As someone who has only casually engaged with the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series, I’m fascinated with its ability to sway in and out of different genres and subgenres while still maintaining the wacky soap-opera core that has made it so beloved. Yakuza has shapeshifted from a crime drama beat-em-up to a turn-based RPG, a spy thriller, and a historical samurai tale, and as the series continues to swap genres like clothes, it’s starting to feel almost like a variety show, with its core cast taking on new personas all while maintaining the same soul. Now it’s delving into piracy with Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. I recently got to spend two hours with the game, due out next month, and, I came away expecting Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio to once again nail new ideas while maintaining the series’ old familiar draws.
Pirate Yakuza puts the focus entirely on fan-favorite comic relief rival Goro Majima for the first time in the series’ 20-year history. Majima has been a supporting character and playable hero a few times over the years, but Pirate Yakuza is the first time he’s been the lone star of the show. He’s a good lead for a game that takes the series in one of its more outlandish directions yet, as he’s often facilitated comic breaks with fervor and gusto. If there’s one character that commits to the bit, it’s him, and that includes becoming a pirate captain in modern-day Hawaii.
Pirate Yakuza’s story takes place six months after the events of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and somehow Majima’s lost all memory of his life as a crime boss and club manager. Pirate Yakuza doesn’t use this as a complete break from previous games, as recovering his old memories is a core part of his story, but it does mean that he’s taking on a new crew on the open seas off Hawaii’s shores. Majima is at the center of a conflict between the pirates he works alongside and the yakuza he was once a part of.
The tension between those two forces means Pirate Yakuza is constantly shifting between traditional Yakuza scraps and silliness and, as the name suggests, pirate ship battles. As far as hand-to-hand combat goes, Pirate Yakuza delivers some of the fastest-paced fighting the series has had, to the point that it feels like it borders on a character action game along the lines of Devil May Cry. Like a Dragon Gaiden experimented with spy gadgetry to give its combat a distinct feel, and Pirate Yakuza is riffing on its own motif by giving Majima a pair of cutlasses. The game feels snappy, stylish, and occasionally pretty tough. Swapping Majima between his harder-hitting pirate persona and the nimble yakuza one can make the difference between getting clobbered and overcoming a gang of criminals. I gravitated toward the knife-wielding yakuza style for one-on-one fights and swapped to the pirate one for wider slashes when taking on big groups. I was surprised by the difficulty of a few fights, such as one against a runaway prisoner I met on the beaches of Hawaii who cold-cocked me as I was still learning all the tricks I had at my disposal. Most of my memories of Yakuza 0’s beat-em-up combat are of it being tedious and repetitive, so coming into Pirate Yakuza and finding something that felt involved and dynamic was a welcome sign.
Pirate Yakuza’s riffs on old Yakuza ideas are where it shines the most. Even though Majima is sailing the seven seas this time, I still found the grounded moments traveling around cities on land to be just as memorable as duking it out on a pirate ship. Between silly mini-games and squaring up against any crook who would approach me, I rode around on a scooter until I stopped at a small cafe where employees were trying to attract customers with a small performance. Even as the series constantly pushes against the boundaries of what people think it is, those small human interactions remain the beating heart of Yakuza.
The actual pirate ship battles are the part I’m not quite sold on just yet, but I could see them getting more complex beyond the early sections of the game I played. Sailing to different islands on a slow-moving ship with weather hazards felt novel, but I could imagine it getting tedious down the line. Ship battles, meanwhile, feel complex in the menus beforehand, but in practice got rather monotonous as I would position my ship to fire upon incoming vessels, let out some cannonballs, then turn around and do the same thing from the other side. The depth comes from the preparation, which includes assigning crewmates with different specialties to weapon-manning and other tasks to bolster your ship’s effectiveness in battle. Building your ship’s arsenal and managing your crew were the most interesting part of ship battles in my time with the early game, and I’m curious to see just how expansive these options are and if the game can spice these fights up as it goes on.
Every time I pick up a Yakuza game, I’m always surprised to see just how much RGG can bend what I think these games are without quite breaking them. The series has been characterized as grounded despite constantly escalating to new heights, and what I’ve played of Pirate Yakuza feels like a natural yet goofy extension built off a stable foundation. We’ll see if Majima’s seafaring detour pays off when the game launches on February 21, but even if it doesn’t, I’m more curious than ever about how far RGG is willing to take its heroes as it keeps pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a Yakuza game.
