Shenmue III

There are multiple places to partake in arena combat, but this specific trophy requires an arena in the second area, Niaowu.

Between the "Fresh Fruit" and "Ninao Flowers" stalls is a parade of shops. On the right side, you'll spot a small alley which you can enter. After a long walk, you'll come to a garden area with gambling and - for this trophy - the arena.

To earn this trophy, you must win every fight thrown at you, which has 36 opponents. To enter fights, you will need gambling tokens, which you can either buy from a stall nearby or earn in the gambling games. Once you begin, it's quite self-funding as you get double back.

But you will need some preparation first, as going in with a low Kung-Fu level makes later fights near impossible due to how little damage you will do. You will need to train Ryo!

There are two elements to training. First is Attack, which is increased by acquiring and levelling up Skill Books in sparring. If you need more skill books, the Guan Yu Martial Arts shop, right next door to the aforementioned alley, sells them. You can then Spar with students of Hu Guitong's school, which is on the far right of the area near the games arcade back the way we came. You will need to max out a good 20 skills.

You will also need to increase Ryo's endurance, which adds more health. These can be done with training dummies near Hu Guitong, with three different training sequences through three different dummies. Unfortunately, these are a bit long, but worth it as they raise Ryo's health.

Once you max out Ryo's Kung Fu, the arena becomes a breeze as you deal more damage and can take more shots. But you're not out of the woods yet.

The tournament consists of three phases. The first is fighting each opponent 1v1, which is 12. These get gradually harder, but are manageable so long as you block and use upgraded specials (I highly recommend tracking down Thunder Palm from one of the vendors, as it's super useful, but its not mandatory). Once you beat each opponent once, you'll fight 2 at a time and go through them again. Finally, after defeating them a second time, you'll be thrown into a 1v3 situation. There are 18 total fights (thanks to gabe-szabo for correcting me on this).

With a maxed out Ryo, you should find even 1v2 more than manageable, but you can get unlucky during 1v3 as opponents get hits in while you try to focus on one. If you need healing items, a bun vendor directly in front the arena sells those and healing drinks, which can be used during combat. The latter is highly recommended during the 1v3 fights, so you can heal sucker punch hits. You can always lower the difficulty if anything gives you trouble, and note being defeated does not mean starting over, as the arena host will offer you the chance to continue or start over. Make sure you never select Start Over, as it will send you back to the start of the tournament!

Some extra info courtesy of gabe-szabo:

- "I was Attack LV20 and Endurance LV17 when I managed to beat the fights on Hardest. Stock up on potions (Snake Power), I used up about 10-15 of them.
- The last match costs 10 000 tokens, so keep that in mind.
- The sides where you enter the arena are actually getting lower with each tier (by 1v1 it's like 2 feet high maybe). It's important because if you use high finishers, it's pretty easy to knock out the opponents of the ring, which grants you an easy win. You can bait them to the right spot, double tap the direction arrows to evade sideways twice and hit away. Tornado Kick and Four-Sided Kick worked like a charm for me."