Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii review: all schtick, no substance

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Goro Majima has amnesia.

When the absurdly titled Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii begins, the Mad Dog of Shimano washes up on a beach with his memories left behind in the tide. After a few scuffles with some scalawags, he’s reborn as a pirate. We still get flashes of the eccentric antihero we know throughout his seafaring journey to find a lost treasure, but he’s a man lost in schtick. His long history of eccentric behavior has become a costume robe draped over his true identity.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii finds itself in a similar boat. The beefy spinoff of last year’s Infinite Wealth is an act of cosplay. While most of the pieces that make the long-running series so beloved are there, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio trades in strong writing for pirate pastiche with mixed results. Majima’s nautical adventure is at its best when flashes of memory break through its amnesia, reminding me that there’s more to Like a Dragon than its memeable moments.

Long-winded story

Though Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii presents itself as an action RPG starring Goro Majima, it’s not exactly the wish fulfillment fans are expecting. Since Majima has lost his memories, we’re not so much following the character we know and getting more insight into his unknowable brain. Sure, he’s still a loud mouth foil to the cool and collected Kazuma Kiryu, but we may as well be following a completely new character. The story only barely gets into his psyche, instead focusing on his fatherly relationship with a young boy named Noah and his cat (definitely not a tiger cub). As soon as Majima takes the wheel of a ship and begins assembling a pirate crew, he’s a new man.

On paper, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is smarter than its title suggests. It draws a connection between its vision of the criminal underworld and pirates of yore. Both have similar politics, with competing clans and crew hierarchies. Both are nefarious operations out to get rich in seedy ways. It’s a fun bit of self-parody, translating the kind of story Ryu Ga Gotoku has told for two decades into a genre send-up that draws a line between a history of skullduggery.

Or at least, I wish that’s what it was interested in. While that thread is there, the story itself doesn’t have much to say about any of that. Instead, its focus is on weaving a standard tale of adventure and riches, as Majima races rival criminals to find the fabled treasure of Esperanza. His journey intersects with other pirate gangs, an underground ship fighting ring dubbed Madlantis, and Palekana, the eye-rolling religious cult at the center of Infinite Wealth’s weakest story arc. You won’t realize just how long-winded Like a Dragon’s cutscenes can be until you’re sitting through hours of circular dialogue about treasure hunting with little substance. It’s the series’ weakest story yet, stretching the premise for a jaunty DLC into a 25 hour marathon that drags more than the 70+ hour game it’s spun off from.

Part of it is a pacing problem born from an identity crisis. Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii can’t establish a rhythm as it lurches through each of its five ever-changing chapters. A lot of my playtime feels like filler that doesn’t progress the story or any characters arcs forward in a meaningful way. The worst offender of that comes in Chapter 4, where I’m told I need to simply beat a rival pirate in Madlantis’ arena. That simple task turns into hours of exhausting diversion, as I’m bounced back and forth between crew conversations, trips back to Honolulu City, and repetitive battles — all leading to an anticlimactic clash that hardly feels worth all the hubbub.

It’s all a bit disappointing coming off the sleek and at times emotionally moving Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, though Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii has one advantage over that spinoff. Its 31 substories might be my favorite batch in the series. It’s here where Ryu Ga Gotoku’s strengths bubble back up to the surface. They oscillate between absurd and sincere on a dime. One story follows a street performer, dressed as a bronze statue, desperate for his craft to be respected. Another turns a woman’s secret dominatrix fetish into a positive statement on sex work. It’s in these moments that the amnesia clears, revealing the heart underneath the costume.

A pirate’s life

Though the pirate schtick doesn’t make for a great story, it does allow Ryu Ga Gotoku to experiment with some new ideas. The adventure is the series most radically reimagined entry to date in some ways, even if it uses the same beat-em-up action RPG formula from the series’ past. Yes, Majima can still wander around a city, smack people around, eat at restaurants, play darts, snap photos of perverts, compete in Dragon Kart. Just about every system and activity present in Infinite Wealth returns here. Those familiar moments are its most consistent, even if they aren’t surprising a second time around.

The tried and true brawling benefits most from the pirate theming. In addition to a basic brawling stance, Majima can activate a faster swashbuckling mode where he can cut foes up with two swords. A pistol lets him pick pirates off from afar, while a grappling hook allows him to latch onto far off enemies and yank himself to them. It’s a fighting style built for a character as unpredictable as Majima; he can bounce around a battlefield with the grace of a drunken master.

There’s an entire second game dumped on top of this though, for better and sometimes worse. The idea here is that Majima runs his own pirate ship, the Goromaru. He needs to recruit crew members, assign them to jobs, sail in search of treasure, and take down other ships in sea battles. None of this is left to simple minigames; Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii goes as big as it can at every turn and feels more distinct for it, even when it doesn’t land.

The core of that change is built around sailing. When not on a main island, I can take the Goromaru out for a spin around a series of small ocean maps. The main thing I can do out there is dock on small islands and complete bite-sized combat gauntlets to plunder treasure, the value of which can be used to upgrade my skills. Treasures can also be earned by reaching hidden high spots on the mainland with my grappling hook and partaking in minigames. It’s an excellent change of pace from the series’ usual open-city exploration, giving me small challenges that yield clear, useful rewards. Some of these encounters even reach towards Dynasty Warriors’ Musou formula, pitting me and my crewmates against 100 pirates. That’s the kind of violence that feels fitting for the Mad Dog.

Ship management is a highlight too, giving Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii a strong RPG layer built on the foundation of minigames like Majima Construction. I need to outfit my vessel with cannons and machine guns, increasing its offensive and defensive abilities as I progress. Crew members need to be assigned to each position and I need to manage their morale to make sure they’re operating at 100%. I can do that by giving them gifts and throwing parties catered by meals I cook. A net can be attached to my ship to pick up materials and fish. It’s these moments that best sell the high seas fantasy. Majima truly does feel like a captain by the end the more the ship functions like a well-oiled machine.

Slow sailing

Though I admire the effort put into everything, the ship system creates its fair share of problems. Sailing requires me to navigate around a few small maps that look identical to one another at an unbelievably slow pace. The ship moves inches along at a glacial speed unless it’s in a boosting through a current. The only way to fast travel to an area is to make it to a lighthouse and warp from there. That decision doesn’t just discourage me from exploring the seas, but it instills some bad habits in me too.

Since getting from location to location is such a pain, I’m encouraged to do as many open-world activities as I can once I reach a city. I don’t know when the story will take me back there naturally and I simply don’t want to make the trip unless I have to. When I reach Honolulu City in Chapter 2, I wind up gobbling up over a dozen side stories and completing a chunk of bounties at once, stalling the main story out entirely. On another island, I get to manage my own little zoo full of critters who will give me supplies when I feed them. I barely ever engage with that system since it requires a trip. The same goes for Madlantis, where I can compete in combat tournaments. It’s in my best interest to do as many as I can at once rather than come back.

Even if sailing were faster, it would still suffer from tedium. When I’m on the seas, I eventually cross paths with small fleets of rival pirate ships. The core idea of naval battles is great: I need to execute wide turns so I can point my cannons towards a ship and let them rip. It’s a blast the first handful of times I do it. I throw some cannons on one side and an energy laser on the other, wedging myself between two ships and pressing down my controller’s triggers to hit them both at once while boosting away from their own attacks.

This quickly becomes repetitive busywork, as ship health bars get bigger and bigger. The tougher that battles get, the harder they become to manage. I’m able to zoom down to Majima’s perspective during battle to put out fires on deck or fire a rocket launcher, but doing so leaves my ship a sitting duck for incoming attacks. I’m better off just powering through battles, something that becomes easy once I’ve spent enough cash on my ship. All of this makes my long trips even longer, too. Fleets are specifically placed in the middle of currents, so the only way to avoid them is to take a slow detour that doesn’t save much time.

That idea fares a bit better in battles against larger vessels. After I incapacitate a rival ship, I board it with my crew and partake in a massive brawl on deck. These fights are delightfully hectic, with dozens of bodies (including weirdo recruits from the series’ past) cutting each other down in a blitz. Even that too gets old after a while, though, as strategy is traded in for higher body counts.

I’d be more in favor of all of these perfectly enjoyable ideas if they were working in service of something greater, but Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii rarely aims to be more than a pirate-themed schtick. If Like a Dragon were a TV show (another one, I mean), this would be its gimmicky bottle episode; think Lost’s divisive Nikki and Paulo one-off. That’s not a bad thing — I love that episode, for the record. A lighthearted diversion is sometimes a necessary breather. That’s especially true coming off Infinite Wealth and Kiryu’s fight against cancer. There’s value in a Like a Dragon chapter that’s just having fun playing dress up. I just wish there was more to Majima than his wacky antics.

I think back to that substory about that bronze street performer. He’s the butt of the joke in Honolulu City, with onlookers mocking his dedication to standing perfectly still. It’s one of those tales that goes from hilarious to sad as I learn to empathize with him. He’s made out to be a weirdo at a glance, but there’s a real guy under all that body paint. He’s not just a sideshow attraction in a silly costume. I hope that’s true for Majima one day too.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was tested on PS5 Pro.