When Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (God, that name is gloriously long) was first announced, I had a couple of thoughts about it. 1. I was happy to see Majima get a game fully centered around him. 2. Pirates?  

Now after playing RGG's latest, I've walked away with some mixed feelings. I think that Pirate Yakuza is an entertaining game and I sunk many more hours in it than the 15 hours or so it'll take you to beat its main story, but I also think it's a great example of the worrying path this series has found itself going down as of late. Focusing a lot on wacky and ridiculous situations that put comedy first and less on the emotional and hard-hitting gangster stories we all initially came to this series for.

Pirate Yakuza sees Goro Majima find himself shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Hawaii without his memories. Amnesiac and hurt, Majima finds himself in the company of a young boy named Noah who helps get him back on his feet. Through a series of events more logical than it would sound on the offset, Majima somehow comes into possession of a pirate ship and crowns himself Captain of the Goro Pirates (named after Noah's pet tiger--sorry cat--also named Goro, and not after Majima himself).

The plot of the game is hilariously campy and involves our main man going after a lost pirate treasure somehow stored off the coast of Hawaii for over 200 years by old Spanish pirates. The camp factor is tuned up to 11 here and the story never really takes itself too seriously, there's not many emotional or dark moments that the series has become known for, and instead a lot more focus on the comedy chops of the series. While the wackiness is a lot of fun and is on point tonally for a game centered around the Mad Dog of Shimano...it does sort of start to feel a little tiring by the end of the game. Once I reached my final five hours with Pirate Yakuza, I was left a little wanting. Some of the best moments characterization-wise happen towards the conclusion and the game surprisingly answers some questions left over from last year's Infinite Wealth, which I did not expect. It's a little goofy in execution (maybe a lot goofy) but I was definitely appreciative of the attempt they made to handwave away the seemingly mystical elements hinted at in Infinite Wealth.

The story mainly centers around the Rich family and their interpersonal conflicts, the treasure has a personal connection to them and most of the story developments are primarily concerned with them. Noah essentially takes on the role of deutoragonist in the story and the plot is more structured around his journey that Majima sort of stumbles into. In a way, the Like A Dragon series has found its way back to its roots as a "dad" game after taking a small break to explore other stories and tones. Despite its vastly different tone, Pirate Yakuza's contemporaries are the modern "God of War" games and "The Last of Us". It's fun to see Majima take on the father surrogate role but it's ultimately undersold by the tone of the game, never really reaching the heights of Kiryu and Haruka's bond.

Gameplay-wise, Pirate Yakuza also returns to the series' roots as well. Despite the mainline Like A Dragon games turning away from the more free-form combat of its predecessors, Pirate Yakuza brings back the classic beat 'em up combat to great effect. It's maybe not my favorite version of the combat system that's been in these games and the Sea Dog style takes a little too long to fully give you the full kit, it's still a lot of fun and holds your attention well for the duration of the game. I never got bored with random combat encounters and sought out open-world activities that gave me more opportunities to crack skulls. However I will say, I do think this might be the easiest Like A Dragon game I've played so far. I enjoyed the combat a lot but I also think enemy health, damage, and aggressiveness might have been turned down a lot from previous entries. In previous games, there were moments where I got stuck and had to develop new strategies and get better at combat to succeed and move past that roadblock. I never had a moment like that here and ended up just playing mostly the same way throughout, granted adding new moves from leveling up and purchasing new skills via the skill tree. 

The second main pillar of gameplay is ship combat, it's very similar to the way that ship combat has played out in the 13 years since "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" popularized and mainstreamed the mechanic. It's fun for the most part and motivates you to do more and more side content, you're always going to be on the hunt for more cash to upgrade the Goromaru and look for more crew members to beef up your stats during ship battles. 

The game's open world offers a whole host of side content to dive into and enjoy and that is mainly the reason why it took me so long to beat the damn thing. I kept getting distracted by the bevy of activities you can do, whether that's comedic substories, minigames like darts and cannonball batting cages, the Pirates Colosseum, or the expansive and huge Devil Flags side story. If the mark of a truly great open-world game is how often it presents you with an activity that distracts you from the main campaign, then this is a truly great open world full of timely distractions. The substories were often the main thing that distracted me away from completing Majima's crazy adventure, often being just as insane in tone as anything the main story has to offer. Masaru's dating quest takes the cake for the most I've ever cringed at a game before, just painful to watch him fumble as badly as he does (I will note the cringe is intentional, I'm not insulting the game here).

Getting back to the tone of the game, while it's entertaining and enjoyable, I'm now yearning for the series to go back to a time were these games were maybe a little more serious. Part of what makes the Like A Dragon games so beloved and what attracted me to the series in the first place is that wild imbalance of tone that bounces between the serious gritty crime drama genre and the wild open-world antics you can get up to. When nothing is grounding the core of the game and it's all ridiculous, the insane becomes sane and it starts to blur together and that's kind of where I'm at with the series right now. Pirate Yakuza comes after the latest entries in the series also leaned in the direction of the ridiculous, and at this point this trend is starting to become concerning as more and more of the series becomes dominated by this.

It hasn't ruined this game or made me love this series any less, but I hope they refocus their efforts a little more for the next entry in this legendary series.