There’s been a renaissance of pirate games over the past few years, and the quality of them has been all over the place. Rare’s Sea of Thieves dominates the space with its wondrous sense of adventure and swashbuckling exploration. Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, on the other hand, is filled with mundane tasks that make for a live-service slog.
Now it’s Like a Dragon’s turn at the wheel with the series’ latest spinoff, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. While Sea of Thieves and Skull and Bones put ship battles front and center, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii uses them as side dishes to the main Like a Dragon formula. It may be a minigame, but it’s a surprisingly well-fleshed-out one considering its relative scope compared to the rest of the game.
At a recent preview event, Digital Trends spent two hours playing Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. While that included your standard Like a Dragon gameplay, it’s those pirate ship battles that stuck out to me most. Traversal and combat are both more exciting than I anticipated.
All hands on deck
A spinoff of last year’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a side story focused on everyone’s favorite Mad Dog, Goro Majima. He’s living a pirate’s life this time around, and no captain is complete without a ship. Over in Madlantis, a place where pirates from all over the world gather, Majima can participate in naval battles against other ships in a coliseum setting. My ship, the Goromaru, would face off against three other opponents.
I had a variety of different weapons at my disposal. By default, the Goromaru was entirely maxed out with all possible weapons and crew members unlocked. Along with the traditional cannonball fire option, I had a weak rapid fire machine gun. It almost felt like I was less in a pirate game and more in one of Starfield’s outer space dogfights. I could customize my ship and switch out which heavy weapons I wanted.
At first, I stuck with the default cannonball and flamethrower options, but I later switched the latter with the Super Shark Cannon, a weapon that shoots freezing shells to keep enemy ships in place. After trying that out, I switched it for a giant laser cannon. I’m not sure what I expected out of a Like a Dragon pirate game, but I’m not surprised to see wacky weapons like this. It adds a lot of personality and sets Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii very far apart from its more-grounded contemporaries.
Evasive maneuvers are incredibly important in these naval battles. I quickly learned to avoid enemy flamethrowers at all costs, as it could engulf my entire ship and slowly eat away at my HP. In these cases, Majima has to momentarily step away from the helm and put out the fires, leaving the Goromaru vulnerable.
In these coliseum fights, players can board enemy ships after depleting their HP to initiate a deck battle. Majima then takes his crew to invade and proceeds to attack its crewmates in the traditional Like a Dragon real-time brawling to completely take it over. It’s a nice finishing touch that connects the minigame back into the core Like a Dragon formula.
A pirate’s life for me
Players can recruit NPCs to join Majima’s crew, not unlike minigames in previous games such as Like a Dragon: Ishin. They’re an eclectic bunch. While the demo had many of them unlocked for me already, I found an older woman in Madlantis named Natasha. By adding her as a crew member on a ship during naval battles, she increases smoke screen use by two and slightly boosts the ship’s recovery rate.
These NPCs still retain Like a Dragon’s iconic sense of humor in their profiles. For Natasha, her description reads: “A lady pirate who formerly worked at an intelligence agency. Rumor has it she’s toppled countless countries, as well as men.” One of my favorite NPC profiles is based on the real-life actress Nicole Kidman, named Nickelle Kidman, and reads, “A popular actress famous for her smile. To help get into one of her roles, she’s spending time as a real pirate.”
Players will most likely spend time on the Goromaru the most while venturing out toward different islands. Hawaii and Nele Island are locations here, both of which appeared in Infinite Wealth. While sailing, Majima and his crew will seemingly encounter smaller ships than the ones found in the Madlantis coliseum; they’re quick obstacles to blast through when traveling. I’m glad to see that the pirate ship traversal is an option, as it better sells the truly wild sales pitch.
I feel like I’ve only gotten a small taste of how pirate ships work in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Most of my time with the demo was exclusively spent toying around with the ship, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. So long as it naturally fits in to the big picture, I’ll be living the life of a pirate next month.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii launches on February 21 for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
