best to look up a quick guide if you just want to jump in and do the completion list, otherwise, you should watch an in-depth tutorial. There's a lot of small things you have to keep track of like seat position, winds, etc. There's an options menu that once you have one tile left, you can open and select riichi which locks you down to look for it. So in some cases, using riichi is not preferable since it limits your options. Mahjong is not really a game you can just pick up by playing it a few times. I've played it for many, many hours and I still don't have a full grasp on it. If you take a couple hours to learn it from youtube, then you should be able to sail through any Yakuza mahjong game since they give you pretty good draws on average.

It takes time to learn mahjong. Seriously, its not an easy game to just pick up and play. You need to start with the basics, and focus on the building blocks that makes you a complete player.
You can only chi tiles from the person to the left
You can only pon if its a triplet, and you can call it from anyone.
You can only riichi if your hand is closed.
As soon as you call, your hand becomes open and certain hands (riichi is one of them) are no longer available to you.

Mahjong and Shogi.

Two games that have been in Yakuza forever that I dread having to do for completion each time.

I'm grateful that 100% achievements this time around does not require doing everything.

It's not the easiest to explain and I'm not the best at mahjong but I get by and I think what you're missing (and what a lot of people miss at first) is the distinction between an open & closed hand and how it affects the scoring. Your hand is open as soon as you take a tile that an opponent has discarded (pon/chi).

To win a hand you need to have a complete hand (as in 4 sets and a pair) and it needs to be worth something. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner with a complete hand that's worth nothing, and can't win, if you pon/chi at every opportunity.

If you keep your hand closed (don't pon/chi) then ANY complete hand will score at least 1 han for being a closed hand, if you pon/chi then you have to make sure the hand is worth something some other way.

Quite a few of the elements that are worth something are only available to a closed hand also, so you put yourself at a pretty big disadvantage calling pon/chi without a specific open hand in mind.

A few easy things you can go for that are worth something, even in an open hand, are:

triple/quad of any dragon
triple/quad of the round wind (shown in the middle of the screen eg. East 1)
triple/quad of your personal wind

If you get the opportunity to pon these then it might be worth it because they are worth at least 1 han each anyway. You just have to complete the hand and you win, not very much but a cheap win all the same.

Riichi is also only available to players with a closed hand, so if you have called pon/chi you won't be able to call riichi. It means the player is 1 tile away from a winning hand and will discard anything else drawn and raises the stakes. If an opponent discards the tile they are waiting for then they ron and take the points from that player specifically, so you do not wanna be the person providing them the last tile.

The safest thing to do if someone calls riichi is to look at their discards and throw away duplicates of things they have discarded, there's a rule that prohibits them finishing on anything they previously discarded so you can safely avoid being the one that they ron.

As a general strategy, only pon dragons/suitable winds and keep working towards riichi, if you feel that you're 1 tile away you have to press square (on PS controls, not sure with KB/M) and it will show a Riichi prompt if available. Call riichi, sit back and ron your enemies. If someone else calls riichi, try to discard safe tiles and let someone else get ronned, you won't win the hand but you'll avoid a big point deficit.

There's plenty of randomness in the game but if you keep in mind that there are 4 copies of every tile and look at what is in the discards you can get a pretty good idea of what's still available to be drawn eg. if 2 copies of the tile you need are in the discards and one is in your hand, is it worth waiting for the last one or are there other more likely routes to a winning hand? Sometimes an opponent calls riichi on their first turn and there's nothing you can do, luck of the draw, try not to get ronned and play the next hand.

If by combos you mean the han scoring at the end of the round you do not need to finish with an opponents discard, you can win a hand from a normal draw (tsumo as opposed to ron) as long as it's worth something.

I think the hardest part about Mahjong is just remembering all the sets you can build, no matter if they're worth something or not. That like the first big roadblock for me. I mean there are 23 pages of combinations in the explaination how the f are you supposed to remember all of these ? Imo they could make the game much more acsessable for new players by adding a tutorial table that guides you trough the basics step by step, highlighting combinations while showing what it's worth, just to learn the game with nothing to win or lose.

I haven't memorised that many sets at all and I do fine, most of the time a round comes down to keep it closed & race to riichi. If you're close to a rare hand it's good to be able to recognise it and go for it but most rounds are won with small scoring basic hands anyway so you don't really need to know them all to get started.

Edit: I'd love to see them do a full on comprehensive tutorial for Mahjong someday, there's good external resources for learning but the RGG games have never explained it very well,

Originally posted by Sacrefice:

I think the hardest part about Mahjong is just remembering all the sets you can build, no matter if they're worth something or not. That like the first big roadblock for me. I mean there are 23 pages of combinations in the explaination how the f are you supposed to remember all of these ? Imo they could make the game much more acsessable for new players by adding a tutorial table that guides you trough the basics step by step, highlighting combinations while showing what it's worth, just to learn the game with nothing to win or lose.

100% this. I find Koi Koi way more accessible because of this very thing.

Originally posted by someoneproud:

It's not the easiest to explain and I'm not the best at mahjong but I get by and I think what you're missing (and what a lot of people miss at first) is the distinction between an open & closed hand and how it affects the scoring. Your hand is open as soon as you take a tile that an opponent has discarded (pon/chi).

To win a hand you need to have a complete hand (as in 4 sets and a pair) and it needs to be worth something. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner with a complete hand that's worth nothing, and can't win, if you pon/chi at every opportunity.

If you keep your hand closed (don't pon/chi) then ANY complete hand will score at least 1 han for being a closed hand, if you pon/chi then you have to make sure the hand is worth something some other way.

Quite a few of the elements that are worth something are only available to a closed hand also, so you put yourself at a pretty big disadvantage calling pon/chi without a specific open hand in mind.

A few easy things you can go for that are worth something, even in an open hand, are:

triple/quad of any dragon
triple/quad of the round wind (shown in the middle of the screen eg. East 1)
triple/quad of your personal wind

If you get the opportunity to pon these then it might be worth it because they are worth at least 1 han each anyway. You just have to complete the hand and you win, not very much but a cheap win all the same.

Riichi is also only available to players with a closed hand, so if you have called pon/chi you won't be able to call riichi. It means the player is 1 tile away from a winning hand and will discard anything else drawn and raises the stakes. If an opponent discards the tile they are waiting for then they ron and take the points from that player specifically, so you do not wanna be the person providing them the last tile.

The safest thing to do if someone calls riichi is to look at their discards and throw away duplicates of things they have discarded, there's a rule that prohibits them finishing on anything they previously discarded so you can safely avoid being the one that they ron.

As a general strategy, only pon dragons/suitable winds and keep working towards riichi, if you feel that you're 1 tile away you have to press square (on PS controls, not sure with KB/M) and it will show a Riichi prompt if available. Call riichi, sit back and ron your enemies. If someone else calls riichi, try to discard safe tiles and let someone else get ronned, you won't win the hand but you'll avoid a big point deficit.

There's plenty of randomness in the game but if you keep in mind that there are 4 copies of every tile and look at what is in the discards you can get a pretty good idea of what's still available to be drawn eg. if 2 copies of the tile you need are in the discards and one is in your hand, is it worth waiting for the last one or are there other more likely routes to a winning hand? Sometimes an opponent calls riichi on their first turn and there's nothing you can do, luck of the draw, try not to get ronned and play the next hand.

If by combos you mean the han scoring at the end of the round you do not need to finish with an opponents discard, you can win a hand from a normal draw (tsumo as opposed to ron) as long as it's worth something.

Following this is pretty good advice, but I would only add that you might want to go into the settings (before you start a game (not the main menu, the mahjong menu)) and remove the 2 han minimum requirement. That should help you get cheap hands easier. Although, ultimately, I would leave it 2 Han Min ON because the AI abuses it too. Turning it 2 Han Min ON seems to force the AI to go after bigger hands which gives you more time to make your hands. It's 50/50 on if it really helps beginners. If you start seeing people call riichi after a couple turns, then I suggest leaving it on and follow the strategy of only opening your hand if you have dragon or wind triplets (or doubles so you can nab one and make it a triplet).

The 2nd thing you must turn on is Red Dora. If you're chasing dragon or wind triplets at first, each red dora tile gives you 1 extra han. You can get 6+ han for some relatively simple hands with red dora tiles. The other ones are too specific to worry about now imo.

At least there is nothing locked behind mahjong, only some money reward, no special items. So you can safely ignore it, there are lots of other way to increase Ichiban's personality traits :) . But yeah, the only way to get good at mahjong in-game is to get good at mahjong in real-life :/ .

Originally posted by Sacrefice:

I think the hardest part about Mahjong is just remembering all the sets you can build, no matter if they're worth something or not. That like the first big roadblock for me. I mean there are 23 pages of combinations in the explaination how the f are you supposed to remember all of these ? Imo they could make the game much more acsessable for new players by adding a tutorial table that guides you trough the basics step by step, highlighting combinations while showing what it's worth, just to learn the game with nothing to win or lose.

I guess knowing the different kinds of tiles can make remembering hands easier. For example:

• Honors: winds and dragons
  
• Suit tiles: tiles that are not honors: anything that is character, bamboo or dots
  
• Terminal tiles: among the suit tiles, the ones that are either 1 or 9. They are called so because you cannot make a meld / sequence like 9-1-2 (9 will always end a sequence and 1 will always start one.)

So knowing this you can think: "What if I do a hand that all the tiles are of the same suit?" that's one combination. "What about a hand that all the sequences / triplets and the pair contain terminals?" that's another one. "what if I have a hand of the same suit but I added honors?" that's another one.
Note that you cannot make sequences with honors, only triplets and pair.

As said in this post, Mahjong is not a pick up and play and you will learn only by playing and playing. I also recommend watching tutorials that explain the basic stuff like how hands work. And if you end up liking the game, follow by learning how to be more efficient in making your hand and some other tips.

Originally posted by arronax06:

At least there is nothing locked behind mahjong, only some money reward, no special items. So you can safely ignore it, there are lots of other way to increase Ichiban's personality traits :) . But yeah, the only way to get good at mahjong in-game is to get good at mahjong in real-life :/ .

I really liked this change in this game. There are certain games that I dread having to complete every new Yakuza/LAD game. Not having anything locked behind this minigame, be it a important piece of equipment or an achievement or something, was a choice that I very much enjoyed with this game.

There were a number of things that I wasn't really satisfied with in LAD8, but I did like how you had some flexibility in what things you did and did not do in the completion list. You didn't HAVE to do each and every single item in the list if there are certain parts of it that you don't have fun doing.

Okay i've done a "few" more games now and i understand it now. Mostly thanks to someoneproud's comment (dont know why but after reading it some sort of knot popped in my head) and a lot of trail and error, even won my first cup just now :) Actually really fun if you get the hang of it. Too bad that the rewards are complete axx ^^

My approach was basicly going for sequences and calling riichi the moment i get the chance, took a while to understand that you can't call it when you opened your hand in which case i had to go for ron (hoping the opponent gives you the tile you need) or tsumo (drawing the tile you need). 4 triplets or double sequence are really hard to go for same as gates ect.. I only kept dragons or winds when i already had 2 of a kind hoping the opponent drops the 3rd one. Also keeping your hand closed for as long as possible was a good tip too since it gives you more room to work with and more points if you win like that.

I've played mahjong in different games and honestly, it sometimes feel like this game's version works differently. What I could do somewhere else wouldn't work here, for example. Not sure if Yakuza's version is the correct one or not, but it's definitely different to what I've played.

Originally posted by arronax06:

But yeah, the only way to get good at mahjong in-game is to get good at mahjong in real-life :/ .

You can still game it and save a good 70% of your time investment.

Exit and retry if you don't win the first hand.
Exit and retry if anyone ever wins enough to have a decent lead over you.
If you're in a real hurry, exit and retry if your starting hand isn't immediately good.

All there is to it. Basically save scumming.

Originally posted by Rocky McRockerson:

I've played mahjong in different games and honestly, it sometimes feel like this game's version works differently. What I could do somewhere else wouldn't work here, for example. Not sure if Yakuza's version is the correct one or not, but it's definitely different to what I've played.

idk about different rules, there are some small specific things that yakuza games use and sometimes they're not even consistent between their own games. The biggest difference is that yakuza mahjong gives you a ton of good hands and draws unlike real life mahjong. It's easier to win and win big in this game. The only downside is the AI can be brutal in swooping in. The amount of times I've seen the computer call riichi after the 2nd or 3rd go-around is crazy..