Once I have a look at the trajectory of the Yakuza sequence over the past decade I really feel dizzy. Yakuza 0 launched 10 years in the past and is arguably the sport that catapulted the sequence from cult consciousness to mainstream success within the west. The next 12 months, in 2016, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio launched Yakuza 6, which was meant to capstone the lengthy and elaborate Kazuma Kiryu saga, thus making room for a sequence refresh. And boy did the sequence get a refresh, even when RGG refuses to let go of Kiryu.After a comparatively quiet 2017 (we obtained Yakuza Kiwami 2), the sensible Judgment made its debut in 2018, which was meant to maintain us firm till the massive seventh Yakuza instalment arrived in 2020. Yakuza: Like a Dragon famously deserted the sequence’ crisp beat ’em up combating with JRPG-inspired turn-based fight, and changed the steely-but-gentle Kiryu with starry-eyed pet canine Ichiban Kasuga.Much more has occurred since then. Like a Dragon has had a sequel within the type of Infinite Wealth. We have additionally had a Judgment sequel, and a Like a Dragon: Ishin! remake. For tragics who used to import these video games from Japan close to the start of the century, this embarrassment of riches is welcome and, to a level, enduringly inexplicable. What’s much more stunning is that Yakuza hasn’t sanded away its quirks for the sake of worldwide success. On the contrary: it is turn out to be quirkier.Yakuza 7’s turn-based fight was revealed as an April Fools joke. Everybody is aware of RGG are cheerful lunatics, however when this “joke” turned out to be true it was an actual assertion of intent from the studio, whereas additionally giving many diehards a sound purpose to desert the sequence. It was an enormous shift within the sequence’ DNA, in spite of everything, the likes of which few—or no—different studios would dare try. Even in the event you weren’t tremendous onboard with the zany melodrama of its meandering plots, you can at the very least play Yakuza video games as combating video games.Anyway, JRPG Yakuza (or these days, Like a Dragon) has confirmed an inexplicable success, and the combating Yakuza video games are actually offshoots: see Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Title, and now, um, let me test my notes: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. It takes sequence favorite Goro Majima—a zany, charismatic however totally deadly Yakuza—and turns him right into a pirate. As per the secret, you see.I used to be fairly sceptical of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Like most Yakuza fans, I really like Majima, and have lengthy wished him to have his personal sport. However Majima-as-pirate appeared to be a step too far within the zany path for RGG. In any case, as humorous and weird as Yakuza video games may be, these qualities normally complement the straightfaced melodrama of their predominant tales. Bear in mind, this sequence was set nearly completely within the streets of a small pocket of Tokyo, and was just about completely involved with the infinite bickering and politicking of Yakuza households. These days they’re hardly concerning the Japanese legal underworld in any respect.(Picture credit score: Sega)Which is ok, however pirates? To make use of an analogy: When a child does one thing foolish that is humorous, and folks snicker at them, the child will do it once more, however extra intensely. This normally retains going till the child fully over-eggs the entire thing, the spectators get irritated, and the child by some means hurts themself. That is near what I imagined occurring to RGG after Pirate Yakuza was introduced. That is too silly, gang. You are veering too zany. You are going to damage yourselves.Preserve updated with crucial tales and the very best offers, as picked by the PC Gamer group.However Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is one other goddamned masterpiece, I am blissful to say. Throughout the first hour I had crushed the shit out of a bunch of dumb pirate LARPers, sang in an elaborate musical-inspired jaunt aboard my ship, and made buddies with each a rooster and a cat. Afterward, I wander the streets of Honolulu shouting “aloha!” at individuals, which provides them to my buddies checklist on an in-game social media app. I meet an embittered mascot who desires me to gather playing cards, for some purpose. We’re again.RGG simply launched a 30-hour joke sport a couple of Yakuza roaming the Pacific Ocean as an amnesiac pirate, with a child tiger as a companion, and a rhythm-based cooking mini-game, they usually’re charging $60 for it, and persons are shopping for it.
the drill by now: it takes Pirate Yakuza about 10 hours to get going. The story is drip fed amid numerous invites to partake in its aspect content material: need to play a batting sport with explosives? How a couple of spot of mahjong? Or karting? Why not recruit a pack of weirdos to assist in your pirate ship? And many others and so on. Good stuff, clearly.Having performed each single mainline Yakuza sport, I can confidently say that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is not doing a lot that is new. Certain, there may be crusing, nevertheless it’s arcade crusing, and anyway, I am talking broadly: each Yakuza sport brings some new function to the desk, some new novelty, however the broader format has not modified a lot, save the change to turn-based fight in 7. Elsewhere, the Yakuza sequence continues to get away with the flagrant re-use of maps, mini-games and places, which is normally sufficient to get any studio drawn-and-quartered on Reddit.(Picture credit score: Sega)However Yakuza is (largely) immune to this type of criticism. It coasts alongside as a result of it is an inherently charming sequence with a a lot stronger sense of what it’s than another dwelling videogame sequence. In 2025, all over the place you look, blockbuster video games are having existential crises making an attempt to adapt to the ephemeral tastes of an indeterminate “mass viewers”. Not RGG: they’ve simply launched a 30-hour joke sport a couple of Yakuza roaming the Pacific Ocean as an amnesiac pirate, with a child tiger as a companion, and a rhythm-based cooking mini-game, they usually’re charging $60 for it, and persons are shopping for it.It is true that RGG advantages from working with a 20-year-old sequence, and has carved out a manufacturing routine that works effectively for them. However that solely explains how the studio manages to dole these video games out at such a brisk tempo. It does not clarify why all of them are so reliably partaking. The Yakuza video games remind me of Twin Peaks greater than something: there is a deliberate meshing collectively of tones that may usually be at odds. This fixed tonal battle contributes to an id and an environment that’s close to ineffable. In Yakuza’s case, the key components appear derived from TV melodrama, motion film machismo and surrealist comedy, however there’s additionally gameshow components, Nineties motion cartoons, and now… musicals. All of this mixed makes Like a Dragon really feel like a very wild experiment.I could have characterised Pirate Yakuza as an offshoot earlier, however in actuality it isn’t, and that is probably the most wonderful factor. Whereas earlier “offshoots”—the zombie-slaughtering Useless Souls, the nineteenth century-based Ishin—have been completely separate from the principle Yakuza video games, Pirate Yakuza is emphatically not. Its story very clearly intersects with the mainline video games, disallowing the likelihood that this bizarre ‘n’ experimental pirate sport—so past the scope of feasibility—just isn’t canon. No, that is what you now have to simply accept as Like a Dragon canon, people: it is complete bullshit, you by no means noticed it coming, and 10 years in the past we’d have written it off as a joke. And [psych!] that is why it is good.
