If there’s one thing series veterans of the Like a Dragon and Yakuza series have been begging for, it’s more Majima. This Chaotic Good ex-Tojo Lieutenant has been constantly at Kiryu’s heels and only really got his time in the limelight as the deuteragonist in Yakuza 0 and one of the four playable heroes in Yakuza: Dead Souls. For more than twenty years, the Mad Dog of Shimano has yet to take center stage in his own game and all of that is about to change in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
It’s important to note that this is most definitely a Y’s game, if the Y happened to actually stand for Yakuza. Our overly vocal protagonist finds himself shipwrecked in a foreign land and a wicked case of amnesia to book. All he needs is a big, burly sidekick that can bash his way through walls. If old Six Gun Saejima doesn’t fit that bill, I don’t know who would. Anyways, back to the amnesia. The all-important plot device that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii hinges on as the basis of its adventure. After being accosted by a group of pirate roleplayers (while the clothes aren’t real, for some reason, the swords they carry sure are), Majima finds the concept to be incredibly fascinating and worthy of his next grand adventure. It doesn’t take long before Majima comes up with the bright idea that he needs to somehow return to Nele Island, the source of most of the previous Yakuza title’s story when not meandering around the dual cities of Honolulu and Yokohama. Majima can’t remember a thing about his actual purpose for going there initially but the pieces slowly come together along the adventure.
After hijacking an enemy vessel and taking some of his saviors (and the ship’s original cook) under his command, Majima soon goes all in on the pirate lifestyle, dressing the part, picking up an old blunderbuss and other pirate-y tools, and quickly picking up the mantle of Sea Dog Majima. Similar to his playstyle in Yakuza 0 and Joryu's kit in Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Majima has two combat stances to bring out to the brawler melee, each with unique heat actions and taking full advantage of the weapons in his arsenal. Unique to this edition are the ability to equip up to ten rings, each working like a typical piece of armor and bestowing upon Majima stat and sometimes unique passive buffs.
The actual piracy that Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii centers around feels like a secondary minigame and I found a lot of similarities to Ichiban’s Dondoko Island from the previous game. What I found most engaging was the naval warfare that felt like a simplified and snappier version of what Ubisoft came up with in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. When sailing the high seas of Hawaii, Majima can fish up crafting materials and engage in the occasional random encounter or miniboss fight with a named pirate crew; besting the latter increases his pirate rank little by little and permits him to take on higher rank fights in the Coliseum in Madlantis.
Naval warfare is separated into two phases: ship combat and boarding. The ship combat is a fairly straightforward action game where you and the enemy ships freely steer around a small arena and try to blast the other ship apart with cannons bolstered to either side of the ship, a front-facing machinegun, or the old standby of just ramming into the enemy vessel. While there are a few boosts you can use to give your ship a nitrous boost or repair and recover damage sustained, you’ll spend most of the time blasting at enemy vessels while trying to outmaneuver their guns and get out of the danger zones. Despite the ship combat being somewhat simplistic in nature and not truly evolving much over the short playtime, it was still a highlight for one of the best Yakuza minigames not named Dondoko Island.
After capsizing all but the enemy leader’s vessel, the second phase of ship combat opens up with Majima leading a boarding party onto the enemy ship. This descends into an all-out brawl of the entirety of both ships until last man standing. Some of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s best battles are these mass battles and even with the short runtime of this year’s Gaiden title, players will look to enjoy a couple of dozen battles that used to be limited to just one or two in most mainline titles and showcase just how fun and fluid Majima and his two combat stances play.
Majima’s role as pirate captain on the high seas, despite its appearance as an action title, is still largely an RPG numbers game. Those crew you recruit can be assigned to various posts on the ship and either confer passive bonuses or directly increase the ship’s stats in terms of health and damage output. A much smaller 3-person squad can be assigned for special summon abilities during boarding melees while the bulk of your pirate crew can be assigned as the boarding parties themselves and take part in large scale melee brawls both on ship or on land. You’ll still have to raise their morale and either fight alongside them in enough random battles or give them gifts to raise their stats and most crew members fall into different rarities that determine their stat caps and how strong their individual abilities are. If you spend the extra few bucks on the Digital Deluxe Edition of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and unlock Kiryu and Ichiban as crew members, you can feasibly ignore a large chunk of the recruitment minigame and steamroll your way through most pirate encounters just by having a few top tier recruits.
When it comes time to hit the waves in the Goromaru, sailing about can be a fairly simple and boring affair outside of the ship combat. Rather than any sort of large open world to explore, the waters are segmented into smaller maps, each with only a handful of points of interest, usually in the form of rival ship captains or small linear islands to disembark and explore for lost treasures. There’s not a lot of excitement or hidden secrets outside of these points of interest and ship battles, so expect to tune out the one sea shanty that the pirate crew sings ad nauseam or at least put on a custom soundtrack of SEGA songs you’ve collected in Honolulu.
One of the last mainline Yakuza: Like a Dragon titles brought in the largest city to date with its depiction of Honolulu and it was a given that the developers wouldn’t let it be limited to just a single game. What I didn’t quite expect was that Honolulu made up half, if not more, than the actual playtime in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. In the forty-some hours it took for me to earn the platinum trophy, I counted that I spent nearly twenty-five hours combing the streets on a Street Surfer, hitting up the Crazy Eats and Sicko Snap for some quick cash and unique loot, and trying to max out my Aloha Links so I could befriend Kei and make her part of the Majima pirate crew. Sadly, so much of Honolulu feels like it’s simply there to pad the brief runtime of Majima’s solo game and while there’s certainly a lot of diversions to see and play, players could just as easily skip over this day trip to Honolulu and just focus on the main story and still feel satisfied.
Marketing Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii as this grandiose swashbuckling adventure feels a little disingenuous when the actual piracy devolves down into the title’s primary minigame. All of that aside, for a Yakuza side story, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is an amusing take on the formula and putting one of the series’ most chaotic personas at the helm of a proper followup to the final moments of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
[Editor's Note: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro platform. The review code was provided by the publisher.]
