As an usual staple, Yakuza 5 has the Batting Center as one of its available minigames, as they tend to do between games, the stages change ever so slightly, though Y5 has some of the more crucial changes I've seen on the series yet, regarding the challenges presented.

I'm mainly making this guide to list out the speed distributions that this game has for the different difficulties, usually there's the ever famous GameFAQs guides that contain them, but the Y5 guide doesn't have them for some reason, so I took it upon myself to fill in that hole.

The minigame can be played by the four fighting playable characters, Haruka seems to be a bit too young for this activity (honestly there's no reason she can't actually do it, but they didn't allow her to play it, oh well)

Before explaining the stages, I wanted to clarify the way I approach this minigame.
The way it works at its core has remained consistent throughout the series: The balls will come at a specific stage and difficulty at predetermined speed distributions, meaning you can play a stage over and over and the order will always be the same, allowing you to learn and improve your execution on a course by knowing what to expect when.

On top of that, I have personally "developed" a strategy to classify the ball types, regardless of the type of throw it is, what I care about is the speed.

In a nutshell, depending on the speed a ball has, I've classified them into 3 shot categories:

• Slow Balls: Anything bellow and including 100km/h
  
• Fast Balls: 110 to 120km/h
  
• "Instant" Balls: Anything including and higher than 130km/h

The reason I've classified them like this is because I've also been able to get a "feel" for their timing, it is hard to convey through text but for Slow Balls, it feels like 2 beats or ticks in between the ball launching and when you should hit the button, for Fast Balls, its about 1 beat/tick. Instant Balls have that name because the reaction timing is almost immediately after you hear them go off, hence the name "Instant".

I have explained this in a video I made for Yakuza 3 Remastered, if you wan't to try and see the audio/video example, you can see it clicking here. (in case the timestamp doesn't open, it's 34:27)

This "feel" for the timings has been consistent across games, which has helped me do all of the requirements in the different titles so far, I wanted to establish that concept before moving on.

Also, you may know this already, but when Kiryu (or the playable character) tenses up his arm, it's the visual clue to tell you it's the right timing to hit it, however, on faster balls, waiting for this visual clue can be more detrimental, that is why I instead rely on a timing cue. Of course, this is just how I do it.

With this established, let's move onto the stages in this game.

Completion List Requirement: 1500 Points

The first is usually the easiest, you may be able to do this without knowing what shots are coming beforehand, most of them are very slow, after all.
The board will have four big panels to hit, each panel hit gives 90 points. Do note that this game did not bring back the multipliers that existed in the previous one, due to how the boards for all difficulties are set up.



You can hit a corner and get 3 panels at once, leaving just one extra hit for a board clear, worth 360 points in total.
Clearing the board reveals the red target, which only stays for the following shot. If hit it gives 400 points.

Two board clears and two red targets should get it done in 6 shots, the stage is Easy so it will hardly be asking many retries in case you don't first try it, the speed distributions are:

Completion List Requirement: 1900 Points

For this course, the same scoring rules for the Easy one apply.

This time there's 5 big panels, but once again you can hit a central corner for 3 at once, and then the opposite corner for the remaining 2, totaling 450 points for a board clear. Red target gives 400 again.



Score-wise this stage is easier than the previous one, even ignoring the red target, with about half the shots only hitting the main board you'll be in the clear for the score goal.

The speed distributions are:

Completion List Requirement: Acquire all 6 Gravure Photos.

Surprise! There is no regular "Hard" course in this game, instead, the classic 3x3 board gets a twist.



In this course you'll get a math question presented to you, with increased complexity in every pitch. The answer to all the equations will be a number between 1 and 9. You have 10 seconds to think about the answer (or you know, you can pause the game as well...), then you'll get the familiar board numbered 1 through 9, simply hit the ball into the correct answer to get a mark.
Don't know the answer? Don't worry! You can hit multiple panels at once, and if any of them are the correct choice, you'll still get the mark! (but seriously pause the game if you need the time to think, or even to use a calculator).



The good news: This course is only 5 pitches long!
The bad news: The difficulty comes from actually having to hit all 5 answers.

When you get 3 marks, you'll see a girl poster on the board, hit the remaining 2 for a second poster. There's 3 poster sets that come bundled (1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6), so in total you need to do this course perfectly 3 times to earn all 6. If for some reason you only get the first poster of a set, and in a retry you see one you already own both of the ones in the set, you can safely quit and restart faster for another chance, the sets are bundled, so you'll never get, say, poster #6 y you see #1 show up at the 3rd answer.

It isn't as hard as former "Hard" courses but you do need perfection in each attempt, it can be a bit nerve wrecking thinking on the math questions and then landing the timings and answers, but it's absolutely doable.

The speed distributions are:

Completion List Requirement: Acquire all 3 Gravure Photos

Following the steps of the previous game, the Extra Stage in this game has to do with revealing a gravure poster, but it does so in a different way.

You have 20 total shots to destroy all the panels from the board, you can hit panels that occupy the same spot you aim for and they'll both be destroyed. There will also be some red panels, these take two hits to destroy, as they'll turn green after the first hit.
After 3 successful shots you hit (they don't need to be in a row), you'll get a bomb chance on the next pitch, this will trigger a big explosion, destroying nearby panels instantly, including any red ones.

Your objective is to fully clear the board within the 20 pitches available to you, if done right, you won't be needing even 15 in most cases. There are 3 different posters for you to get here, on my experience, I never got a different one before I was able to clear the current one being displayed. After you get all 3 then it will be random whenever you decide to play again.

All in all, the main strat is to hit with bombs on concentrated areas to clear most of the panels, use 3 shots to get certain panels, then use the bombs to clear most of an area. Hopefully you don't miss the pitches with bombs, an attempt is still salvageable even if you miss one or two, but hopefully it doesn't get to it.

Here's where I suggest you hit each of the setups in order, the orange ones symbolize where you should aim the bombs. Note that the bomb will not trigger if it doesn't hit a panel.






Finally, here's the speed distribution, it's always the same regardless of which poster you see:

Completion List Requirement: 800 Points

Will not go into much detail here, since this is kind of an oddball (ha... get it?).
This Course is exclusive to Shinada, which is funny to me since Kiryu has come to this Batting Cages for decades, you'd think he'd qualify for a "Pro" title.


This course works exactly like Shinada's Side story missions, and the Nagoya Batting Center. I actually have no idea if these balls come in the same pattern every time, hardly matters because how easy it is when you have maxed your baseball stats.



Simply hit 8 Home Runs to slowly destroy the glass panel and reveal a poster girl, there's 20 pitches so there's plenty of room for mistake if you need it.

And that's all you need to conquer the Kamuro Batting Cages!
Hopefully the guide was useful, I personally wrote it to have a more detailed explanation to complement a video I made regarding the entire completion process on achieving 100% on this game, I'll leave it here if you wan't to check it out (yeah, it's 2 hours long, that's how much stuff there's in this game).


Thanks for reading and happy hunting!