Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Is The Dumb Pirate Game We’ve Desperately Needed

When it comes to videogames, there’s no shortage of premises a teen would dream up: cowboys, ninjas, robots, aliens, samurai, treasure hunters, gangsters, and detectives regularly take center stage alongside just about every variant of gun-toting soldier imaginable, whether it’s the stoic Master Chief or the many more explicitly jingoistic army men of Call of Duty. But of these games that are one step removed from a kid smashing their action figures together, there’s one classic pop culture standby that’s weirdly neglected: pirates.

Sure, there are a few breadcrumbs here and there, the most cited examples being Sid Meier’s Pirates (which is over 20 years old), Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (which is over a decade old), and Sea of Thieves (which is a no-go if you’re not into live-service stuff), but considering the thousands of games that come out yearly, it’s surprising there aren’t many more. And it’s fairly likely this trend won’t change any time soon because after a hellishly long development cycle, Ubisoft’s “AAAA” Skull and Bones dashed against the rocks amidst low reviews and dreadful sales that reportedly cost Ubisoft hundreds of millions of dollars last year. There are a handful of other pirate games besides those listed above (hey there, Monkey Island games), but you probably get the picture; there simply aren’t many ways to sail the high seas while channeling your inner bearded marauder.

But in this vacuum, we’ve received an unlikely savior. Or at least a pretty dang good attempt. As its name suggests, Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii takes many elements from the yakuza-themed Like A Dragon series and combines them with pirates, melding these games’ irreverent nonsense with plenty of swashbuckling. The result is as charming as you would expect, involving treasure hunting, exciting multi-stage naval battles, sea shanties, and a whole lot of goofy goodness.

As for how the plot took a turn from being about Japanese crime families to sailing around in 16th-century galleons, the game begins as long-time series foil Goro Majima wakes up on a beach with amnesia. Without his memories and only traces of his identity, he quickly meets a bunch of pirate-cosplaying bullies, beats up their boss, takes his ship, and then heads off to find a fabled hidden treasure worth billions—I’m simplifying a bit, but that’s the gist. As he sets out on the waters surrounding Honolulu, he assembles a crew of good-guy pirates who mostly only fight bad-guy pirates, of which there are plenty.

As for where the villains congregate, there’s Madlantis, a pirate haven where crews battle it out in naumachia-style, ship-on-ship skirmishes. Unfortunately for Majima and his pirates, they end up in the crosshairs of a pompous windbag who’s the crown champion of this place, Mortimer; they’ve got to take him down so they can remove the bounty he placed on their heads. Later, though, they realize there are other pirate crews out there who aren’t just playing dress-up in an arena, the no-holds-barred gang of murderers and pillagers called the Death Flags. After a tragic run-in, Majima and his buddies swear to bring these guys down: again, if you’ve played these games before, they’re like Yakuza 0’s Five Billionaires or Infinite Wealth’s Sujimon gym leaders, a band of cartoon evil guys that make good heels.

While Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s mainline plot also has some seafaring antics, namely that it concerns finding a long-lost buried treasure, it’s really in these “side” adventures where a significant percentage of the pirate antics take place. For quite a while, the Yakuza series has been excellent at crafting enjoyable, very distracting sub-missions, and here they’ve refined those elements even further. You’ll shore up your ship, the Goromaru, taking a barely floating wreck and transforming it into a perfect restoration of an Age of Discovery vessel (besides the laser guns and jet boosters you may or may not have attached). One of the most important things to upgrade are the weapons, and there’s plenty to choose from, each with pros and cons: for instance, standard cannonballs have great range and let you safely poke from a distance, while close-range weapons like the flamethrowers are riskier but positively shred foes at point blank. And although these tools are essential, the people operating this firepower are often more important than the guns themselves, and you’ll spend lots of time staffing up a crew of around 40 shipmates as you scour the streets of Honolulu, play mini-games, and engage with every bell and whistle to recruit a lovable band of oddballs. They each have different stats and classes, leveling up as they get their sea legs, which in turn improves your ship’s capabilities. If the Pokémon-spoofing Sujimon from the previous entry in the series had me obsessively searching every street corner for allies, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s crew system took this even further.

And then, of course, there are the actual naval battles, seaborne slugfests where you maneuver around cannon fire while trying to get the drop on enemy captains. While these encounters aren’t outstandingly mechanically deep or anything, they are a hull-crunching good time. Armed with machine guns and rows of cannons on your port (the left-hand side) and starboard (the right-hand side), you have to manage the cooldowns on your weapons, evade enemy fire, and keep your vulnerable stern (the back of the ship) out of harm’s way. Oh, and because this is a Like a Dragon game and needs at least a few goofy details, your vessel also comes with nitrous-style jet boosters that can be activated in times of need, allowing you to drift around incoming ordinance and get the angle on weak points.

While I’m sure some would prefer a more “realistic” sim-style experience, the fun, light approach here works quite well. For example, the deeply unserious touch of having rockets strapped to your hull makes your ship quite mobile, setting up for lots of nuances when it comes to drifting in and out of range of attacks. And although encounters may be a breeze at first, things heat up in the later fights, forcing you to take advantage of every trick available, like using smokescreen bombs to hide your crew so you can frantically repair your vessel, making use of elemental effects to debilitate your foes (thank you freeze gun), and carefully positioning yourself to hide your weak spots while taking advantage of your adversary’s.

However, that isn’t all because once you’ve beaten down an enemy’s ship on the open seas, you’ll have to take a boarding crew to finish the job. After an over-the-top sequence where your team of little freaks leaps into action before freeze framing, your pirates will enter a massive brawl, usually outnumbered, as you lead the charge. While these sequences usually involve some degree of button-mashing, there’s just enough complexity in the combos you can perform to keep things engaging, as the scale of these scrums tips towards Dynasty Warrior territory. It is always very satisfying to fight beside your hand-picked dudes, like a scientist who is trying to find a way to talk to animals or a rockstar who thinks he’s channeling a wind god, as they unleash punches and kicks that send enemy sumo wrestlers—or whatever equally bizarre aesthetic your opponents have going on—rag dolling across the screen.

And of course, these battles are fought to claim what every pirate is after: booty. As you sail from island to island, you’ll track down loot marked on a treasure map. These rewards aren’t minor either; they’ll net you large sums of reputation, which gates all sorts of opportunities, as well as cash, which is used to do the obvious like buy upgrades for your ship, as well as unlock new abilities for Goro. When you hit your first big haul, it genuinely feels like you’ve struck it rich, as upgrades that seemed impossible to afford finally became within reach. Add in the maximalist animation that triggers every time you open a chest—Majima looks just as incredulous the first time he does this as the hundredth—and it’s a rush every time you discover something new and cross it off your “Treasury of Treasures” index. In short, this game hits just about every bullet point on a buccaneer’s wishlist: naval battles, sword fights, and plundering, all presented with flair.

Admittedly, though, I won’t pretend that this voyage is all smooth sailing, and there are certainly times when it becomes clear this experience is repurposed from a series that has nothing to do with piracy. First off, the opening hours are too slow as it takes its time establishing a complicated Like A Dragon-style mystery. This section comes across like an extended tutorial and takes too long to introduce the elements that make it fun to be Captain, like partaking in Madlantis’ colosseum battles or foiling the Death Flags. While most installments in this series pull you into an engrossing central mystery while simultaneously peppering in lots of entertaining detours, here it feels like the “detours,” as in all the cool pirate stuff, are by far the most interesting part of the experience. Basically, the game is a little too tied to the series’ standard crime drama formula, and it has a hard time connecting the central narrative to its pirate antics.

But perhaps the biggest problem is that while the naval battles are engaging and the progression systems are rewarding, the actual process of sailing and exploring is way too linear. Unlike traversing the interconnected ocean of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, you stake out smaller island chains. Worse yet, you’re basically always directed where to go courtesy of the in-game map, as glowing blue speed boost rings very literally funnel you down set paths. While there are random battles and resources to be found on the high seas, getting from point A to point B is usually a bit dull and a lowlight.

But even with these downsides, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s latest scratches an itch, something that more than covers for its mistakes. Here, you exchange cannon fire, weaving between enemy fleets as you tear through defenses like a scourge of the surf. In a pinch, your vessel becomes a projectile missile, ripping open enemy hulls as you send your foes to the bottom of the sea. And like basically every entry in this series, this spin-off’s best quality is its endless charm, whether it’s the hilarious banter, do-gooder protagonist, or your ridiculous crew and their even more ridiculous victory dance. You get to wear a tricorne hat. You can play a baseball mini-game while dressed up as a swashbuckler, and it’s a really good baseball mini-game for some inexplicable reason.

Considering the decade of development that went into Skull and Bones, only for it to become a fiscal black hole for Ubisoft, maybe it makes sense that there aren’t more pirate games out there. I imagine many studios think their take on this space would have to be an incredibly involved open-world title full of hand-crafted islands, complex water physics, and realistic hull damage simulations. But if Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii shows us anything, it’s that pirate games don’t need to be “AAAA” blow-outs to be worthwhile. A little heart and a galleon with jet boosters can go a long way, and this game has plenty of both.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.