The Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has been telling interlocking stories with overlapping characters over the course of eleven core games now and with more expected in the future. While this can be a great way to keep an audience engaged, it also inevitably turns the entire thing into an increasingly impenetrable behemoth.
It’s something we’ve been seeing the Marvel Cinematic Universe lumber through for years, (which is especially ironic given that this same problem plagued Marvel comics for generations before it).
I’m a fan of the series but kind of a casual one. I’ve completed about half of the mainline games but still have yet to find the time for Yakuza 4, 5 and 6. 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon was positioned and pushed as a fresh on-ramp for the series but its 2024 sequel veered frustratingly hard into its legacy. Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s story is really a coda to Infinite Wealth, and a bit less directly to the Kiryu/Majima saga which sprawls across the entire property too.
I had an absolute blast with its gleefully silly pirate shenanigans, but very few of its narrative beats will land with much impact unless you’re well-versed in what came before it. The game being a chaser to last year’s juggernaut entry is by no means a bad thing, just know going in that that’s what you’re in for.
Read: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii – Preview
Say his name and he appears, I believe in Goro Majima
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s adventure begins with the franchise’s beloved antagonist Goro Majima in full pirate regalia, staring down the barrel of the camera and telling the tale of how he washed up on an island with amnesia. It’s a narrative framework which I love, but that few video games use, and it suits the character of Majima perfectly. He’s then rescued by a young boy named Noah and a cat, coincidentally also named Goro, and quickly finds himself the captain of an old-timey pirate ship.
While games in the Yakuza/LAD series tend to use a super serious story as the pillar upon which to hang loads of supremely wacky side-content, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii blends these energies together much more centrally. There are plenty of good dramatic beats throughout the journey but the situations they stem from are always completely absurd. It works wonderfully though, due to the conceit of it being a yarn spun by a character who has existed in that specific area of tonal drift for so long.
I genuinely kept thinking about Thor: Ragnarok as I played through it – a deliberately goofier entry in a sprawling franchise, with a story that functions well enough in itself, but most of its key beats really rely upon audience knowledge of the larger franchise to which it belongs.
The seven (square-mile) seas
I already discussed Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s land and sea combat systems as well as the seafaring system’s structure in my preview last month. I won’t waste words repeating details here, except to say that the two melee stances are good fun, and I did get on a lot better with the very arcade-y sailing and ship battles than I did during the preview event.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a much smaller game than Infinite Wealth, and while Dragon Kart, Aloha Links, Kamulop Fortunes, Photo Rally, Crazy Delivery and other diversions return, I’m perfectly fine with the massively complex Animal Crossing-like Dondoko Island and Pokémon-like Sujimon features being cut. Frankly, I think their return would’ve made the whole game roll like an egg anyway.
It’s a goddamn delight seeing many of Infinite Wealth’s sidequest characters return though. It’s also hilarious finding out how many of them either previously lived as pirates, or have long dreamed of becoming one.
I only dabbled in a lot of the non-core or non-new features that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii offers, but it’s a testament to how damn enjoyable I found the whole game to be that I’m itching to go back and fully clear through them once my schedule frees up a little.
Flotsam and jet-engine-sam
While I adore RGG Studio’s games deeply, there are two major quality of life features that I’m dying to see them implement. Firstly, it’s absurd when any game with this much dialogue offers no way to scroll up and reread anything you may have missed. Secondly, the long, multi-phase boss fights need to start featuring checkpoints throughout them. A badass transitional action cutscene is fun to watch the first time, but it grows tiresome on the third or fourth.
Outside of that, I really have no real negative criticism to throw at Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. (Well, beyond the disappointing revelation that Samoa Joe is not a good voice actor and subsequent realisation that the producers of Twisted Metal were probably right to dub him over anyway.)
The team at RGG Studio continue to be the absolute leaders in building sensibly scoped video games. They prove time and time again that there is utterly no need to reinvent the wheel, so long as you’re delivering something compelling and fun.
If Yakuza/LAD is the MCU of video games, then Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is its Thor: Ragnarok. It’s an enjoyably breezy romp that opens the property up in a fun new direction, but that still feels shackled to what came before.
Four-and-a-half stars: ★★★★½
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: 21 February 2025
A PC code for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
