Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii – Review
Hot on the heels of 2024’s GOTY contender Infinite Wealth, Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a shining example of why the term ‘asset flip’ doesn’t need to be a pejorative. Reusing many elements from its immediate predecessor while returning to beat ’em up combat of yesteryear rather than the turn-based RPG combat the main series has adopted, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a camp and ridiculously over-the-top swashbuckler that keeps its energy high while reining in the runtime – unless you happen to become hopelessly addicted to the many mini-games and distractions around every corner.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii doesn’t require players to have rolled credits on Infinite Wealth, but it does help to have some more context around certain events and characters present. Aiding new players or those that might have missed Ichiban’s Hawaiian hijinks, the Pirate Yakuza in question is none other than Majima Goro, a series favourite who made Yakuza 0 still my personal favourite entry. Majima has run into a little trouble however, washing up ashore on Rich Island, a small landmass just a short ship ride from the Hawaiian mainland, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Befriending Noah Rich, a young boy with a dream of exploration, Majima quickly builds a pirate crew as they race to find the secret location of a legendary treasure. The overarching story is the usual blend of melodrama and absurdity that, given the material, tends more towards the latter than the former. The pirate theme is out in full force with mystical supernatural treasures scattered throughout the many islands on the game map and Jack Sparrow references aplenty.
With a shorter runtime than Infinite Wealth, the core game loop of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii doesn’t disguise itself as well as larger entries do, which would be more of an issue if the loop itself wasn’t a decent balance of hand-to-hand combat, adventure on the high seas and arena-based ship scuffles with a hefty dose of Yakuza side quests thrown in for good measure. A return to real-time combat speeds up the feel of encounters, with two fighting styles available to switch between on the fly – Sea Dog and Mad Dog. Sea Dog is Pirate Majima personified, wielding a pistol and dual cutlasses which works best at range, while Mad Dog is closer to his ‘regular’ combat from the main Yakuza titles and prioritises close-up aggression. Many fights throughout the game will be done beside a scurvy crew of pirates Majima has recruited to his cause, most of whom will have some sort of requirement to unlock, such as defeating another pirate crew or obtaining a particular item. Everywhere the player turns, there is something to do or discover, whether it be upgrading your ship, expanding your crew or finding more treasures to upgrade Majima’s stats and abilities.
Where Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii shines is the way the Ryu Ga Gotoku team weave these many systems together to make everything feel cohesive, where excelling in a side-activity is then going to make other areas of the game easier. For a start, the importance of acquiring gold cannot be understated as it funds just about everything in game to some degree – items, skills, ship upgrades and equipment all rely on maintaining large gold coffers which can be acquired in a few ways, but most reliable are side activities like Bounties on the streets of Honolulu and the Ship Combat Arena in Madlantis, an exclusive new area which serves as both a story hub for large parts of the game and where players will go head-to-head with competing pirate crews. These tend to be self-perpetuating activities, as the money gained can be fed back into new skills, equipment and stat upgrades for Majima and his ship so that players can go after higher risk/reward Bounty targets and Pirate crews. Both forms of combat factor highly in every other section of the game, including exploration, so it’s worthwhile for players to spend some time working through these challenges when they become available rather than putting them off, especially in Madlantis where story progress is sometimes locked to rank achieved. Even early on, there are islands to explore and pirates to engage around the various ocean maps that far outstrip Majima and crew without putting some effort into upgrading as well as recruiting and training new members and positioning them on the ship such that they can shine in their role, whether that be manning a starboard flamethrower or throwing down in a hand-to-hand deck battle. This aspect of management – a favoured sub-mechanic of the entire franchise – can sometimes tend towards the tedious though, especially presenting individual gifts to crew members in person or juggling who goes where on the ship.
This tedium bleeds over into seafaring in general, given the very slow movement of your ship before upgrades and the repetitive nature of ship combat which employs quite simple mechanics. New weapon types spice things up every so often, but towards the latter half of the game I found myself avoiding extra ship combat where I could. The pedestrian nature of the ocean traversal also affects exploration and treasure hunting, which boils down to landing on an island and beating pirates to a pulp before opening a treasure chest. Easily the most exciting rewards are new rings which Majima can equip across both hands – seriously, you have five slots, one for each finger – to boost stats. Explorable ocean areas become more numerous as players progress an overarching plot involving the Devil Flags pirate crew whose difficulty increases exponentially alongside the rewards they offer, some of whom will easily be post-game content without proper preparation.
Back on dry land, Madlantis and the varying explorable islands are somewhat small in size, meaning a repurposed Honolulu stands out as the main destination. While it might be a bit ‘too much, too soon’ for anyone coming straight over from Infinite Wealth, the choice to reuse it is understandable given it was a very large new area for the devs to build and repurposing assets is how RGG Studios manages to keep the series releasing annually. Honolulu is loaded with side quests, heart-to-heart conversations with your crewmates and more extraneous content than you could shake a cutlass at. Between vocational school quizzes, the returning courier bike delivery jobs, cooking, pool, darts, mah-jong, karaoke and more, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii isn’t short of content to keep players busy if they so wish for well over two dozen hours.
It’s fair to say that following up Infinite Wealth was always going to be a difficult task and one that RGG Studios have neatly sidestepped with Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. It’s offbeat premise and relative brevity make it an easy game to like for Yakuza/LaD veterans but much like the similarly asset reusing Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, it would make an odd place to begin the series given how much it does differently. Despite a few shortcomings in traversal and some repetitious elements, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is an enjoyable way to ‘tide’ oneself over until RGG can put together the next main series entry.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 console using code kindly supplied by the publisher.
