Welcome. This is a beginner’s guide for Punch Club 2. This is a translation of another guide for Punch Club 2. I translated it because some people requested it.
This guide will explain basics like combat of exploration. If you came from Punch Club 1, you wont really need this guide, unless you want to check differences between the 1st and 2nd game.
Chapter 1 : Character’s stats
First thing to know : how to manage your hero’s daily routine ? What to do ? We’ll see this but before, let’s see your character’s informations.
You can see your hero’s statuts on the top left. Always keep an eye on it.
Big gauge : this is your mood gauge. It decrease when you work and refill when you entertain yourself or after a fight (no matter if you win or loose, as long as you had a fight, you are happy !).
Heart gauge : it’s your health. It decrease more or less after a fight, according of how much HP you lost, and it refill when you take a rest or if you heal yourself. Some food can also regenerate your healtf. Try to keep this gauge filled as much as possible : when you start a fight, your max HP depend of this gauge.
Chicken leg gauge : your hunger gauge : it decrease with time and more or less if you are active (working or training) or passive (entertaining, sleepint, etc.). It wont have an influence on your fights but if this gauge is empty or too low, you wont be able to do some activities.
thunderbolt gauge : your stamina. it deplete with time (and faster if you work or train) and refill when you sleep or consume energy drinks. If this gauge is too low, you cant work or train. Energy also have an impact or your fight : your max stamina depend of this gauge so try to have a nap before you fight.
golden thumbs up : this is your current GPP score. We’ll see this later.
Silver metal sign : this is your Old School respect score. We’ll see this later too.
Le symbole “métal argenté”, c’est votre score de respect Old School. on y reviendra aussi.
On thu uper right, you can see what time it is (some place are closed during some periods), your money, when your next fight is planed and – later in the game – more informations will be available.
If you click on your character’s status, you’ll see more information. I wont show all tabs because some will spoil laters discoveries… oh yeah, information wil lbe in french, sorry…
First tab :
Let’s start with the flashy thing : the big golden bar is your GPP score. It’s kinda your league score : you’ll earn more if you win official ffights but loose it if you loose official fights. Completing this gauge will usually start next chapter.
Reputation : the trust you earn in your 3 jobs. it’ll allow you to buy more stuff at your employers. Usually better thing than Apu’s grocery store.
Nourriture/food : your food slots. You start with 3 slots. having sandwich or cofee can could really be useful.
Objets de quête/ quest item : please, tell me I don’t have to explain this…
Ligues/league : Your current rank in league. if you click on it, you can have more information about the league : who are your next target, who are under you, other fighters informations, etc.
Effet/effect : All passive effects acquired during your progression… yeah, there’s a lot of passives. usually good stuff, sometimes bad stuff (but bad stuff are time limited usually).
Red glove : your strenght stat. A good strenght means you hit harder. But it also means you’ll spend more stamina. Finally the more strenght you have, the more max HP you have.
Blue racket : your agility. A good agility grants you more action points when it’s your turn to attack.
Green shoes : your stamina. A good stamina means more energy points so you can use more powerfull skills.
Did you know ? In first Punch Club, those stats decreased with time if you didn’t trained enough. In punch club 2, you wont loose it with time : an acquired stat point is kept for ever
Second thumb :
This is your fighting style sheets. First, you’ll just have “basic school” style (not sur of the english name). Each style will have 4 passives and it own skill slot repartition.
Passives will only be enlabled if you equip skills from the style’s school (the little colored triangle on the upper left of you skill must have the same color than your style). Note that an efficient build doesn’t need to have 4 passives enabled. It’ll depend of your opponent.
Skill slots depend of the style you use. An offensive style means more offensive skill slots when a defensive style will grant more defensive skill slots. You can switch style between each round and even change you skills however you want.
On the right side of this screen, you can check HP (heart), stamina (thunderbolt) and initiative (blue arrow) gauges. Keep in mind this is theorycal gauges : if you havn’t fully recovered your health and stamina, you wont have this much HP and SP. lower right side of the screen, you’ll see tonics gauges for each stat. Most powerfull skills will drain tonic points each round. Which means on a 5 round fight, a single powerfull skill can cost 5 tonic points. You can recover tonic by training the stat. And as long as you are not full tonic on this stat, you wont be able to level it up.
Renforts / reinforcements : this is timed passives. You can get it by consuming some specific food/drink.
3rd tab :
This is skill trees. you have 5 skill trees : the first one is basic school tree. available by default. It’ll let you learn some basic skills. You have to spend GPP points and have the required stat to unlock a skill. Note that available GPP is displayed on the upper gauge. completing this tree will unlock offensive school tree (bear head), agility school tree (monkey face) and defensive school tree (reptile head). those styles are focused on school specific skills. Just like the first punch club, it’s recommended to focus on one specific school (even if other schools skills can be interesting and give a good synergy. It’s up to you to see if it’s worh to invest).
And what about the second school ? the metal sign one ?
It’s not a skill tree actually but… to resume, You’ll be allowed to learn passives her by spending old school points. Old school points can be earned by unlock those passives. You’ll discover it early in game but there’s a single way to unlock passives : find old movies VHS and watch it with your neighbour. Passives unlocked are usefull to help you in daily routine : it make you more effective in your job, unlock inventory slots, upgrade your training, etc. Nothing usefull for a fight but still…
Oh wait, I lied : there’s another way to farm old school points. How ? Discover it by yourself…
4th tab:
This is story timeline. It show you where you are in the story and can help you to find your next destination.
As said, I wont show the 5th tab because spoiler.
Chapter 2 : city map
Now that you saw the menu, it’s time to learn how to manage your daily routine. For this, let’s check the screen you’ll see the most : the map.
On the map, each place you can go is highlighted. There’s two way to move from a place to another :
– walking. It’s free but you’ll spend time according to the distance.Up to 2/3 hours I’ll say.
– Bus : You wont loose a minute (really, not a single second will be lost), but you’ll have to pay.
I wont give you all destinations available in game, but here’s most usefull places :
– Old house : your house. Your father lived here and where you lived… I mean, you lived in the garage and your mom spend here time on the couch. This is where you can sleep, do some push up on your carpet, where the training gears you bought will be displayed and you also have a fridge to cook.
– Apu’s store : you can buy food and drink here (and other stuff).
– Henry’s house : this is your neighbour. You can watch old movies with him and unlock passive skills from your old school tab.
– Silver’s gym : probably the place you’ll go the more often. You can use simulation’s training (we’ll talk about it later) or get a massage to recover health. Silver’s gym opening hours : 8h am – 10h pm
– Bobo’s farm : first of your 3 employers available : you can work here between 8am and 8pm and develop stamina during your work (we’ll see jobs later)
– Grisha’s robot junkyard : 2nd employer. You can work between 8pm and 8am and increase strenght by working here. He also sell training gears for your house.
– Night Club : actually, the more interesting thing is outside the Night Club : Noodle-San’s chinese restaurant will be your 3rd employer available between 7pm and 7am You can increase agility by working here.
Chapter 3 : Daily Routine
Now we’ll see your daily routine. In the first part, we saw stats, it influence on the game and how to manage it. But let’s see this with more details.
Health : it decreasing after each fight. The more you lost HP during your fight, the more the gauge will deplete. A K.O. will drain a lot. To refill the gauge, the more effective way is the massage robot in Silver’s gym. It’s free, but only available if the gym is open. The 2nd effective way is : eating. Some food can refill some health, especially meal kit. Finally, getting some rest (sleep, watching tv, etc.) can refil a little of your hp with time.
Hunger : deplete with time, but only if you do something (training, work, sleeping, etc.). To refill the gauge, you have to… eat ! You can buy food at Apu’s store. Also, if you gain enough employer’s trust, they can offer some interesting alternatives. there’s two kind of food :
– meals : they are displayed in your fridge at home. You can buy up to 7 times the same meal. Prepare meal take time, but it’s the most effective way to fill your gauge.
– snacks : each snack sue an inventory slot. You dont have to prepare it before eating so you wont spend time. It’s less effective to fill your hunger gauge but you wont have to come back at home to prepare a meal when you have an activity outside so you wont loose time.
Stamina : Almost everything will drain your stamina : fighting, training, working… even a chill activity like watching tv can drain your energy. There’s two way to recover :
– Sleeping : the most effective way. Of course, the more you have to recover, the longer you have to sleep. But you can wake up whenever you want, even before you fully recovered.
– Consume snacks : there’s some snacks who can give back some stamina : cofee, energetic drink, energetic bar, etc. You can find’em at Apu’s store. Maybe some employer will have a good alternative ? Finally, a robot sell’s energy snacks at Silver’s gym.
Mood : Make sure to keep a good mood. A happy hero will be more effective at work and training. There’s 3 mood stage :
– green = happy. More effective.
– Yellow = it’s fine. No malus, but not the most effective mood.
– Red = depressed. Progression malus. If your gauge is empty, you won’t train or work.
Mood decrease when you work, but you have a lot of option to recover mood :
– fight. No matter you win or loose : you recover mood after a fight. If you lack of opponent, Silver can be your sparring partner once per day.
– give a hug to your pet : if you bought pet food at Apu’s store, you can cuddle your pet once per day and hear his wisdom… or divagations… (note : I guess pets are pre-order bonus. If the game didn’t asked you which pet you wanted before you start your adventure, it mean’s you didn’t pre-ordered the game…)
– watching movies with Henry : pop corn and good old classics ! You can re-watch movies you found so don’t hesitate
– some snacks can recover mood. Have a pepsi.
– Mood will refill by itself a little once per day. If you fought recently, you’ll have a bonus.
Money : best way to earn money is to work. Go see an employer and work… but let’s see how it work.
As said earlier, you have 3 employers : Bobo’s farm, Grisha’s junkyard and Noodle-san’s restaurant. Each workplace have opening hours. to work, you need to have a good mood and enough hunger/stamina in your gauges so check it before you work. When you start a job, you’ll have this screen:
You can interrupt work whenever you want and even leave job by closing the window. You’ll spend time when working and it drain your mood, hunger and energy but it train a stat according your employer (not as much as training, that being said). As you saw, there’s 3 gauges :
– upper gauge : it’s your employer’s respect. You can earn respect with promotion. there’s 5 stages : 0 (you started your job). 25 (first promotion), 50 (2nd promotion), 75 (3rd promotion) and 100 (… I won’t spoil). Each stage will grand a bonus. We’ll see it later.
– work gauge : it fill by itself. When the gauge is filled, you’ll earn money and the gauge come back to 0. Also, Promotion gauge will be filled a little.
– Promotion gauge : click on the button when the gauge is filled. An event will be trigger. Complete it and you’ll be promoted, which means respect and better pay !
Boss’s respect :
– 25 : your boss will teach you a new school (not a school tree, just a style to use in fight with passive and stuff).
– 50 : your boss will sell you a snack.
– 75 : Boss’s 2nd snack is available
– 100 : your boss will sell you a snack who grant reinforcement for 2 hours.
Now, let’s talk about training.
You have two way to train your stats (I mean except working) : old school way and modern way. Each have positive and negative points :
Old school :
it’s simple : use training gear. Grisha can sell it. Each gear can train specifit stats to it own rythm.
+ :
* you buy it once and it’s free to use after this.
* you can interrupt your training whenever you want if needed.
– :
* slower than modern way
* you will be tired to use a gear if you use it too much and you’ll have to wait before using it again (so you’ll have to use another gear or just doing something else)
Modern :
Silver’s gym offer high-tech training device : let’s go for some VR training and… don’t ask why but it have an influence on your body…
+ :
* faster than old school way
* when you start a training, you can see how long it’ll take and your stamina/hunger cost. But you can’t interrupt training.
– :
* you pay each session. expensive on long term
* only available when gym is opened.
both ways will upgrade with your game progression. It’s your call to use one of the other.. or both.
Chapter 4 : FIGHT !
First, here’s the rules :
– each fight will last some rounds (usually 5)
– your character will fight by himself using skills and passives you choose. It’s pure simulation.
– you win if you manage to fully deplete your oponent HP gauge or if you have more HP than him at the end of the fight.
– as said in first chapter : you have 3 gauges to check, each one depend of your stats :
* HP : depend of your strenght and your health gauge. If you have a full health gauge, you have all your HP for this fight. Otherwise, the more your health gauge is depleted, the less HP you’ll have for this fight. If you loose all your HP, you’ll be KO and loose the fight.
* stamina : depend of your stamina stat and your stamina gauge. if you were tired before the fight, you’ll have less SP at your disposition. Each attack have an SP cost who rely on your strenght (remember : a high strenght mean’s more damage but also more SP spent for a hit).If you dont have enough SP, you’ll pass your action and recover some SP. If you take a hit who decrease your SP up to 0, you’ll fall and loose HP, then you recover with some SP.
– Initiative : rely on agility. Each action will spend at least one initative point. Some defensive skills will also take a point. When you spent all your initaitive points, it’s your oponent turn.
Now let’s take a look on your fight preparation screen
On the left side, this is your fighter’s sheet. You can choose your school and your skills. If you have active reinforcements, it’ll be displayed here too. On the right side, you can see ennemy’s informations : stats, school, passives, skills, reinforcements, etc. note that some ennemies have custom school, skills and passives. Be sure to always check ennemy information and build your strategy around it.
Between each round, you come back here and you can change your school and your skills. If a school have a SP/HP regeneration passive, it’s the one you equip who count, not the one you used during your previous round.
And before you ask : ennemy’s GPP have no influence on the fight. But if you are in league fight, you’ll earn more GPP if your ennemy have way more points than you.
Chapter 5 : tips, advices, etc.
Here’s some usefull tips :
– I stoped playing for a while and now I’m lost ! : take a look at timeline tab as said in first chapter : it’ll help you to see last events who occured. otherwise, useuallly, doing some ligue fights will trigger next main events. If you are scared to miss a sidequest, go to each location and talk to each NPC. if a new dialogue choice is available, maybe it’s an event.
– I ran out of money, I have no food and I’m too hungry to work : Talk to Henry. He’ll never let his best neighbour down. That being said, charity is not unlimited…
– Mom wont let me cook ! Ah yes, your mommy can be a pain because she sleep during day and watch TV all night along… you have two options : eat sandwiches at Apu’s store during day or… ask him if there’s not something to help your mom to sleep. It’s expensive, but you have no other option as long as you sleep in her house (actually it’s your dad’s house but… she’s the Mom, huh…)
– I need to spare money for some expensive stuff, but it’s hard to keep money.. It’ll occure fast enough. Apu’s goods is not cheap and training gear is expensive, so you’ll have to work a lot. Heres some advice : switch between Bobo’s work and Grisha’s work (or Noodle’s but you’ll spend less time to work. So you’ll work between 8am to tomorrow 7an (or 5am with Noodle). Each day, you only need 2 meal kit and if you come back home soon enough, your mom wont be a problem (or maybe you found a way to be sure to not wake her up when you cook). If you are too tired (it’ll occure), just sleep. For your mood, be sure to cuddle your pet and train with Silver (or maybe your next league fight will occure today). If you miss some work hour, it’s not a problem. When one of your boos can promote you, do the event. With this, you should earn between $125 and $150 per day. Remove $50 because of your meals. Some old school passives can help you with work and make money gain easier. Also, at some point, you’llf find a way to be more effective at work. Anyway, after 3 or 4 days, you should be able to buy your stuff. Do it one more day juste to be sure to have some money spared just in case..
– A specific ennemy is too strong ! : First, remember to look at your oponent stats and skills. You can check it whenever you want if it’s a league opponent. If it’s a random encounter during your daily routine, do one more fight to check his skills, even if you loose the fight for this check. Note EVERYTHING : stats, passives, skills, etc. after this, look at your skills and school passives to find the perfect counter. For exemple : if you fight an opponent who use dodge and no block, avoid to use a school who counter block. Look if you don’t have an anti dodge option.If you really have nothing, go do some training : increase your stats, even those who wont help your school, then try again. Be sure you have all your health and stamina. And if needed maybe your employers have something usefull for you ?
– Which school is the best ? Which stat should I main ? : There’s no best school actually : each one have some positive points and negative points. In Punch Club 1, agility was OP because it influenced dodge probability, but not anymore. Dodge is a fixed probability now. So each school have his flaws.
Offensive style with Srenght as main stat will give you powerfull hit but drain a lot of stamina.
Enduring style with Stamina will give you a lot of defense but you’ll have less initiative.
Agility style will allow you to act a lot before you finish your turn and even give you an alternative to stamina for your defense, but you’ll lack of damage.
For stat development, alwayse favorise your main stat. that being said, since you wont loose stat point in Punch Club 2, it ‘s not a bad idea to train your other stats alongside if you are ready to take your time.
– how make a gode use of my GPP and Old School points ? Think twice when you spend your points. Once again, think about the way you choose and think if what you’re about to buy will be usefull. For exemple, one of old school passive can grant a bonus when you train with a specific gear, but if you choose agility way, a boost for bench wont be usefull.
– I have a negative GPP ratio ! help ! yeah… you’ll have it often. You spent your GPP and after you lost a league fight, you have a negative ratio…
Just as I said earlier : look at your oponent stats, train yourself, think about your strategy… dont worry, a negative GPP is not a soft lock. Little Bobo can even help you to recover your GPP fast enough… but his help can also be your doom if you are overconfident…
Have fun ❤
