Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Review (PS5) – Full Goro and Into The Abyss

We all still miss Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, don’t we? Skull & Bones tried, albeit after a ridiculous number of years and a development cycle more tumultuous than the Drake Passage. Sadly, it failed to survive the tsunami of problems it faced. In true heroic fashion then, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio sent in the legendary Mad Dog of Goro Majima to, at long last, deliver us the high seas pirate adventure we all crave in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Can the ex-Yakuza beast shed his Japanese roots for a seafaring escapade successfully? Trading suits for cutlasses but losing none of his trademark madness, let’s adorn this Man O’ War and see if Majima’s Jack Sparrow impression is as eccentric as his cabaret hosting antics.

What’s My Age Again?

The Yakuza series sits alongside the Hideo Kojima catalog of being infamous for long sequences of cutscenes, a Bible’s worth of dialogue and being chock-full of twists, turns, double twists and even more turns. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii dials much of that back significantly. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of sitting idly, taking in ludicrous and hilariously written setups, but the narrative very much takes a backseat on this pirate frigate.

Goro Majima washes ashore on Rich Island, whereby, shirtless and memoryless, he’s rescued by a young lad named Noah. RGG Studio waste no time playing into the amnesia trope, with Goro having zilch recall of his previous life (though he can still throw hands without issue, thankfully). What follows is a series of increasingly absurd scenarios, involving Yakuza disposal of nuclear waste, conspiracies within a Mad Max pirate coliseum named Madlantis, and a repeating pirate antagonist aptly called Keith. Yep. Eyepatch, pirate hat, yarr accent, the lot. Keith.

If you’re hailing from the main series, say from Yakuza 0 or Yakuza: Like a Dragon, you’re going to find the story chops lacking any meat whatsoever. This is purely a comic relief side story, filled with wacky moments, Goro constantly “teehee-ing” his opponents into submission, and a cast of characters lapping up the ludicrous nature of the game itself. It’s largely forgettable, which for a Yakuza game, is quite a strange thing to write. However, this is all about the swashbuckling lifestyle of treasure hunters, high seas sailors and rum guzzling loveable rogues.

It left me feeling pretty mixed on the approach. On the one hand, it just makes sense to treat the story as a silly add-on to what’s essentially a game where you have a pet tiger watching you fire bazookas off of the stern of a ship and then slap about people being insulted as bad cosplayers. On the other hand, the attempt to string some threadbare tale together feels forced, and a couple of moments are questionable at best (including one at the very beginning). An odd, eclectic story, but then that’s a pirate’s whole existence, I suppose.

Hawaii Would You Do This?

Enough about the storytelling, which no one is playing a pirate themed Yakuza game for anyway. How’s the Blackbeard simulating? Well, on the whole, an absolute blast, a kind the Black Pearl would unleash upon some helpless sloop. Gameplay is split into two main components: typical Yakuza exploration, side-quests and combat on land, then hitting the blue seas of Honolulu to terrorise sightseers and holidaymakers galore.

We’ll start with Goro himself and the land-based gameplay first. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii returns to real-time combat, where Goro has access to two combat styles. Both are great fun in their own right, with the Swashbuckling style having you hurl cutlasses and fire off overcharged rockets of Flintlock pistols. The Mad Dog style is, well, Goro Majima with a knife, need I say more? Out with the turn-based waiting around, in with the heat action of Goro flipping into the air and delivering Coup de Grace’s in a feathered hat and overcoat.

If there’s one criticism I have of the combat, it’s the slight input delay that niggles away at proceedings. Heat actions are tied to the same button as heavy attacks, rather too frequently causing them to be triggered at inopportune moments. Stun-locking is also still rife throughout this entry, which makes the delay for dodges or blocking that much more irritating when it misses as well. By no means is this a dealbreaker, but it did fry my nerves like the Hawaiian sun after 25 or so hours of playing.

Aside from that, combat continues to be fast, hard-hitting and a good time. Goro’s kit is one of the most limited of any Yakuza protagonist before him, but additions like the chain hook and dark instruments make things exciting and tie into the comically over-the-top nature of the game. Nothing like calling in a horde of electric jellyfish to stun all of your opponents before battering them on the ground. What’s more Yakuza than that?

Seas The Day, and The Booty

When Goro takes to his newly acquired seafaring vessel, aptly named the Goromaru, that’s where Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii becomes its own distinct entity, defined from the rest of the series. The best way I can describe this portion of the game is akin to a stripped back, arcade-y version of Black Flag. The Goromaru has two banks of cannons, two front-facing machine guns and a crew you need to select for manning said weapons and acting as your boarding parties.

Aside from that, there’s not a whole lot else to contend with. Goro can release the wheel during combat to fire the aforementioned rocket launcher at passing ships (always highly enjoyable), release a smoke bomb or pick up injured crew. Ship combat therefore quickly boils down into charging the primary boss warship, turning each way to unleash your cannons, lasers, sharks, flamethrowers or other bombastic weapons, then quickly boarding and obliterating their crew.

If you were hoping for a pinnacle pirate experience, I’d suggest this probably won’t be it. It’s streamlined, approachable and very easy to pick up and have fun with, but ship combat has the depth level akin to Majima’s depth perception, you know, cause he only has one eye. Repeated battles in the pirate colosseum only serve to heighten the limitations of the mechanics, but truth be told, it’s still just really fun hacking ships apart with banks of super laser cannons, depth be damned.

Let’s Dance, Shell We?

Naturally, all of this on foot and sea based combat takes place within a wide Yakuza sandbox, positively flooding with content. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii features about 30 substories, dozens of colosseum battles, Devil Flag battles in the ship-based hubs, bounty targets to battle, mini-games galore and a host of treasures to find. It’s not uncommon for any Yakuza title to feature over 50 hours of content and this one is no exception. If it was a hidden treasure, it’d be quite the haul indeed.

Most of what you’ll find in Madlantis and Honolulu is taken fairly wholesale from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which makes sense, given the rapid turnaround with which this game has been released. At sea is where the more unique content lies, with Devil Flags battles encompassing ship fights or treasure islands. The latter is a mini dungeon format where you charge forward and blast through waves of enemies until you beat a tougher final encounter for, you guessed it, a treasure.

They’re… decent. A lot of them re-use assets across each one, and the formula for them never switches up or really develops, aside from smacking goon after goon into oblivion. It doesn’t help that they’re the most visually unappealing sections of the game, with bland environments, poor texture work and a very last-gen feel about them. Given the combat is so intrinsically enjoyable, they’re rescued by how great the core of any Yakuza game is. The rewards for completing them also tend to be very good, with points to level up your pirate rank, a literal bank’s worth of money and the previously mentioned dark instruments tied to them.

Aside from them, you can look forward to the usual zany and off-the-wall substories, where you’ll veer from snapping pictures of gyrating “sickos” with a dude on a trolley, to helping one of your crewmates set up a series of five dates… which leads to half an hour of live-action cutscenes of said dates. Truly, RGG Studios understand chaotic entertainment like no other. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii may have fewer side quests than most other entries, but they still claw you in like Captain Hook with their hilarity.

Keep Palm and Yakuza On

Coming as little surprise to anyone, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii runs as smoothly as the ocean waves you’ll dance and, you know, fire barrages of cannon balls across. I ran into next to no issues whatsoever, either in terms of glitches or crashes, which was a wonderful, blissful life. Visually the game is incredibly bright, with sun-bleached Honolulu awash with life, beaches and scantily clad visitors.

As noted earlier, the pirate islands and sailing hubs are probably the least impressive elements of the game, visually speaking. Texture pop-in is a real issue in these areas, with rocks and entire formations often lacking any detail until they ping into place right up close. It’s not so garish as to be off-putting, but it’s certainly distracting and far too easy to notice. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was clearly made on a lower budget and a faster development time, so the corners that have been cut show their bows here.

I also want to mention the progression of the game, as the thrill you take from it will likely depend on your approach towards it. Due to my completionist nature, I had almost fully upgraded both Majima and the Goromaru by the end of chapter 2, out of 5. In this way, my perspective of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii crystallised into the idea that the pirate aspect was most likely envisioned as a hugely fun side activity the developers simply got carried away with, turning it into its own project.

If you go straight for the story, you’ll be able to finish it in remarkably quick time. However, do all of the side content as you go, and you’ll be at 100% or close to before even hitting the halfway mark. Obviously, this shipwrecks any sense of challenge or tuning for the main campaign’s difficulty. Again however, I didn’t really begrudge this at all. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is all about blasting you full pelt out of a cannon onto land and letting you blaze a trail of destruction in your wake. If that makes you an overpowered behemoth mockingly destroying the main antagonists in the story, so be it. But, it’s worth keeping an eye on depending on how you like your games to be balanced.

Yarr Makin’ Me P-irate!

So then, how do you sum up an experience like Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii? Much like Majima himself, I suspect. It’s bombastically wild, comedically over-the-top, nonsensical and belligerently illogical, prone to moments of broken madness, but with a heart of pure entertainment. I still recall the moment of ecstasy when I realised I could put a pirate hat on my companion baby tiger, or when I froze a ship in place with my frost mini-guns before firing an Apache helicopter’s worth of rockets at its stern.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a joyful, simplistic and wacky game, just as its name suggests. Sure, it’s lost some of what makes the series’ best so compelling, particularly with its storytelling feeling like an optional add-on, or its visual blandness in its newer areas. Quite honestly, the fact there’s a story here at all that just gets in the way of my bounty hunting, bone breaking and seafaring vessel crushing antics is probably where the problem lies in the first place. Nevertheless, where Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth or Yakuza 0 blend all of the series’ components to perfection, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii feels like a wonderfully fun, if somewhat underwhelming, addition to a stellar franchise.

Even so, I still highly recommend it, if for nothing else than the sheer thrill of leading Majima and his crew into another bout of bloodthirsty action, complete with tornado spewing parrot, a wild cast of characters for crew, and a protagonist who was tailor made for one of the most eclectic and eccentric games I’ll play this year.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X and PC.

Developer: Rya Ga Gotoku
Publisher: SEGA

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.

Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels. Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features