Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (2025)

This is my first Yakuza/Like a Dragon. For whatever reason, it clicked. I love how straightforwardly, unashamedly, 'game-ey' it is. At a glance, it's realistic looking, but the artiface is constantly and gleefully smashed; fighting with swords, coins bursting from enemies, or how every side activity gets an arcadey mini game. The tone veers just as much, from deeply earnest melodrama to wacky hijinks. Somehow, it all hangs together.

I'm not sure whether it's better than the sum of its parts, which are of extremely variable quality, but there are so many parts!

A ridiculous spin-off of the Like a Dragon series starring Kiryu Kazuma's rival Goro Majima. The games starts with him washing up on shore of a small island near Hawaii with amnesia. He's revived by a young boy named Noah. He helps the kid and the rest of the island out by beating the local thugs parading as pirates. After defeating their leader, he decides to be the pirate crews new captain, and joins the men on a hunt for legendary treasure. He even brings Noah and his father along for the trip. This jarring, silly pivot in the Like a Dragon series ends up being a surprisingly heartfelt story about following your dreams and leading by example for the next generation.

The game takes place in Honolulu, Noah's home Nele Island, and a pirate hub called Madlantis along with the waters around these locations. Madlantis is similar to the big gambling ship from The Man with No Name. It's a lot of neon lights, gambling, games, and a ship combat arena. In the waters around these areas, there are enemy pirate ships to fight and small islands where pirates are guarding treasure for the taking.

Combat goes back to the real-time brawler style the original Yakuza games are known for. There are two fighting styles: a traditional brawler style where Majima fights with his fists and a knife and a new pirate-themed fighting style where he dual-wields cutlasses. The former is best for one-on-one fights while the other has several attacks for taking down multiple enemies at once. The brawler-style will never not be satisfying as the animations of the punches and dodges look so cool. I preferred it for a while, but then the pirate style becomes more fun as they introduce new items like the pistol and the grappling hook. Hitting multiple enemies with a charge shot feels good, and the grappling hook is useful for closing the distance between Majima and enemies with guns for quick takedowns of the most annoying enemies. The one issue I have with the combat is the sprint and jump buttons are the same button. Pretty often, I would end up jumping when I was trying to sprint.

The major new addition to combat is ship battles. These are faster, more arcade-like than what the Assassin's Creed games offer. Goro Majima's ship, the Goromaru, has two mounted machine guns on the front, a set of cannons on each side. The cannons can be swapped out for different types of fire power such as flamethrowers. I stuck with cannons the whole time for the range and damage. The only set back was the reload time after firing. The Goromaru also has a boost which can help to catch up to enemies, ram into other ships to do damage, and allow the Goromaru to drift. The drift is the major game-changer here. Turning in a ship can be frustratingly slow without it, so that drift feels amazing. I can quickly put myself in an advantageous position to do some real damage to the enemy or quickly dodge an enemy attack. It's also a good way to fire your cannons from one side to quickly turn around and hit your enemy with your cannons from the other side. There is a deck mode during combat where Majima lets go of the wheel to move freely around the ship. It's useful in battle because in deck mode, Majima pulls out a rocket launcher. It's a good way to quickly deal with weak foes without having to maneuver your ship to line up your shot. It's also how you have to heal your ship from status effects like frozen or poison. Things get tense here because it takes time to recover the ship, and the Goromaru is a sitting duck when this is going on.

The Goromaru's crew is customizable. Player's can choose their first mate, who mans the cannons and the machine guns, and who joins them in big deck battles for crew vs. crew fights. These fights happen at the end of major ship battles. The crew is broken up into squads with squad leaders providing stat bonuses specific to their characters making who the squad leader is matter to strategy. Animals can also be assigned to the crew to provide further buffs that can be triggered after defeating enough enemies to build up the meter. Everyone recruit has stats for attack, defense, ship recovery, and cannon power to help determine who to place where. Pirates are recruited for main quests, side quests, and people around Honolulu and Madlantis who will join the Goromaru if their criteria is met. It's funny to see shots of the full crew because the pirates who join the Goromaru can be some random weirdos.

This game never meets the heights set by the previous game, Infinite Wealth, but it's a fun side story with major changes from the traditional Like a Dragon games to make it a standout for the long-running franchise. It also might be the best pirate game ever made.

Of the fourteen Like a Dragon games I’ve played to date, this is the tenth I’ve rated five stars. I remain smitten with this franchise.

What sets Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii apart for me is its tone.

Normally, a Ryu Ga Gotoku game mixes emotional melodrama with unabashedly silly side content. That line can be fuzzy, and the balance varies title to title. But it’s not uncommon to be (for example) challenging small children to a slot car race one minute, then watching a real tearjerker of a cut scene the next.

By comparison, Pirate Yakuza contains almost no street-level dramatic beats to ground its adventure, committing instead to a truly bonkers premise with pure “substory” vibes.

This could have been a disaster. But it works for me, for a few reasons:

• I’ve always been a “complete all substories” kind of guy anyway, so I don’t mind seeing those elements turned all the way up.
• The characters comment just enough on the ridiculousness of their predicament without undermining the experience or sacrificing any of the series' trademark heart.
• It’s really fun!

To be clear, I'd miss those more dramatic or emotional elements if they continued to be sidelined in the future. But based on the game's epilogue, and its status as more of a standalone expansion than full-on entry, I'm not worried.

Since my introduction to the series seven years ago, I've admired the way RGG Studios prioritizes fun over consistency of tone. Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii simply pushes that to an absurd extreme. Yo, ho! ☠️

Majima had gotten pretty throwaway roles in Yakuza games since Zero but this year this finally changed. We got a proper game all about Majima. Well... about Majima and pirates in Hawaii.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a fun, silly game that goes way beyond a quick cash-grab spin-off. A lot of it is very by-the-book, though. It's old-style Yakuza gameplay (no turn based stuff here) with tons of recycled minigames and content you've come to expect from the series, in good and bad. The visuals range from flashy and vibrant cutscenes and environments to stilted low-effort dialog sections like they always have. The music is mostly awesome once again. The sidestories are clumsy and simple gameplay-wise but hilarious content-wise. It's good stuff but very familiar.

However, the game comes with a surprisingly content-heavy pirate campaign with sea battles, crew management, ship customisation and so on. In a sense, it's a lot more ambitious in its new mechanics than say, the Judgment games were. There's a lot of improvement in the pirate gameplay but what is there is already very easy-going fun.

When it comes to combat, in addition to the more familiar Mad Dog fighting style, Majima is also given a new unique Seadog fighting style. This utilises throwable cutlasses, a pistol and a hookshok to close distances between enemies. It's a fun addition for sure. As is with Dragon Engine beat'em'up Yakuzas, though, the loose and chaotic combat is far from perfect, and the developers seem to even bring new problems in by trying to make the the battles larger in scale with tons of gun-wielding enemies. However, the battles (and the most of the game in general) are rather easy even with the harder difficulty, so that it doesn't get too bad with the dodgy combat. And as before: when the combat is fun, it is very fun and flashy.

Like the previous mainline entry, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (which I haven't yet played, too long turn-based game makes me scared), Majima's pirate adventure takes place in Hawaii. The gist of the story is that Majima washes up on an island without his memories, gets saved by a kid called Noah, and then goes on a treasure hunt to find a legendary teasure and, most importantly, to show the crazy world out there to the sheltered kid Noah. The story itself is not particualrly strong but, as is typical with Yakuza games, the cast of characters is strong and it's nice to see them in the crazy events of the story as well as the more relaxed character-building moments of the side content.

In general, the overall tone of the game is pretty cozy and whimsical. In some ways, it's a bit jarring how child-friendly the tone is at times (and yet, at times it definetly is not child-friendly) but it also contributes to this nice lighthearted feel. Even venturing in Honolulu, the game's main city, and engaging in its side content is made pretty cozy. For example, you have a greet-button that let's you holler at people on the street and rack up new friends. Substories are mostly about helping people. There's also the "Drink Link" system that let's you have a heart-to-heart conversation in a bar with your crewmembers after finding enough slice-of-life dialog bits scattered around the game world. For a game about beating people up and dangerous pirate conspiracies, it sure is filled with feel-good vibes.

And then there's the insanity of Masaru's Love Journey live-action bits.

I went into the game expecting and wishing for a swift ten to fifteen hour campaign and some nice side content to tackle for a while after that. I ended up doing most of the content in the whole game and spending about 45 hours in total with it. And I still have some stuff to get into (new Sega arcade games!). Needless to say, I had fun.

And as a weird existential crisis hit me this year, it's kind of calming to see the old Yakuza uncles Majima and Saejima talk about aging and how to make your life worthwhile while you're still alive. You don't always need crazy stories to make an impact. Relatability on the whole being-a-human-thing we are part of goes a long way too.

Some thoughts on Pirate Yakuza: The Man Who Forgot His Name now that I have beaten it last night. Liked it overall.

• Majima's kid equivalent >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ichiban's kid equivalent. Noah is an actual character who is a foil to Majima back in Yazkuza 0. Very simple in his traits, but he gets much more banter off of Majima. Lani was such a nothing character in Infinite Wealth. I don't remember a single exchange between her and Ichiban.
• Not a fan of the ship sailing. Getting from point A to B per mimute on a ship doesn't seem like it'd be for me.
• I didn't care for the main villain up until the end, even if it's by a little bit. He has some sick setpieces as a final boss and I do like his comeuppance on a thematic level.
• Very low stakes story, which is what I expected. I had a fun time with it. Even if the pacing is very wonky. Worth it for the post credits scene and the dancing scene a la Shrek
• I don't like this direction of the beat-em-up combat where there are tons of enemies per encounter that have barely any health. I like the styles Majima has, but I feel so incentivized to just hold X in his pirate style because of the quantity of enemies. Against bosses is where the combat shines IMO.
• Progression is better here than in Gaiden. Same system but the rate is much better and what you do to get points is less chores.