12 copies of the same photobook have just been sold to the same lovable idiot. Thankfully, he has a pirate ship to store them.
It’s crewed by the weirdo Mishmash from all walks of life and if you were given one of these books it would actually be better in the whole swashbuckling. But it has to wait.
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Goro Majima and the woman he is about to invite to the party – at one point it revolves around a middle-aged man taking a shower, clutching a dandelion between his teeth. You will descend to an island away from the boat. When they are chilling on the beach, they tell her they are helping their kids live their dreams.
Things are quite moving for a moment. The Pirates gang then attacks. Majima tries to shape them by chucking his trusty boomerang cutlass, and he has a backup he doesn’t expect. She pulls out a full-size sniper rifle from the thin air and blows Danny DeVito in a way that makes him proud. Naturally, he later recruits her to the Kiriu clan of his ship as a laser prison.
Like a Dragon: Hawaiian pirate yakuza do this kind of thing frequently. Yakuza games, pirate games, pirate yakuza games, yakuza pirate games. Goro Majima switches between these identities more smoothly than switching outfits to pink phone box-sized changing rooms at his various hangouts. It enjoys the inherent ridiculousness of this duality, but if you are still taken for a ride, you will find it has a solid moment of more serious and distinctive moments.
There were some points in that main story. This will wash away the iconic series of charismatic mad dogs on the coast of an island off the coast of Hawaii and evolve into hunting for hidden treasures. Even if you plug it like the dragon’s name kazuma kiryu, will things unfold that differently? Certainly there are several crossovers – they are both tough, aging yakuza brokers, and their carefully cultivated underworld manireism gives way to inner warmth.
But this is a story of Majima. Because it takes the series’ weirdness knob and cranks to the maximum when it makes sense to do so. It appears that Majima has rejected everything he has forgotten his desire to maintain the flow of a raging adventure, so what can be mistaken for life, which may initially be dealt with a carefree, childlike desire, as he may be dealing with the responsible nihilistic ducking, is rounded up into more than that. Certainly, both Kiriu and Majima lost their sense of identity at the beginning of these refreshing short stories.
Kiriu fights to keep him from owning in reality and find out that it is worth moving him forward in his new life. Majima must mature and separate from the charm of living a fantasy without losing the soul of a wild horse.
That fantasy is encapsulated by the pirate lifestyle, where he stumbles hilariously and begins to get lost in trapping. As a pirate game, Hawaii’s Pirate Yakuza is the most fun I’ve had a single player swashbuckling since the black flag of Assassin’s Creed. And the former sailing and ship combat doesn’t just feel that it deliberately takes a lot of inspiration from what Ubisoft did very well.
Controls, feel that steers the container and promotes another broadside explosion, along with sidewear pons. It’s all there and it’s like coming back to a nice, warm rum bath. Not so much that I’m focusing on plunging in to do a lot of damage – what I feel like I’m completely nailing the black flag – but you can enjoy a bunch of arrays of Gatling guns, RPGs, and elemental weapons that Yakuza use to raise things to rid lol and very dragon levels. Of course, that’s true on your ship.
That said, it felt like many of the fighting difficulty curves of ships in many matches were denied by the fact that some laser cannons could be created fairly quickly. That short, sustained burst was causing much damage compared to the more regular cannon blasts, which offered too little penalty to add a paycheck. I began to come across real cream of crops at Pirates’ Coliseum, which was what made me feel in danger of being sunk, bumping into the setting of Honolulu and Nere Island, the centre of the main new additions of the Pirates Yakuza.
RGG is not a stranger on a good fight stage, and the Coliseum feels like one of the best. It’s a wild pirate gardening famously for dismantling not only as a place to crush crew levels and cash to upgrade or customize the ship, but also as a place to strengthen yourself before the battles of key main story and the dungeon treasure trove run guarded by tough devil flags.
On the other hand, when you are in the land, you will be rampaging on foot with something more typical, like dragon style. Majima’s two fighting styles – the mad dog posture that will definitely give the early Yakuza series Kiryu PTSD and seedog stance, and as you probably guessed, Piratey is very pleased. This is much more pronounced early on, especially when you have standard difficulties. Something like the Mad Dog Magic Cloning abilities become active when filling up a madness gauge that is surprisingly named in its style.
The ultimate ability of the seedog style to play the stunningly strange cursed instruments that summon spectral animals is equally powerful, and can feel like a cheat code if you’re not facing enemies or particularly tough people. That being said, you won’t be able to pause and get down a reliable Staminan, especially in things like the Pirate Crew deck brawl or Treasure Island Run. You may actually need a giant ghost monkey that is summoned by strumming a riff.
The foot section of the game does a commendable job of not feeling like sailing is stressed so that it’s easy to do. Some of the Honolulu activities, which have just been pulled away from endless wealth, like yelling to greet people on the streets, don’t fit here as much as the game’s wonderfully cheesy summer holiday vibe, but they are pretty much the exception.
Additionally, RGG has embraced more detailed visual customizations, not just ships, by bringing together Majima custom costumes that can be mixed and matched, not just ships, but rather than rigid sets. Spend most of your time of choice, properly carve pirate sub-stories and goals to recruit new crews, hunt prizes drawn from various enemy categories in IW, and enhance your bank’s balance with exhilarating, unglamorous chunks.
That being said, there was one aspect of the game and I didn’t feel like it belonged to it. It’s quite a major, and the ending of a otherwise completely Pirate Yakuza Minato Girls sub-story (I kicked off this review by describing the encounter). Suddenly, the game, along with the voice actor of Majima’s crew member Masato, gives up on many live-action filmed skits as he fails to sloppyly seduce the five women who have come to his party. The jokey Japanese comedian Akiyama Ryûji was trying to tell, but the sudden change in form took me away. For example, just as I saw a wise man become clever about “love juice” being placed on his hair, punchline wasn’t.
But that aside, you may not be blown away by any of its individual works in terms of looking at them as a series or advancing the gaming industry, as you would probably expect from the spinoffs, but borrowing quotes from a particular short guy all works. You can see exactly what the developers want with each choice and mechanic and why they did it, and enjoy the adorable, ridiculous pirate yakuza as much as you want.
Like a Dragon: Hawaiian Pirate Yakuza will be released on 21 February 2025 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC via Steam. This review was conducted on the PS5 using code provided by the publisher.