The Like A Dragon series continues to be a series that can retread itself with relatively expert ease, and nowhere is this ability showcased better than in their latest outing with Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Despite the biggest promise made in RGG Studios’ latest outing being a return to the Honolulu location that the players no doubt spent hours, perhaps collective days in, it is easy to think that the game would fall into the funk of feeling like a rehash.
Indeed, much of the map remains the same, the minigames for the most part return untouched, and you can expect a lot of the same grinding you already sunk hours into, just in a new form. But on top of that is one of the best and most memorable shifts that the series has taken in its 20-year history. A shift that, while it has its ups and downs, makes every moment that makes you go, ‘Oh, I remember this from the last game’ worth it for every moment that makes you go ‘What the hell is going on?’ Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii asks you to set sail on an adventure that by the end, you never really hope ends, but you are so glad it does, only because of the promise it makes for the future of the series.
Captain Goro Majima
The story picks up shortly after the events of Infinite Wealth and serves as a narrative offshoot rather than a full continuation in the vein of Like A Dragon: Gaiden, which served as a setup for last year’s mainline title. There is some forward progression to the Universe of the series, but expect most of what occurs here to feel self-contained, though I’m sure these characters will appear again in the future. The narrative is also smartly retold through the lens of the protagonist, the one-time villain Mad Dog Goro Majima, who is already an unreliable narrator, which adds to the absurdity of the story in a way that mainline Like A Dragon games mainline games don’t.
Goro awakens on a beach after a ship he was sailing on sinks. With no memory of who he was but much of his personality intact, he quickly gets drawn into a tale of modern-day pirates that sail on old-fashioned pirate ships and wear old-fashioned garb, yet use inhalers and cellphones on a regular basis. This eventually leads to a quest for treasure, as one might expect of a pirate adventure, that Goro is more than happy to set sail on, showcasing in the most complete display since 0 just how far he has come as a character.
Goro makes for a fantastic lead, and honestly, the only character that could pull off the pirate life in the series, with a performance that an outstanding English and Japanese voice cast bolsters. Goro retains some of his signature elements, especially his laugh, but is given the free range to showcase just how he became the head of a construction company and a Yakuza matriarch, mixing his readiness to throw down just for the fun of it with the willingness to protect and help the friends along the way and with the motley and bizarre crew he will build through your time in and around hawaii, selling him as someone worth following is served all the more.
Depending on where you stand, the biggest drawback in this adventure might be the length, which is far shorter than an average LAD title, breaking more on par with that of Gaiden. For context, the platinum trophy for Infinite Wealth took me roughly 170 hours of time (which I don’t regret), while both Gaiden and Pirate Yakuza both clocked in for the same thing at around 30 hours for the same completion. Ever since the introduction of Yokohama, it is hard to deny that the bloat in the series can get a little bad. The series is addictively fun to play, of course, but just like ice cream, stuffing your face with so much sugary goodness can leave an opposite effect on you. Hopefully, these side stories will become a common addition to the usually scheduled programming, though, offering a great place to start for newcomers with stories that require less reliance on the long-form narrative and a smaller slice of the world for players that get overloaded with things to do.
Sea Shanties
While there is a lot here that treads old ground, built on top of that is a pirate game that, ironically, feels a lot like Ys X: Nordics, which blew me away when it was released in the West last year. There are a ton of maps specifically for sailing around, as well as a combat style built around being a pirate. This new element didn’t always hit with me as much as I wanted it to but it marks one of the most drastic departures from the norm the series has seen ever since Takayuki Yagami went full on Steve Buschemi in Lost Judgement, though here it works better no mater how radical Yagami was with a skateboard. Pirates and Yakuza really shouldn’t mix, but from a narrative standpoint, it does well. It also makes me wonder who could be next, hopeful even characters that have long since been backseated, like Akiyama could return in a Gaiden narrative in the future, or even new characters. Kiryu was a secret agent, and Majima is a pirate. Who or what could be next? Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii really helps solidify that I want these stories.
Pirate Yakuza also brings back an element from Gaiden that I sorely missed in Infinite Wealth and that is the customizable outfits. Every piece of Goro Majima’s outfit, from hair and shirt to earrings and shoes, can be interchanged with a lot of options to choose from. While he has had a few looks throughout the series, his signature has become pretty iconic, and yet he wore everything I put him in well. The customizations also extend to your pirate ship with a massive number of options to make your enemies fear your approach. In both cases, you get five customization slots as well, giving you the freedom to have a look for every occasion. In addition to looks, this title features the most complete soundtrack from Sega’s history and an mp3 player to just let you play them whenever you want. Seriously, sailing into battle to Escape The City from Sonic Adventure 2 or beating up gang members to Magic Sound Shower from Outrun will change your perspective on life in the best way possible. With songs from so many more franchises, even Metaphor: Refantazio and Persona, this might be one of the best collections of music you could ever hope for and a labor of loving homage to a company’s history on par with AstroBot. It will blow your mind.
Ready the Cannons
Setting sail on Goro Majima’s ship, the Goromaru, which ironically is not named after him when it is named but actually named after a tiger… Named Goro… I swear it’s super complex and cool… It was not all I was hoping it would be. For starters, even fully upgraded, the ship isn’t super fast, despite being stocked on boost, which also feels slow outside of combat and controlling the navel field. Sailing maps are pretty wide with little but ship battles and some landfall maps to arrive at, and of course, lighthouses that serve as safe waters. You can only teleport from lighthouses making it annoying to actually traverse, especially later, needing to sail out to the middle of nowhere to tackle one map to find treasures ( a collectable) in the game, then travel all the way back to the lighthouse to teleport somewhere else, or sail across the map to the next treasure because you have no lighthouse activated.
This wouldn’t be as noticeable if Ys X: Nordics didn’t actually do this better, allowing for quick movement from anywhere on the ocean map to a checkpoint you found already. Since Like A Dragon has also streamlined this on the core Hawaii map, giving you quick access to taxi locations just by using the map, the fact that Sailing lacks this is even more noticeable. Sea battles are, in concept, fun as the ship controls well and makes for a fun addition, but it can also wear out its welcome quickly. Ship battles rarely see you get valuable items, and they inherently take up more time than an average fistfight. Since any given map will probably force you through two or three of these battles to move from a spawn point to where you’re going, then back again, they quickly feel more like a nuisance than an engaging moment. They aren’t easy to avoid, but you can run through them. Since this is the new ‘gimmick’ of the game you can expect ship combat pushed into everything, so there will be more than enough to get your fix without taking on additional combat.
On land, fights are much easier to avoid, but again, combat can become the tedium of completing tasks and sidequests as enemies spawns are obnoxiously frequent. On Rich Island, where you start the game, areas are small and run you into enemies often since traveling between the two open areas pigeonhole you into a linear staircase. In one of these areas, a tiny little beach, I would get attacked only to turn around and, you guessed it, get attacked. These enemies literally spawn in this tiny area as fast as they are defeated, and while I love a good fight, it becomes a slog when I have my objective right next to me, and I’m just being blocked from hitting it.
Majima is also, by far, the most overpowered character I have played so far, even compared to Kiryu. Not only is he very fast, but every style has a bladed weapon you can use to tear apart your enemy’s health. Playing on the professional difficulty, it’s not like I wasn’t wrecked at parts I shouldn’t have, guaging my health wron,g but there were other points where I felt I should have struggled and breezed right through. Gaiden was far more challenging on hard, and while I don’t play Like A Dragon to ‘suffer defeat after defeat’, I like my enemies to feel like they can fight back, and too often did I feel they just couldn’t as Majima zipped around them. Later, Majima unlocks abilities that make even quicker works of his enemies.
On Land And Sea
And Like A Dragon really needs to be measured on just how distracted you can get, and the answer is a lot. Returning from the previous entry are side events like Dragon Karts Crazy Delivery, and Sicko Snap, all very apt paradise of classic titles that you can get lost in for quiet some time since they are all fun. While each has treasures associated with them to earn, as well as new crew and clothes, none really has a massive narrative with them to follow or some higher goal to accomplish. Dragon Karts, notable for having a long arc when it appeared during Ichiban’s first outing, is fully completable in about an hour, though there is a narrative. It makes these modes stand out as you don’t feel obligated to complete them, but you will probably feel some obligation to complete them like I did, as a pirate needs that treasure. The master system returns as well, complete with a vast library of games to collect, which also distracted me every step of the way.
These things do prove slightly more fun than the actual side story of the game, which is both predictable for the series but also insanely tedious. You are introduced to a pirate crew made up of five themed villains, such as a samurai pirate and a ninja pirate. Yup, this is kinda how it always goes. The issue is it sets a bunch of waypoints on the map you need to sail out of the way to get treasures and pirate flags to unlock the next out-of-the-way marker in the narrative. Again, this involves sailing slowly to a corner of the map with nothing on it but one mission, then sailing back as slowly. In one case, I was way underpowered for an enemy I sailed to since it doesn’t really tell you the difficulty of the enemy till you’re there. I lost a few times and sailed back, but it felt especially annoying not realizing I should build my ship up before heading to that corner, then taking the sail of shame back.
With Majima being as powerful as he is, the game turns to two more mechanics to balance it out: the new ship combat, which can take some getting used to, and crew battles that feel similar to some combat group battles that have appeared in the past but set itself apart as well. Both the ship and squads can be made up of a massive roster of characters, both new and returning, each with their own power level to contribute. While not massively hard to figure out of succeed it, both can prove to punish you if you set your characters wrong, causing you to lose fights you kinda feel you should dominate in simply because of the squad power level and not majimas level. The Colosseum is based entirely around these fights, which prove to be the best versions of ship combat, both challenging and engaging, but far more consuming as, first, you need to win a naval fight and then a crew fight in standard combat, with multiple rounds in each.
Verdict
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii has a lot of grindy elements in it, and I know this is nothing new to the franchise. In cases like Mini-games and alternative modes, I can live with this, as these are meant as a distraction you can take rather than a need. What it shocked me, though, was just how much the ship element that this game was so heavily based around felt like the anchor weighing the experience down. Ship combat, when on full display, is absolutely great, but it is only highlighted this way in a few contexts, such as the Colosseum. Normal battles yield little reward and are so frequently forced on you that they feel like an obligation you can’t weasel out of.
Other sailing elements like wandering the map, feel slow and cumbersome, with mission stuff to find feeling out of the way almost intentionally to force the element. The fact that you don’t get quick travel outside of safe waters also proves to be annoying, especially when you want to return to the main maps in a hurry. In between these moments, though, there is fun to be had as you fight through waves of enemies or flirt with your tiger companion (which is a very real thing). The things you love about Like A Dragon are on full display, just in a smaller package.
Where the game truly succeeds is its narrative, which feels like a breath of fresh air for a series that can often feel redundant. Never have I felt more excited for the ways the series can grow and the narratives it can tell after I set sail for the pirate’s life. Even more so, I am excited for the side stories the series can tell and the additional characters that it can highlight, rather than let a series full of crazy and compelling heroes only be represented by a few. Sega and RGG have finally let the series embrace some elements like the vast array of the company’s history in game and music form, as well as let me fully customize my protagonist, and I seriously hope these elements are here to stay.
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Reviewed For PC, Also Available On PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series
Developer: RGG Studio
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: February 21st, 2025
Set sail as legendary Yakuza Goro Majima as he hunts for treasure and live the pirate life in hawaii.
PROS:
+Great Story The Offers New Possibilities.
+Great cast across English and Japanese
+Enjoyable Ship Combat
+Massive Sega Soundtrack
+Character and ship customization.
+Shorter Story
CONS:
-Ship traversal and maps
-Too few events that highlight ship combat.
-Majima is pretty overpowered and somehow keeps getting more so.
-The expect Like A Dragon grind
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Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
