As you roam Sotenbori in Like a Dragon Gaiden, you’ll find a variety of neat side activities to occupy your time, including some addictive Pocket Cars events. Here is our guide outlining the best Pocket Cars parts in Like a Dragon Gaiden.
Like a Dragon Gaiden – best Pocket Cars parts
As I played Like a Dragon Gaiden, I’m pretty sure I spent more time playing Pocket Cars than I did progressing the main adventure, and perhaps enjoying the rest of the mini-games combined. It’s super addictive. But you win most handily when you acquire the best parts and know when to use one over the other. Some of them are more useful than others. The best Pocket Cars parts play a role in your customization race after race. They’ll be your go-to choice when you make your first attempts at any new event, though you may have to make some tweaks and go with other parts.
Related: Where to find all seven gold balls in Like a Dragon Gaiden
It took me some time to grasp that the car you drive doesn’t matter much. You unlock stylish new vehicles. Weight aside, the difference in stats is extremely minor or even non-existent. Most cars wind up with the exact same stats if you adjust all of their parts. You only really need to pay attention to the parts you add. Below, I’m offering suggestions for the best parts in the most relevant categories, and wrapping up with some final comments on the less interesting (but sometimes vital) Suspension, Wing, and Stabilizer components.
Tires – Spiked
In a lot of the early races, you should use some variety of Soft tires. They let you maintain tight control. Then in some later races, it’s easy to go flying off the course on some of the tight turns, and Soft tires fight that. However, a lot of the later courses also include grassy patches. Those will slow you down something fierce unless you have Spiked tires, which also help you accelerate up hills. I give them a very slight edge over the Soft tires for that reason. There are some limited cases where Slick tires are also useful, but they rarely played a part in my victories.
Runner Up: Soft
Frame – Speed
Corners have brutal effect in a close race. You’ll be cruising ahead of your competition just fine, and then you hit a series of S turns and suddenly, you’re behind by a few car lengths. The way to handle this is with the Speed frame, which prevents you from dropping back in those instances. However, there are some courses where the frame sends you flying off the track. In those cases only, I recommend swapping it out for a Balanced frame. I only occasionally had reason to touch the other varieties.
Runner Up: Balanced
Motor – Godspeed
This is the toughest category, and the motor you want to use changes over the course of the game. There are a few varieties of Godspeed motor that I typically use, once I acquire them. Their downside is that they allow you to build up enough speed to easily fly off corners in the later races. Typically, you want to swap out for a High Torque motor in those cases. It slows you down, but not so much that cars usually lap you. After all, if you have to move at a crawl to survive some curves, so do they. In some of the earliest races, the Power motors can also prove useful.
Runner Up: High Torque
Gears – Godspeed
From early in the game, there is usually a variety of Godspeed gears available to attach to your car. That category tends to dominate any others, so you’ll rarely see my vehicles rocking anything else. Most of the time, when I want something else, I go with the Power gear. That’s useful on courses with a lot of hills. If you spend too long going up hills, you lose the advantage otherwise produced by high top speed.
Runner Up: Power
Battery – High Speed
Do all the tweaking you like, but the battery you choose often has the most obvious impact. In races that are sufficiently short without too many tight turns, the High Speed battery is the lead choice. A lot of times, it can be the difference between a win and a loss. I also like the High Capacity battery a lot because it lets me maintain a charge through the end of long races. Sometimes, the High Speed battery just sends me flying off corners, even with all other customizations on point. The High Capacity battery tends to slow me down enough that I have fewer issues. I also like the Regular battery for the less specialized courses. Really, any battery is good, but only one of the three is right for a given course.
Runner Up: High Capacity
Suspension, Wings, and Stabilizers – Rainbow Wing
You won’t spend a lot of time with these parts until you’re halfway through your roster of rivals and courses. I’ve found that with suspension, its main purpose is to add weight to a vehicle so you don’t go flying over the top of hills and fall off-course. Wings accomplish the same thing, but with fewer downsides. The Rainbow Wing becomes available to purchase near the end of the adventure, and it’s almost always the right choice for your vehicle at that point. I typically avoid the Stabilizer parts, except on a handful of courses where every turn seems to give my cars trouble. For suspension, I often will go with Medium Suspension so I can save a point for some other part, even though the Heavy Suspension is superior on paper.
Runner Up: Medium Suspension
As you build new vehicles for each new challenge, you’ll always have the easiest time if you preview the course and consider what unique features are most likely to impact performance. If a course includes grass, that’s a sign you need Spiked tires of some sort. If there are a lot of hills, acceleration/power is more important than top speed. And if you see a ton of sharp turns, it’s time to build a car around the challenge they pose.
When choosing parts, make necessary cuts to keep your part Cost Limit at or below the limit. The Cost Limit is the reason I mostly avoided mentioning specific parts above. Often, you’re better off going with parts that add up to a number below the Cost Limit, if that means you can keep your car lighter on some of the flatter courses. Otherwise, I usually go for the highest-rated piece of a each particular type that I can manage while staying within the limit.
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