Punch Club

• Your first instinct at the start of the game will no doubt be to train your dude to increase his stats, and avoid the fighting tournament because everyone will own you with their sick moves. This is a huge mistake, and will lead into the Punch Club Cycle Of Failure, where you start out with some money and terrible stats, and then you train and increase your stats, but then you have to manage your money, fatigue, happiness and hunger, and when you're done with that, your stats will have deteriorated because of all the not training you've been doing, and at the end you have some money and terrible stats, and literally everything you've done has been a massive waste of time.

- Join the fighting tournament immediately. Everyone will indeed own you with their sick moves, but the fighting tournament is free, and you can join as many times as you like, and it has only one permanent effect: You gain skill points, even when you lose. With skill points you can buy such amazing permanent character bonuses as "a fighting technique that doesn't suck" and "your Agility will never deteriorate below level 4, ever, so go ahead and just watch television for a month".

- Also, don't neglect your happiness stat. It might seem tempting to go to the gym while sad because the game just lets you, but Sad Training gives you a penalty to your gains. Just spend that little bit of extra time watching television and gains will come to you much faster.

- As soon as you can, sign up for the fighting tournament. Fighting in the tournaments is one of the only way to get points to get skill points. Skill points unlock abilities. Stats lose value every day, abilities last forever. Win or lose, you get points.

- Even before that however you'll be asked to choose from three options. "Great Right Hook" is for punching, great for Bear and okay for everything else. "Call me legs" is kicking, good for Tiger and okay for everything else. "But I'm quick!" is phenomenal for Tiger, terrible for Bear and Turtle.

- Once per day you can pay $15 for "Hand pads training" or $20 for "Sparring Fight" at the gym with Silver. Do this every day. Hand Pads always gets you 2 skill points. Sparring fight gets you 3 if you win, 1 if you lose. He's got 5 in all stats and the basic Punch/Kick/Dodge/Block.

- The Bear/Tiger/Turtle trees are not Strength/Agility/Stamina trees! They are Punch/Kick/Energy trees. Every character will need Agility since it determines your accuracy. If you want to focus strength you will need to keep agility up roughly equal to strength and stamina a few points below it.

- Speaking of skill trees, you will not get enough points to get every ability. You will likely not get enough points to max out a single style's abilities. Each unlock costs 1 more point than the last unlock. The good news is it caps at 25 points per ability. The bad news is that it caps at 25 points per ability.

- If you buy a skill that replaces a skill you don't have it will purchase the basic skill for free. This allows you to buy things the basic version is a prerequisite for. For example, "Unstoppable" replaces "Backlash." If you buy Unstoppable, it will allow you to buy the perk Technician off of Backlash.

- Perks are permanent. Keep that in mind when weighing them. Abilities need to be slotted as Active Skills to work.

- You only really want 1-2 attack skills slotted into Active Skills. Each round the game decides if you're going to attack, and if so it will select one of the attack skills.

- Time only passes when you are traveling by foot from location to location or engaging in an activity. Moving around a location or just sitting there will not cause time to advance. Traveling by bus takes 0 time. Fighting takes 0 time, and using the "fight" button takes no travel time or cost. Basically, if you aren't traveling by foot or doing an activity that actively spends your hunger or energy gauge time will not pass.

- The gym pass ($10) lasts until you leave the gym. Make sure your gauges are full before you go in so you don't throw cash away.

- The first time you meet Silver he'll ask you if you want to spar. Don't bother, all it'll do is cost you some health. You aren't going to beat him and it doesn't give you skill points.

- All timers aside from stat loss are elapsed time, not day x/day x+1. Which means if you do a once per day activity with a sliver of the day left you can't immediately do the activity again once the day ticks over.

- Be polite. It will never lock you into an action and being rude can lock you out of options.

- If you have less than $17 and your hunger gauge is mostly empty Mick will feed you. He'll do this 3 times. After that make sure you have food, money for food, or enough energy and hunger to work a job. It is possible in the very early game to make the game impossible to continue.

- Working on a car is simply a timer. You will never stop hitting the damned Engine, you simply need to work on it until you're told that should be good enough.

- Energy is vitally important. Every action you take, whether attacking, blocking, or dodging eats energy. Even getting hit takes energy. If you take a hit when you have 0 energy you'll get knocked down and take a lot of damage. On the flip side, if you hit your opponent at 0 energy they'll get knocked down and take a lot of damage.

- After you win two tournament fights go into the gym and help the dude out. Ultimate Fighting may sound scary, but it'll get you skill points and once you hit yellow $150+ per won fight.