Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii review

My pirate ship is sailing through the Hawaiin seas, pursuing a speedboat. You might think a big, heavy vessel like a pirate ship would stand little chance of catching up with a nimble speedboat. But don't worry—my pirate ship has rocket boosters. So I successfully chase the speedboat into a Bond-villain style base, whereupon I continue the pursuit on foot, jumping over laser traps, fleeing a giant cannonball that rolls towards me Indiana Jones-style, and then finish up with a sword fight against a giant robot.

How can I possibly give a game that contains all that any less than PC Gamer's first ever 100% score? Well… the 'boat chase' is just a cutscene, the lasers have to be jumped over with sticky platforming controls, that cannonball sequence is a quick time event, and that giant robot also requires that crap jumping to reach its weak point. Still, when a game's got this much charisma and joy in its heart, it's easy to overlook a lot of flaws in this pleasantly batshit nautical adventure.

You play as series favorite Goro Majima, and if you're not familiar with Yakuza, don't worry, because Majima has lost his memory and has no idea who he is either (though I still wouldn't recommend starting here—go enjoy Yakuza 0 first). Majima wakes up on a Hawaiian island and soon teams up with an adorable ten year old boy called Noah. Those familiar with Majima know that you'd sooner leave a ten year old boy in the company of a stack of lit dynamite.

Recent mainline Yakuzas have been turn-based RPGs, but this one gets back to the series' street-brawling roots. Majima has barely regained consciousness before several pirates pick a fight with him. Unfortunately for them, Majima has remembered that he's deadly with a knife, fast as Hell, and great fun to brawl with. There's blocking, dodging, and parrying but you won't have to worry about any of that for hours—just focus on kicking the crap out of these pirates as magnificently as possible.

Soon you're introduced to Noah's father, Jason, a surly alcoholic ex-treasure hunter who needs his love of the sea reawakened—through a fistfight, naturally. This series remains excellent at crafting great characters that are ridiculous one second, then pulling melodramatically at the heartstrings the next (Jason only wants the legendary treasure to heal his sick son!). Other highlights this time include Masura, a ship cook who seems a little too open to cooking human meat, and Queen Michelle, who continues this series' incredible run of scenery-chewing villains.

Perhaps you're wondering why it's taking me so damn long to get to the piracy stuff. So was I, when I was playing through the entertaining but glacially paced opening hours. After many tutorials, character introductions, a nap, one asinine cooking mini-game, and several more punch ups, Majima finally hops aboard a pirate ship and is soon declared captain. But then, after an incredible musical number, that's sadly where the hilarious script and considerable charm hit their first rocky wave as the sailing is all a bit Bland Flag.

Hawaii's seas are broken up into several mini-areas rather than one open world, and they all look near-identical. A small collection of treasure islands wherein you fight other pirates for loot, lighthouses that act as fast travel points, rival ships dotted around, and speed rings that make you go faster when you sail through them. You'll want to stick to those rings as much as possible, too, because your ship moves painfully slowly even with the boost on.

That would be less of a problem if the waters weren't so dull to explore. Standard difficulty is laughably unchallenging, with any ships you chance across going down in a few hits. Majima can let go of the wheel and pull out a rocket launcher, something I actually forgot I could do. Not because I'm also suffering from amnesia, but because I just went through far too much of the game without ever needing to use it.

Ship of fools

Things liven up considerably when a subplot involving mightier ships is introduced and you can sail to specific points on the maps to take them on. But the commute is still dull as bricks because there's so little danger along the way. Black Flag, still the pinnacle of third-person piracy, felt genuinely dangerous because mighty ships could suddenly emerge when you were exploring, or the authorities would show up if you sank too many vessels. There's none of that here, bar a bit of nasty weather occasionally spicing things up. "Look, it's raining," says one of my crew whenever it rains, which basically sums up how boring sailing too often is.

Pity, because the major ship battles do still capture that Yakuza combat OTT magic. Realism has been booted overboard in favour of flamethrower cannons, laser beams, machine guns that fire ship-freezing bullets, etc. It's all about trying to get your ship into the optimum position to do maximum damage without leaving yourself open. Once the rival ship has been defeated, you and your crew then climb aboard.

Here Yakuza is on far stronger footing, as Captain Majima has to help his crew take out as many pirates as possible. Luckily, he's got his new 'Sea Dog' fighting style. This comes with two cutlasses that he can frisbee into crowds of grunts and that'll boomerang back to him. He has a grappling hook, perfect for closing the gap with distant enemies. And he even has a pistol if you'd prefer to keep that distance and just fire away. There are also special moves, magical instruments that can summon a shoal of ghost sharks (yep), and Majima's 'standard' fighting style even lets you summon three clones to fight alongside him. That last one almost makes up for the difficulty spike in Yakuza 7 when he used it against you.

Lethal as you are, you're still going to struggle without a decent crew. Luckily, Hawaii is full of people who are surprisingly keen to follow an amnesiac weirdo into a life or piracy. You soon make port at Honolulu City, the setting of last year's Yakuza 8, which is full of side quests and characters that can be recruited. Highlights include a PR manager who's trying to detoxify a pirate captain's image, and helping the dating prospects of a lady ex-pirate who's "some unrefined salty bitch without a lick of class" (er, her words not mine). And would it blow your mind to learn that yet another dope has brought a dangerous animal to Hawaii in an insecure storage device?

These are hysterical, but once you reach Honolulu, you're basically playing a Yakuza 8 expansion pack. Delightfully odd and with the usual hilarious dialogue, but the only thing that doesn't feel familiar about exploring here is the combat. Oh, and Majima's pirate hook he can use to reach high places and nab treasure that poor grounded Ichiban apparently missed last year. The identical minigames and city layout means it struggles to feel fresh. We've just been to Hawaii, and a full priced game is a pretty cheeky ask for such a similar return trip.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is as delightfully preposterous as its name suggests. I've complained a lot here, but the fantastic writing and wonderful cast mean this is probably one of my most screenshotted games since… well, the last Yakuza. How can you hate a game with a location called "Madlantis"? Arguably, because it's one of the only new locations. There's fun to be had here, but if Sega are going to keep releasing spin-offs that recycle so much content at full price, they might inspire a different kind of videogame piracy.