Kenzan! guide: difficulty rewards, Kyoto Tour and what carries over

Kenzan! guide: difficulty rewards, Kyoto Tour and what carries over Finishing Kenzan gives you more options, but the post-game doesn't preserve every checklist in the same way. Keep your original clear save. Making a separate Kyoto Tour file is much safer than assuming it is just the story save with the ending removed. The four difficulty settings Beginner is the easiest initial option. You take 80% of the normal damage, enemies have 75% of their normal health, fewer enemies attack at once and Heat drains at half the standard rate. The story-clear reward is 30 Ryo. Intermediate is the standard setting. The clear reward is 50 Ryo, reduced to 30 if you dropped to Beginner during the run. This is the setting that allows that difficulty reduction. Advanced leaves the normal damage and enemy-health values in place, but increases the number of enemies attacking simultaneously and drains Heat faster. Clearing it earns 100 Ryo and unlocks Expert. Expert raises received damage to 150% of normal, allows more enemies to attack together and doubles the standard Heat-drain rate. It also removes continues. You cannot lower the difficulty to get through a bad section. Its clear reward is the Brawler God Amulet rather than a cash payout. That Expert reward is different from the True Brawler God Amulet earned by getting S in all 33 Ultimate Challenge missions. Similar names, different requirements. What Kyoto Tour does Kyoto Tour is the free-roam post-game mode. It lets you explore and work on side content without following the main story's chapter progression. Time-of-day conditions and sidequest prerequisites still matter. Speak to Ageha at Tatsuya or Koetsu outside his mansion to change the time of day. That lets you reach evening or nighttime activities without waiting for a particular story event. Your level, money, equipment and ordinary inventory transfer from the clear save. The weapon-collection record and recorded performed Heat Actions transfer too. That does not mean every learned technique and every other completion category remains finished. Sidequest progress, learned abilities and meal records reset. Some other completion work needs doing again as well. A marked Heat Action entry is a record that you previously performed it; it is not the same thing as retaining the ability to use every learned move immediately. Why the story-only Heat Actions matter Kyoto Tour does not recreate the unique story boss encounters. Perform the Inshun, Baiken and Kojiro-specific Heat Actions during the story before making the clear save you intend to carry forward. If an entry was already recorded, the carried completion record preserves it. If you never performed that boss move, free roaming afterward will not produce another encounter with that boss to fix the omission. This is why keeping separate saves before the relevant story fights is useful. A post-game mode cannot replace every missed story opportunity. The story locker that moves A-1, or い一 in the Japanese labels, holds Ebisuya's collection money during the prologue. In Kyoto Tour, the replacement key is in Gyotensai's inventor workshop. The reward becomes the Ancient Seven-Branched Sword. That provides another way to obtain the sword after its story opportunity in burning Tsuruya. It is still the A-1 locker, not an extra locker added to the total of 50. Saving post-game progress for another run In Kyoto Tour, speak to Ito outside Tatsuya to create new clear data. That lets you carry eligible progress onward rather than being stuck with only the inventory from your original ending save. Keep that new clear data separate until you've checked it. Preserve the old story clear and any useful pre-boss saves too. The different files serve different purposes: a completed story record, a free-roam working file and a starting point for another run. Ultimate Challenge The title-screen challenge mode also unlocks after the story. Its 33 stages use preset equipment and stats, so training or crafting more items in Kyoto Tour does not upgrade the character supplied for a challenge. Work through the challenge groups and inspect their grades. Merely clearing every stage is not enough for the True Brawler God Amulet; every stage must show S.