How to suffer LESS in Naval Combat (Professional)

You played the demo, and felt like combat on Majima was way too easy and went for the Pro. Yep, seemed like a good idea till you remembered you were never a good pirate and saw how absurdly hard the naval combat can get...

First of all, be in peace of mind you made the right choice. Even on Pro, Yakuza Pirate Gaiden still feel on the easier side on combat. But ok, all right... Here are some tips you can use to get through and get the Plat. Keep in mind: it will STILL be hard. But following these you can actually have a good chance.

I don't even know if the Naval combat is any challenging on Normal, but any tips here will carry to Normal as well. So, lets do it.

These are the basics. Some of these you are supposed to actually learn by playing, so, lets refresh the most important parts:



If you shoot enough in the rear part of the enemy ship, you'll see a yellow bar filling up. Complete the bar and the enemy ship will be disabled for a few seconds.


During this phase, the enemy ship cannot move or shoot you. Your best approach to trigger a disable is either to focus damage with the machine guns in the rear, or drift to target the rear part of the enemy ship with the cannons.

When the enemy is disabled, you can either dish your entire damage without many issues. You can also use this time to fix your ship, if needed.

Friendly reminder: In coliseum matches and in Black Flag challenges you only need to defeat the main ship. (It will show a purple Icon next to it's HP) Do not waste any time on other ships. In harder matches it's either impossible to sink all ships, or focusing all ships will take so much time you be always out of the "S" rankings.

Just focus your fire on the main enemy and avoid fire from the smaller ones.

Ok. I CANNOT stress this enough. It is IMPOSSIBLE to defeat high level enemies without understanding the basics of boosting.

If you boost once, you'll use your main boost. Simple enough. This will be represented by a green bar, which will slowly replenish. You will NOT use a charge for using this.

But here's what you might be not be using: the secondary boost. These are used by holding the boost button before the green bar is actually replenished. You will use one of the total boosts, but this is actually needed in many scenarios.


For instance, you will probably start the match by using a boost, and when you get close to the enemy ship, they will line up a shot or try to ram into you while your boost is recharging.

Another good example: the homing missiles and the mortars. If you are into the target of both of these 2 weapons, you will likely either need the speed or drifting to avoid these.

Do NOT be shy of using your boost charges. The single match you will need to actually keep an eye on it it's on the last match of the Captains Tourney since you'll be facing 3 enemies ships + on deck battles in a row with your kit, and it will not replenish between battles.

Also important, but into a lesser extent: drifting. You'll need to use this a lot to escape enemy fire, or, in a cooler way, offensively. You can, for instance, use your left cannons and drift to use your right cannons.

Drifting is actually pretty simple. Just boost and brake into the direction you want your ship to turn into.

You can also disable enemy ship with status inflicting weapons. We'll talk more about it in the weapons section of this guide.

Kinda obvious, but get the most upgrades you can for Goromaru and Majima itself. For anything Platinum Matches and above, you should already have the money and reputation to at least have Goromaru maxed.

Also, have the Black Flags sidequest finished. It will be good for multiple reasons. One of them is have an easier time leveling up your newer obtained characters.


Higher level battles are hard on pro. You probably already understood that and might be thinking there is a miracle or something you're are not understanding... but yeah. These are actually challenging. Some of these you'll be boarding their ship with Goromaru on fire, all your crew down and you know what? That's life...

So. These are pretty much the basics. Lets get to the weapons and crew.

To the weapons! After testing for a while, here are the best options i recommend.

From out of all the cannons, Super Lasers Cannons are the way to go. These have good range, and outstanding damage if you can focus all their 5 seconds of pure damage into the enemy ship.


If you got the basics right, you will understand how powerful they are when you get to disable a enemy ship and blast 5 seconds into a stuck ship.

There might be other good options, but i'll be honest: this is what i've used and got the most success with. You can post your opinion in the comments and i'll probably take a good try with.

Get these for the both sides and you are good to go.

Here's the secret to get your life a bit easier: go for the Ice Machine Gun


Yeah, the Coconut Machine Gun is also great. And does a lot of damage. But with the Ice Machine Gun you can stack 2 disables (shooting the rear part of the enemy ship + frozen), which help ALOT.

Frozen enemy ships will be able to move, but will be unable to attack. This will get us a lot more safe time to not be killed in battles.

Usually the 2 disables will not be triggered at the same time, but even if it does, the enemy ship will take the entire time of the first disable + quite a while to get defrosted. It's a much safer option in my opinion.

Ok. Here's where i can see options getting more open.

I recommend to use the Meteor Rocket Launcher. But i can see you strategizing into other types of rocket launchers.

From my experience, you will try your best to avoid needing to stop the ship, and the rocket launcher is pretty much a risk to use.

You'll try to use this if you ship is frozen/poisoned or if you need to rescue your crew. Once or twice you will actually be so close to finishing an enemy ship that you might need a tiny extra damage. This is the best cannon damage-wise, so if that situation comes, you got the damage going for it.

But yeah. Maybe you should try the Toxic Cannon or the Ice one to stack another option to disable enemy ships. It's up to you.

To be very honest, i don't think it will do much difference at all.

About the crew, there might be a deeper strategy, but lets sum it up.



If you don't have enough Golden, go for Silver. If you don't have enough Silver, go for the Bronze till you get good ones.

After you have finished the Dread Fleet sidequests you'll have a Coliseum match on the beach available to face Zeus. Use this to level up your newer characters, mixing a couple of underleveled ones with your already maxed ones.

If you are having trouble with Zeus, go for the lower tier matches there. Go for one you can constantly defeat without much issue and rank them up.

Check the stats of your characters and put them to stack as much attack and repair as possible on your cannon squad.

You might have a weaker boarding crew, but you can make up for it in combat with some tips, which i will provide below.

There are many good characters to unlock via minigames and sidequests, but some of the stronger ones are (somehow) 3 of the Minato Girls, Barman, Mecha Onomichio and most of the Judgement fellas. Minato girls are available via sidequests, Barman by befriending 100 people, Ono via Dragon Kart and Judgement boys by the minigames exchanging (Crazy Delivery, Batting mini game, Kamulop exchange)

If you got the deluxe DLC you'll probably have an even better time here. Just follow the logic of maxing up the higher tiers and check their stats. Again, if you get to the Boarding Attack you pretty much just won.

For squad leaders, check their traits for good stuff you might need in battle and try to put the rest of the unused plats/golden there for better result. As you can see, i got to face the final secret boss with 3 golden squad leaders... as long as their stats are good, there's not much to go wrong here.

You'll probably only have to choose your third support crew, since Noah it's downright absurd, and Goro is also the other best option.

Since i got DLC, i got Nancy for a extra damage boost. But there are other good options. As i already told before, everything on boarding crew is not as important as the main crew. You'll be able to get by with something that fits your style here.

(Corrected) Getting Noah to Level 4, as well as upgrading support Squad depends on how many times you're using the Crew Special. It doesn't seem to show the progression anywhere, so be sure to use it whenever possible.

Saejima, Jason, Nishida and Minami will be upgraded from Gold to Platinum tier via the bond system. GLADLY, they get all experience after level 30 cap stored, so they get right to expected level after you get them to Platinum.

It's a very nice upgrade on all stats, so don't miss on it.

Got to the boarding phase? Great. Here are some tips to don't ♥♥♥♥ it up and get back to the Naval Combat again...


Unfortunately you will not have great success by playing Mad Dog in boarding combat. Reason being: it's better for facing smaller number of enemies, and you'll have to avoid a lot of bullets during combat...

Sea Dog can guard in all directions, so, by this reason alone, i wouldn't recommend anything else.

Some battles have some very annoying shooters who can 3 shot you in a second. Remember to guard these shots or evade these.

Get a good start by charging a full pistol shot. You can either do this literally the start of the boarding section or jump to the left side of the ship and charging up.

If you get hit by anything it will be interrupted, so it's tricky. But if you have the upgrades, you'll get a lot of heat, special gauge and thin out the enemy numbers. Sometimes you can down 5 to 10 enemies with a single shot.

If you have the upgrade, you can trigger a heat action if you hit at least 3 enemies. Always go for these because heat actions in these game are kinda wonky to trigger.

After hitting this combo, use your throwing sword to get some extra heat and get some good damage. Remember to let your team do some of the working for you.

Using your support crew assist (up arrow) is KEY. Use it whenever as possible. Don't underestimate the amount of damage your crew can dish out with the damage bonuses + healing.

For combo matches, try to save your special gauge for the harder fights. There are pretty much only 2 viable options to use:

Sharks:
If you are facing a high number of enemies and want to kill the weaker ones.
(You will also probably get a good chance of charging a full pistol shot during the chaos)

Monke:
If you are facing a high level enemy with more health or facing a single enemy like Amon.

Monkey will DESTROY a good chunk a single target enemy and some enemies close by, but it's not very good to thin out enemies.

Parrot:
Good for large number of enemies, drawing them all together for some extra damage.

Jellyfish:
Somewhat situational, will heal you overtime and stun enemies. Also better used on large number of enemies.

Hopefully you'll be able to use these tips to have less pain in Naval Combat in Pirate Gaiden. Have any other tips, please let it be known in the comments.

If you are still having trouble... well. I never said it was easy. But at least you know what you should be doing to have it as easier as it can be.