Pirate Yakuza Is a Rollicking Adventure That Does the Series’ Best Character Justice

Pirate Yakuza is the only game where you can engage in rollicking sea battles, but also attend a compliance seminar on how to be an HR-friendly scallywag. This is a Yakuza game through and through, filled with both raucous absurdity and heart-crushing emotion.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a ridiculous name for a game that actually describes what it’s like surprisingly well. In the same vein as 2023’s The Man Who Erased His Name, this is a drastically smaller-scale spinoff. It’s a game that fully embraces the zaniness Yakuza has become known for, and truly hits the ground running with the pirate premise (the game literally begins and ends with a big musical number). While there’s a bit of needless fluff, Pirate Yakuza is another strong entry into the series that’s becoming one of gaming’s best. But perhaps the game’s biggest achievement is how it works in concert as a companion piece to last year’s Infinite Wealth.

Hoist the Sails

In Pirate Yakuza you play as Goro Majima, the iconic “Mad Dog” that Yakuza fans have known and loved since the very beginning. While Majima has served as a central character throughout the series, this is only the second time he’s had a starring role – the first being Yakuza 0. But the core conceit of the story means that even those unfamiliar with the character, or the series, can jump in blind.

Majima wakes up on the shores of an unknown Hawaiian island with amnesia, no recollection of who he is or why he's there. On the verge of starvation, Majima is saved by a young boy named Noah Rich, whose father runs a bar on what’s colloquially called Rich Island. This is a Yakuza game, of course, and things quickly spiral from there as Majima fights off a band of pirates, only to learn about a massive pirate underworld in the seas of Hawaii, centered around a den of iniquity known as Madlantis. Yes, these are true blue pirates that still use wooden ships, cannons, old-timey guns, and sabers. There’s the occasional random comment about how weird all this is in the 21st century, but Pirate Yakuza just expects you to buy into its premise – and leaves you in the dust if you don’t.

If you can do that, though, you’re in for a heck of a time, as the only game I’ve seen embrace the idea of pirates as well as this is Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. After that initial setup, Pirate Yakuza, fittingly, is a game about seeking the legendary Esperanza Treasure, which as legend has it can grant the elixir of eternal life. The story of Pirate Yakuza is a rollicking tale that has you going across the high seas, trading barbs with enemies like Pirate King Raymond Law (played by wrestling legend Samoa Joe), and recruiting a crew of the biggest weirdos you’ve ever seen.

Pirate Yakuza has a decidedly lower-stakes story than most Yakuza games, but it still contains a lot of the ludicrous twists and turns you’ve come to expect. Where the game really shines, however, is in its personal relationships, namely between Majima and Noah.

If Infinite Wealth was a game about growing old and leaving behind your regrets, Pirate Yakuza is about still finding a reason to live and leaving it a better place for the younger generation. The duo of Majima and Noah are the beating heart of Pirate Yakuza, and how it hammers home that theme. This is where Majima’s amnesia comes into play as well, as we get to see a much more lighthearted, playful version of the character – one that grows to care for the young Noah in a fatherly kind of way. Everything Majima does is for the sake of Noah’s future, and through their relationship, he also starts learning a different way to see life and the promise it can still hold even for a 60-year-old man. The entire game embraces this idea of leaving the world a better place than when you entered it, and it’s capped off by a phenomenal ending that brings everything full circle with Infinite Wealth.

It’s fascinating to see this kind of wholesome theme fused with the rough-and-tumble aesthetic of pirates, but it works. Every aspect of the game permeates that grungy pirate feel, from the way your crew sings sea shanties to the pubs and blazing neon signs of Madlantis. But the pirate theme is hit even harder in the gameplay elements of Pirate Yakuza.

A Swashbuckling Good Time

Pirate Yakuza isn’t a tremendous deviation from the Yakuza formula, and it actually sticks quite close to what the last few games have done. However, there are a few new elements layered in that make its core experience feel remarkably different, while side content sticks closer to what’s expected.

The big addition here is your ship, the Goromaru, and the ability to sail the seas around Hawaii. All of the core systems, and what’s new, revolve around your ship. If you’ve played Black Flag you know exactly what ship combat entails, as Pirate Yakuza uses that formula almost exactly. You have cannons on both sides that can be fired, and an automatic firearm that shoots straight ahead, although you can also stop piloting your ship and just fire a rocket launcher from the deck of your ship, for fun. But Pirate Yakuza mixes things up a bit with ridiculous weapons like flame throwers, laser cannons, and coconut guns – many of which can apply adverse status effects to enemy ships. Occasionally, you’ll also need to board enemy ships, which prompts a massive crew-vs-crew battle with dozens of characters duking it out.

Majima himself has two different combat styles to swap between. Mad Dog is his tried-and-true style from past games, heavily focused on agility and weaving in between enemies. But the drastically more fun style is his new Sea Dog, which uses a wealth of pirate gadgets. In this mode, you can throw your swords like boomerangs, fire off a massive pistol blast, and use a grappling hook to bring the pain even faster. A special move gauge lets you summon Majima clones in Mad Dog, and play instruments to summon “Dark Gods” in Sea Dog – a ridiculous ability that lets you call ethereal sharks to gobble up foes. Majima’s moves are both flashy and satisfying, perfectly complementing each battle.

Swapping between these two styles is a blast, especially as you unlock more skills and abilities. Pirate Yakuza’s action combat has some of the best depth of the series, letting you pull off sick air combos, dazzling counters, and gut-wrenching Heat moves. Majima’s moves are both flashy and satisfying, a perfect compliment to the ship and crew battles.

Outside of the combat, though, you’ll also need to painstakingly build your crew, from over a hundred potential characters you can recruit. This includes a cornucopia of characters from past games and new weirdos, like a professor who invents a device to talk to animals or a tired gardener who just needs an energy drink before he joins your crew. Pirate Yakuza continues the series’s tradition of rewarding nearly every single thing you do. You get new crew members from substories, can purchase them with points from minigames, or just recruit them randomly on the streets of Honolulu.

Every crew member levels up and can be placed on your cannon squad or boarding party, and you can give gifts to increase their morale, throw feasts to give them a boost, and more. Apart from battles on the high seas you can also take on the Pirate’s Colosseum in Madlantis, which presents you with dozens of high-stakes ship and crew battles. Of course, there’s also an entire lengthy series of side quests based around fighting off a tyrannical group of pirates.

If you know any Yakuza game you know they’re heavy on side content, and that’s the same here. While the main story leans pretty heavily on battles and ship combat, there’s a ridiculous amount of things to distract you in this game. You have full access to Honolulu, just like in Infinite Wealth. The city is filled with activities, including recruits to find, animals to save, bounties to take down, and minigames to play (including kart racing and food delivery). There are also over 30 substories in Pirate Yakuza, many of which develop on side stories and characters seen in Infinite Wealth. The substories are a particular delight because of how hard they lean into that wacky pirate theme. There’s the aforementioned HR course for pirate captains, one where Majima helps a gruff former captain try to be the “ideal” Japanese girl, and another where a 60-year-old businessman begs Majima to let him live his lifelong dream as a pirate.

There’s no shortage of things to do, but for once, it feels like that can be a bit of a problem. I almost always do everything in every Yakuza game, but some of what’s in Pirate Yakuza can start to feel a bit tedious.

The ship combat feels great, but boy is there a lot of it – especially in those side stories. The hordes of random thugs roaming around areas can also begin to feel exasperating, as you constantly have to either run away or fight a quick battle to get back to what you’re doing. Most of the minigames are also recycled from Infinite Wealth, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but your mileage can vary depending on what you enjoy and don’t.

As a smaller “spinoff” it’s hard to not feel like Pirate Yakuza is padded out with a ton of side content we’ve seen before, even if those new additions in the main story are undoubtedly a blast. Even so, I can’t condemn the game for that, as the series’ mission statement is essentially reusing assets to create something new and vibrant – and that’s certainly achieved with Pirate Yakuza.

Leaving a Legacy

Pirate Yakuza feels like the kind of game that could have only come out of this specific series – this simply wouldn’t be possible anywhere else. A game that gives you a pirate theme park to run around in, while still delivering the Yakuza’s trademark sense of virtual tourism and emotional storytelling. It’s not perfect, sure, but the game’s earnestness is downright infectious. It’s the kind of experience you simply can’t help but have a smile on your face while playing.

But past the pirate platitudes and seafaring hijinks, what really sticks with me is that core narrative theme. Majima is a character that’s had a long and tragic life, one much harder than he deserved. But by adventuring with a young boy he finds not just a new lease on life, but a reminder of the duty he has to undo the harm he’s caused, to make the world a better place to live, even for just one person. It’s a reminder of why Yakuza games continue to be so special – their humanity. That’s something we could all use a bit of right now.

8/10

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii launches on February 21 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Inverse reviewed the PS5 version.

INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.