Game Review – Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: SEGA
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Year: 2025
So you’re telling me there’s a game where Goro Majima — the Mad Dog of Shimano, the eye-patch wearing chaos agent, the guy who shows up in every Yakuza game like a violent jack-in-the-box — becomes a PIRATE?
Yes. That is the game. And it’s exactly as unhinged as that sounds.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii picks up after the events of Infinite Wealth. Majima washes up on a beach with amnesia because of course he does. He gets recruited by a crew of pirates and proceeds to do pirate things while also doing Yakuza things which means beating the absolute hell out of everyone while delivering monologues about honor and brotherhood.
Look. If you’ve played any game in this series you know what you’re getting. The combat is absurd. The side quests are absurd. The main story takes itself VERY seriously while also being completely ridiculous. There’s a scene where Majima fights a guy on top of a flaming ship while rock music plays and the camera does these dramatic close-ups and I was laughing and also kind of moved? That’s the Yakuza experience. That’s what these games do.
The new pirate stuff is. Okay so you have a ship now. You can sail around. You can engage in naval combat. You can recruit crew members. It’s not quite Assassin’s Creed Black Flag but it’s more substantial than I expected. There’s actual ship customization. There’s boarding combat. There’s treasure hunting. They didn’t just slap a pirate skin on a Yakuza game — they actually built out a whole pirate gameplay loop.
The land combat is real-time again, not turn-based like Infinite Wealth. I know some people prefer the turn-based stuff but personally I like beating people with a bicycle in real time. Majima has two fighting styles — his classic Mad Dog style and a new pirate cutlass style — and switching between them mid-combo feels great. The heat actions are insane as always. There’s one involving a cannon that I won’t spoil but it made me say “what the fuck” out loud in my living room. That’s a compliment.
The side content. Jesus. The side content in these games is always where the real magic happens. There’s a karaoke minigame. There’s a dancing minigame. There’s a whole thing where you manage a pirate crew like it’s a sports management sim. There’s fishing. There’s gambling. There’s a substory where you help a guy who’s convinced he’s the reincarnation of Blackbeard and it’s somehow touching?
I have complaints. The pacing in the middle section drags. There’s a stretch of like five hours where not much happens story-wise and you’re just doing busywork to unlock the next chapter. The English voice acting is. Fine. It’s fine. The Japanese is better. And the ship combat, while fun, gets repetitive by the end.
But these are minor issues in what’s otherwise another banger from RGG Studio. They’ve made like 15 of these games and somehow they keep being good. They keep finding new settings and new mechanics and new ways to be sincere and stupid at the same time.
Majima as a pirate with amnesia fighting other pirates while also fighting Yakuza while also singing karaoke while also managing a ship crew.
Sure. Why not. I played 60 hours of this and I’d play 60 more.
My rating: ★★★★☆
