Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii review — Shivers timbers like no other

The Like a Dragon series has certainly changed a lot from the Kiryu saga to the modern Ichiban saga. Billed as a side story set between Yakuza: Like A Dragon (seventh mainline game) and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (eighth mainline game), Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii sees players take on the role of the iconic Goro Majima, now an amnesiac, who ends up stumbling into the world of pirates in modern day Hawaii. Pirate Yakuza delivers high seas shanties and booty plundering with your scurvy-ridden crew but I can’t help but wonder why this is happening. 

In the 20 hours I’ve spent on the PC/Steam Deck version of Pirate Yakuza, these waves have some high tides and low tides, but, overall, these seas are worth sailing. Pirate Yakuza stands out amongst the other games in the series thanks to its crew management, treasure hunting, leveling systems, and snappier pacing. If you’ve played any of the LAD games before, you’ll probably feel right at home. Pirate Yakuza begins with Majima waking up on the beach, no memory or recollection of who he is, where he is, or why he’s here. He does have the muscle memory for combat, which he uses to save a local boy from some thugs dressed as classic style pirates. Before long, he ends up saving the locals from a pirate crew and becomes that crew’s new captain, and with that they set sail for a swashbuckling adventure.

The game at this point starts flooding you with tutorials for all the different mechanics you’ll be engaging with throughout the adventure. Ship sailing and battles, discovering islands and plundering them for that sweet booty, and the various systems in place leveling up, and taking care of your crew Like A Captain. Pirate Yakuza is a very deep game in terms of what you’ll be doing because eventually, you find yourself going to Hawaii where the game’s story takes a screeching halt for you to partake in the dozens of side activities on the island.

As a series fan, I have some small conflicting feelings on Pirate Yakuza. This is a well made game with a great gameplay loop, but for much of the game you barely know what happened to Majima or how he got to this point. This is where the conflicted feelings come in because at one point the game even stonewalls you from progress, requiring you to get a certain number of crew members and money in order to progress the story. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of this. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Metal Gear Solid 5 completely killed my enjoyment because they force the player to meander and do side quests that are often not related to the goal of the game, or the direct rewards for completing them are often never enough to attract even the savviest of seadogs.

That being said, Pirate Yakuza does progression gating in a much more palatable way. The goals it sets aren’t difficult to obtain because the game’s Like A Dragon roots help facilitate the pirate gameplay. Side Stories, a staple of the series, now reward you with much more than just items, money, and experience. You’ll get all those along with new crewmates, experience for them, and even some special weapons you can’t find elsewhere but the sea. Another fun change is that Side Stories, at least in Hawaii, are more varied and sometimes shorter. Sometimes you just get into one conversation, get into a fight, have another conversation, and the side story is done. Not all of them are like this – some of them will require you to travel around Hawaii to gather material or play a minigame – but the rewards are always worth it.

There’s also the new bounty system. Eventually you will unlock them as handcuff icons on your map. You can find them sprinkled all over the hubs, and beating the tough enemy at that location will net you anywhere from $2000 to $16,000. The fights are actually pretty tough too which is a nice change of pace. These are nothing like Mr. Shakedown in Yakuza 0, but you’ll certainly have to use an item or two for every one you encounter which is certainly more than one could say about the random Assholes you encounter in the city.

Majima is a pretty well-equipped lad from the get-go. Honestly, the first style you unlock for combat is arguably all you need. The combat plays like a mix of the classic-style Yakuza games with a good mix of the RPG mechanics from the newer games. Think of it like an action-RPG while the main games are turn-based RPGs. You spend money and “reputation points” on leveling up Majima in the pause menu but on your boat you can also give gifts and food to your crew to boost morale, and experience gains when plundering the various islands on the map.

Speaking of those various islands, there’s a lot to do in the game. There’s multiple hub areas with their own side stories, bounties, minigames, chats with your crewmates etc. and the sea becomes its own open world, eventually. One of the biggest new additions to the game is the pirate gameplay. It takes quite a while to open up but the pirate gameplay is arguably some of the most fun you will have in the game. Whether cooking food to party with your crew to raise their experience and moral, plundering islands to get one of the dozens of treasures that are all tracked like Wario Land, the fast paced RPG combat with dual swords and guns, sailing and blasting other boats before storming them with your crew, or the  entire side plot involving an evil faction of pirates, you’ll never be short of things to do.

It’s really hard to articulate how much there is to do in Pirate Yakuza, but even fairly far into the game you’ll still be seeing tutorials for new mechanics. It’s not as overwhelming as that may sound because these are all doled out at a slow pace, but it’s because of that slow pace that those conflicting feelings come back in. It’s hard to recommend a story-driven series like Like a Dragon without an asterisk mentioning that you will probably miss some references or story beats if you haven’t played the previous ones. Pirate Yakuza is something I could recommend as a great game on its own merits, as it does enough to bring in new players and veterans of the series. Something I haven’t talked about are the new characters you’ll meet.

Majima isn’t hanging out with his crime buddies in the yakuza this time around, so the people he meets on his swashbuckling journey are entirely new. The three main buds he hangs out with are Noah, his dad Jason, and Masaru. Jason and Masaru clash with Majima at first but all three of them are fun to hang out with, being involved in the main story, and it’s nice to see Majima in a whole new way. Noah is a kid who hasn’t seen the world beyond his small island town so when they join Majima in his treasure-filled tirade, Noah is right by Majima’s side and they become great friends. It’s really endearing to walk around Hawaii and do side stories with Noah joining Majima, going to a bar with Noah where he orders milk and talks about life, or even just walking around and activating one of the dozens of “bond chats” where they can talk about a myriad of topics.

Despite any misgivings, Pirate Yakuza is an excellent game, to say the least. As a lapsed fan of the series after 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon, this game helped me remember why I fell in love with the games back when Yakuza 0 was new and got me into them. It’s the dozens of things you can do in these games with the most wild and endearing characters. I’m a bit disappointed in the main story being treated like a moving goal post but I’ve had a smile on my face every time I get into yet another new thing that’s fun. An endearing side story, a golfing minigame where you hit numbers on a board to get bingo, heated battles with my entire crew of rag tag losers fighting over a hundred trained pirates, or maybe I’m chillin’ at home base because there’s an in-game Sega Master System with almost a dozen games you can play, including some that even display in togglable stereoscopic 3D!

One last thing I want to mention for those of you who are interested in the PC version and how it runs – it’s mostly great, but there are few dragons in these waters you should know about. I’m running with a 3080Ti, 32GBs of RAM, well above the recommended specs, at a locked 60fps with RT enabled. I have had no major glitches, and no crashes or freezes. The game runs incredibly smoothly on even mid-tier gear. I even played about half of the time I’ve had it on Steam Deck where it also runs great. The default Steam Deck settings set it at medium and 60fps but honestly, I recommend bumping it down to 30fps. It rarely ever reaches 60fps but at 30fps you’ll only see frame drops go as low as 24fps in more hectic scenes.

One issue, however, is the lighting. Despite Pirate Yakuza being a pretty game, the lighting is way too dark at times and I needed to max out the brightness just so I could see in the shade or darker areas. Shown above is a comparison shot with default on the left and maxed out brightness on the right. I’m not sure if this could be adjusted in a patch to look more natural. I’m fine with the washed out look of max brightness, but it was worth mentioning.

Pirate Yakuza is quite the experience. I have issues for sure but this is such a fun game I can’t help but just say it’s worth your time. Pirate Yakuza has hundreds of things to do and they all feel fun and thought out. All the different mechanics and side content help contribute directly to either growth in stats or seeing fun new stories. It’s not just a bunch of icons on a map like some open world games, it’s extremely satisfying if you dabble into everything the game has to offer. Whether on the high seas or in the big city, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii delivers on the high sea shenanigans. Simply put, it’s a treasure.