As a longtime Yakuza fan, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is the Goro Majima game I’ve always dreamed of and somehow more unhinged than ever before. Ryu Ga Gotoku has outdone themselves once again and I’m so excited for players to get their hands on the helm to take Yakuza’s version of a naval RPG for a spin.
What do pirates and yakuza have in common? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yet, Ryu Ga Gotoku reached deep to make these two disparate thematics work in their tried-and-true bonkers fashion. Every time I have picked up a new Yakuza game, I think I’ve seen it all. Yet, once again, I’m pleasantly surprised to no end.
We don’t deserve Ryu Ga Gotoku, folks. We don’t deserve them at all.
I spent the past decade infatuated with the Yakuza series. Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku has solidly interwoven serious undertones alongside pure silliness in the same fictional Tokyo neighborhood of Kamurocho (sort of). Time and time again, I’ve been impressed by how well they’ve packed so much content in an RPG that avoids being repetitious while keeping longtime fans engrossed in the world of Kazuma Kiryu and, more recently, Ichiban Kasuga. A notable side-character, Goro Majima, was given his time to shine in Yakuza Kiwami (the remastered Yakuza from 2005).
Goro Majima is one of my most favorite characters from the Yakuza series, in part because of his portrayal during the “Majima Everywhere” segments of Yakuza Kiwami that pitted me against Goro Majima who was hiding under a massive traffic cone, in the sewers, or disguised as a police officer. His unpredictable swarthiness makes him a perfect candidate for a Jack Sparrow-esque character
I began Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii washed ashore on a beach. Well, not me, but Goro Majima. He had no memory of who he was or how he got to the island, making much of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii an opportunity to discover Majima’s true nature without being confined to any of the Yakuza clans in prior titles. The tendrils of Yakuza influence are there, don’t get me wrong, but they’re less of a domineering force and more of a shadowy puppeteer that pull the strings of fate into a narrative tapestry.
The use of Majima’s amnesia was especially smart for his character development. Prior to Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, the player’s knowledge of Majima is that of an unhinged, yet occasionally sentimental, foil to series figurehead Kiryu. We’ve gotten to known Kiryu as being stoic and naïve while Ichiban was charismatic and goofy. Majima has, for lack of a better term, emerged as a bloodthirsty troll of a character set to disrupt much of the world around him.
Now, Ryu Ga Gotoku has created a narrative that’s begs the question of nature versus nurture. Is the Majima we’ve grown to know and love a product of being a member of the Tojo/Shimano clans, or was he born this way? While we hear the classic Majima giggle that permeated throughout the most serious of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s cutscenes, the answer becomes more apparent in the later chapters. In having Majima take a young boy (Noah) and pet tiger (Goro) on adventures throughout the tropical Hawaiian seas, we see how Majima is capable of growing beyond his reputation of being the “Mad Dog of Shimano.”
The first chapter is often the slowest in any Yakuza game. This go-round, I spent maybe half an hour getting to know the amnesiac Majima, Noah, Noah’s pet tiger Goro, and Noah’s family. I’m shown the ropes in a handful of battles that fly by, and the typical pseudo-serious expository cutscenes before I’m set free to explore the ocean on the Goromaru, Majima’s pirate ship. I’ll get to the pirate ship stuff in a jiffy – hold tight!
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s battles are awesome, and the combat continuously surprised me with its fluidity, ferocity, and fun factor. Majima is far more fluid, agile, and cutthroat than Kazuma Kiryu. This is especially evident in early game battles when Majima has but a handful of attacks unlocked involving simple punching and knife slicing. Coming from Yakuza Kiwami, the early game of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii feels like a slick onboarding experience that gets the player ready for a rollercoaster of violence. It’s refreshing to have this much agility and violence unlocked from the start for Majima, knowing that he’s a chaos gremlin who uses every sharp object in his reach to slice and dice enemies into small little bits.
Later on, Majima unlocks a secondary fighting mode, the “Sea Dog” fighting stance. If you’re familiar with the earlier Yakuza games, switching to this mode is similar to how Kiryu switches to another fighting stance. It can be swapped to at any time and opens Majima’s moveset up with an entirely new set of ranged and melee skills. In the Sea Dog stance, Majima feels stiffer at first, but very easily becomes just as agile as his regular “Mad Dog” stance. Oh yeah, he can use a Chain Hook that lets him catapult himself toward enemies like Spider-Man.
Yes, dear reader. Majima has a CHAIN HOOK and feels like Spider-Man in battles because of it. It’s absolutely wild. To say that Ryu Ga Gotoku made battles fun would be a massive understatement – Majima’s power fantasy is fully realized in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii as he easily switches between fighting stances, throws knives at enemies, impales them in special attacks, and jumps from enemy to enemy. This is compounded in mid-game battles that pit Majima against a massive army of enemies with a Dynasty Warriors vibe.
Onto the new stuff – naval exploration and battles. At the end of Chapter 1, I unlocked the Goromaru and could take it sailing across the Pacific Ocean. I’ve been hesitant toward prior pirate RPGs that claim to be AAA or even “AAAA” (I do not know what that means, folks) and almost always come down to giant seascapes of nothingness, boring fetch quests, grindy resource management, and some salty grit mixed with sea shanties. Truth be told, Ryu Ga Gotoku made naval exploration and battles worthwhile.
Like exploring on foot, seafaring exploration is accelerated by the use of jetstreams, smaller and condensed maps, and naval battles that are conducted in real-time. As I progressed through the chapters, existing areas I explored became reinvigorated with new areas to visit and new foes to defeat in my quest to become the most fearsome pirate alive. All the while I explored, my crew would sing sea shanty versions of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s rock-fueled soundtrack.
The naval battles are fun, but they took a degree of onboarding to truly appreciate using machine guns, managing my crew when they had sustained critical damage in battle, and navigating choppy waters. While most battles concluded once I had successfully sunk every enemy ship in sight, the bigger and meaningful battles would involve me hijacking the enemy leader’s ship and fighting them on the deck with a pirate crew of my choosing. There’s a light degree of party management, but not enough to warrant needless hours spent at sea.
I don’t consider Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii to be a deep pirate RPG, but that’s a good thing. Too many pirate RPGs have let me and many other players down. Instead, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii feels like a Yakuza game that has been surgically altered to feature the silliness and saltiness of naval warfare without too much fluff. I appreciate Ryu Ga Gotoku’s big swing in implementing pirate gameplay and am excited to see how they attempt to handle other microgenres within the larger RPG space.
In case you’re worried about the degree to which Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii plays like a tried-and-true Yakuza game, don’t be. By Chapter 2, I arrived in a familiar location that drastically opened up the world and returned me to my preferred gameplay routine of accomplishing ridiculous side quests, buying equipment, and walking through a coastal Hawaiian city.
No Yakuza game is complete without its fair share of bonkers minigames and off-the-wall substories (side missions), and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is chock full of ‘em. Series classics like karaoke and SEGA arcade games return alongside delivering food, Dragon Kart, and so much more. Part of what makes a Yakuza game a Yakuza game is its ridiculousness in between ultra-serious cutscenes, so if you feel tired of sailing the high seas you can spend as much time as you like doing other activities and feel like your time is rewarded with extra money, hidden unlockables, or even silly characters who can join your pirate crew.
For reference, I spent a whole hour during Chapter 3 just completing the Vocational School’s silly quizzes. I didn’t have to, but it was a nice break! I walked away feeling smarter and with additional notoriety that helped me further down the line.
Ryu Ga Gotoku handles main quest activities, side missions, and minigames excellently well in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. I had the means of fast-traveling across the larger parts, but if I wanted to explore the world just for fun, I could, and it was almost always rewarding with something interesting, powerful, silly, dangerous, or a combination of these things. Some folks might consider the late game (think 20+ hours in) to be grindy, but it’s no different than any late-game RPG.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is the 10th installment of the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series, and apparently an expansion to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I find it very hard to believe that it’s an expansion to 2024’s Infinite Wealth in that, despite having a similar setting, it stands alone on its own two feet and easily contains 40+ hours of fun – maybe more, maybe less. Thanks to the amnesia angle, you don’t need to be versed in the previous Yakuza titles – it catches you up with a quick blurb here and there when necessary. The focus is clearly on Goro Majima without being dredged through hours of deep cutscenes that only make sense to the biggest of superfans.
If you’re new to the Yakuza franchise, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is honestly the best place to start just so you can get familiar with the degree to which Ryu Ga Gotoku takes the player to the funkiest of heights.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii hasn’t earned a 10 from me because of how it is a fever dream of chaos and debauchery. It hasn’t earned a 10 from me because of how it’s the Majima game I’ve always wanted. No. It’s earned its perfect score by reimagining the Yakuza formula with a wealth of new mini games, features, and content that make it the most fun Yakuza game to date. When a reviewer would rather be playing the game instead of writing about it, that’s a definitely positive sign of a stellar title.
As a longtime Yakuza fan, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is the Goro Majima game I’ve always dreamed of and somehow more unhinged than ever before. Ryu Ga Gotoku has outdone themselves once again and I’m so excited for players to get their hands on the helm to take Yakuza’s version of a naval RPG for a spin.
