damage types could be searched for
  https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Jobs - To remind me which stat gains certain jobs give and double check cross-job skills
  
  
• Friends:
  Matt - For listening to me rambling about this even though he had no idea what the f**k I was talking about
  DK - For recommending me this game in the first place