Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Review – Yarr-kuza

Like a Dragon—or Yakuza, as it's been known for decades in the West—is no stranger to walking off the deep end into wild waters. However, when Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was leaked, it was so ridiculous that no one believed it at first.

That's the kind of energy that perfectly captures Goro Majima's return as a playable protagonist. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii sees Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio put its spin on swashbuckling combat, and it thrives on its absurdity.

Like some of the best games in the series, it balances borderline stupidity, healthy masculinity, and heartwarming humanity fairly well. Even when things go off course, Majima and the new cast right the ship, making this a journey worth taking, particularly if you're caught up with the series.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Is Awash With Silliness

To set the stage, legendary yakuza captain Goro Majima washes up on the shores of a remote island in Hawaii, having lost his memories. He meets a young boy named Noah who wants to see the world, but some sort of sickness keeps him trapped at home by order of his father.

Anyway, one thing leads to another, and the amnesiac becomes the captain of his own pirate ship. He and his crew sing and dance to a musical number about the Goro Pirates, and then they set sail for the legendary Esperanza treasure. Aside from being worth a billion dollars in gold, it also allegedly contains an elixir that prolongs life—perfect for a coughing young boy.

As you can probably tell, the tone here is often less than serious. That levity is a throughline for Pirate Yakuza; even in its darkest, heaviest moments, Majima's lighthearted, off-kilter attitude keeps things breezy.

Most of the game builds off the setting introduced in Infinite Wealth. The main city hub is Honolulu, but Majima and his crew sail the seas around it, landing on various islands. The crown jewel of new locales here is Madlantis. Equal parts clever and tacky, this hub of debauchery is like if a ship graveyard merged with a casino and city slums, with a heavy dose of neon lights painted over everything.

When I first stepped foot in it, I stopped to take it all in; it felt so innovative for a setting, with a unique mix of aesthetics. However, running around it also proved to be a pain, since it's essentially one narrow corridor with mostly inescapable random encounters.

After the first couple hours, you'll have access to most of the game's systems. The pirate-inspired Sea Dog fighting style is drip-fed, easing you into every part of it. The same can be said for naval combat, ship customization, and crew management.

After all that's shored up, you're let loose into a modest open world full of side quests, collectibles, and mini-games galore. I did a majority of the side content and rolled credits after roughly 28 hours, but you could easily get more than 30 hours out of this if you go full completionist.

Overall, I'd say the side content is worth doing, or at least exploring. The writing tows the line between eye-rolling cringe and hilariously savvy. Every side quest stood out to me in some way, whether it involved an HR manager teaching Majima about corpirate compliance, or a scientist developing a universal animal-to-human translator.

Seriously, if you get to the side quest about helping a crewmate find a Minato Girl, do not skip it. It's easily some of the best content in all of Pirate Yakuza.

The Old Man and the Sea

Majima's amnesia makes this game an interesting entry point for the franchise. On the one hand, characters will naturally explain huge events from previous games to give you (and the protagonist) some context. On the other hand, those are also major spoilers, so your mileage may vary.

The main hook here is the Esperanza treasure though. It's the big inciting action that sets Majima on his journey, but once you're given some free reign, it's easy to get lost in the saucy side quests and mini-games out there.

When you focus on the main story though, it's not terribly long. Spanning only five chapters, this has a lot of the hallmarks and cliches of a treasure-hunting story. There are twists and turns on this tale about brotherhood, avarice, and betrayal, some of which you'll likely see coming.

It's the characters that really elevate the simple narrative to something better than the sum of its parts. Majima's unhinged kookiness is underscored by a heart of gold that just wants to keep a kid's dreams alive. Noah's growth, especially alongside his formerly hermit-like father, is a treat to watch, too.

The overarching narrative is easy to follow, though there are some developments that feel a little too convenient. That's par for course in the Like a Dragon games, but it does feel a bit contrived every time it introduces a problem and almost immediately solves it in the next scene.

The climax is pretty meaty; it took me almost two hours from the explicit point of no return. It's here where the two main antagonists come out in full force. However, they haven't played much of a role in this (relatively) short story, so they don't feel like they really earned their place at the end.

Nonetheless, they serve as decent final bosses to wrap things up. One especially serves as a fantastic foil to Majima's character and motivations.

By the end, Majima's heart of gold shines through. He may be the Mad Dog of Shimano, with a brutality only matched by his lunacy. But his actions and motivations in this game's final moments feel earnest.

It all ties back to the overarching Like a Dragon narrative in a heart-wrenching—and warming—way. I didn't cry like at the end of Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, but it delightfully surprises with its emotional weight, despite the ridiculousness of its premise.

Within You There Are Two Dogs

Most of the problems Majima runs into in Pirate Yakuza are often solved with violence—after all, it's an action game. Even moments that aren't actually problems have a fistfight lying in wait.

This game plays like the more classic Like a Dragon experience, with real-time fights instead of the turn-based combat that was introduced in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Majima moves a lot faster than series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu though, creating a pace that feels more frantic and aggressive.

Majima starts out with the Mad Dog fighting style, a classic staple fans should recognize. He deftly dances between enemies, taking them down with swift punches, kicks, and stabs from his dagger. When he builds up enough Madness meter, he can summon shadow clones that act independently, often putting the game on autopilot for a short moment.

He also unlocks the aforementioned Sea Dog style, which turns him into a swashbuckling maelstrom of pirate destruction. Ryu Ga Gotoku obviously had a lot of fun with every part of this style's toolkit, cranking every bit of it up to 11.

For example, the dual cutlasses, while powerful in their own right, also double as dual boomerangs that sweep across the field. The flintlock pistol, when fully charged, basically blasts out a cannonball. And pirates stereotypically have hooks for hands, right? In Majima's case, it's a grappling hook that kind of turns him into Spider-Man.

With its wide-reaching abilities, Sea Dog was more useful with giant groups of fodder, and Pirate Yakuza isn't shy about throwing entire armies of mooks your way. This style's Madness ability also covers a wide area, as Majima plays cursed instruments to summon spirit sharks and ghost monkeys.

Overall though, both styles are fun to play, with their flashy, fluid animations and over-the-top combo finishers. Majima's Heat actions—context-sensitive attacks that deplete its own meter—are as gruesome as they are entertaining. Even when I accidentally set one off, I never feel like I'm "wasting" my Heat.

Drifting Into Naval Warfare

Of course, a pirate game isn't complete without some seafaring combat. Your ship, the Goromaru, moves with a lot of weight, turning as slowly as you'd expect. Well, that is, until you turn on the booster jets. Then you double your speed and can literally drift in the sea.

And I'm talking like The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift here. You can unload your portside cannons, boost and drift nearly 180 degrees, then immediately unload the starboard cannons. Is it realistic? No. But it's fun, and that's what matters.

Pirate Yakuza isn't trying to be the most accurate pirate-simulator out there, in the same way it's never been an accurate Tokyo-crime-underworld-simulator. It goes for maximum fun factor that makes you laugh with delight.

You recruit crewmates throughout the story, but you also get them during side quests and out in the open world. They can be assigned to the various weapons on your ship and to your boarding squads, and there's enough meaningful choice where you can strategize and optimize your ship.

There are also ship upgrades, like improving its durability or swapping out the cannons for flamethrowers or laser cannons. I decked out my Goromaru with pink wood, kawaii anime girls, laser blasters, and coconut machine guns, which wonderfully undermined the seriousness of any situation.

However, I found the ship combat to be the weakest part of the game. It isn't boring, but it gets repetitive very quickly. Fights aren't as dynamic as hand-to-hand combat, with almost every fight devolving into the same strategy. Boarding enemy ships is the best part, only because it switches back to on-foot combat.

It gets tedious after a while, and the overarching ship-focused side story didn't quite feel interesting enough to carry it all the way through.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Review | Final Thoughts

All this is to say, if you've been eagerly anticipating Pirate Yakuza because you've already been Like a Dragon pilled, you have nothing to worry about. This delivers on everything I wanted in a Yakuza game and adds a little more. It does run shorter than a full-length entry in the series, though, but I personally found that helped it not outstay its welcome.

The naval combat, while a novel play style for the franchise, ultimately comes out as the weakest part of the game over the course of its runtime. However, it's absolutely worth sticking through to the end of the story, just to see how it all ties back to the end of Infinite Wealth.

And if you have no real stakes in the overarching narrative, Pirate Yakuza still delivers a light, playful, and humorous open world action experience that's easy to approach and easier to enjoy. It's got the trademark absurdity that gives the Yakuza series its signature identity, balanced by heartfelt moments that make these characters feel human.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a copy provided by Sega over the course of 28 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.