In mid-September, Japanese developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, which makes the Yakuza video games, shocked followers with a shock announcement {that a} new sport within the collection was approaching Feb. 28, 2025, and that it could characteristic fan favourite Goro Majima in a pirate journey. In a west Los Angeles workplace just lately, I received an opportunity to play a short slice of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and boy does it dwell as much as the identify.
Once I say transient, I imply it: Employees from RGG gave me simply half an hour to run by way of a handful of fights and minigames. There is no method I received a consultant understanding of the gameplay nor its story in such a brief window. However I did get a style of what awaits gamers when Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii arrives early subsequent 12 months.
My demo started a brief method into the sport, when the one-eyed Majima makes it to the seashores of Honolulu, Hawaii (the setting of the earlier spin-off, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth). As you’d anticipate from “Mad Canine” Majima, it does not take lengthy for him to get in a brawl with some native robust guys, giving me hands-on time with the fight.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii returns to the collection’ live-action preventing roots, and lets gamers roam round attacking in actual time (sorry, followers of the turn-based RPG programs in Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth). Majima can swap between two preventing types on the fly: Mad Canine and Sea Canine. Mad Canine lets him sprint round with fast punches, knife assaults and launchers that slide into airborne combos. Sea Canine type places two cutlasses in Majima’s arms for slashing and capturing his method by way of enemies.
Combating within the “Sea Canine” type.
No use pretending: The Sea Canine type was far more enjoyable to make use of, particularly since switching to that type routinely fits Majima up in his unimaginable pirate outfit. You’ll be able to throw swords like boomerangs and toss a grappling hook (known as “wire hook”) at enemies to drag you into slashing vary. However do not low cost the Mad Canine type for its Insanity Gauge. When it is absolutely constructed up after sufficient assaults, you may activate it to summon 4 doppelgangers that may tackle enemies or mix for a spin assault. If you do not need a charmingly foolish Yakuza sport, look elsewhere.
After the seashore bros, the demo nudged me again to Majima’s pirate ship, the Goromaru, to take a look at the sport’s new space: Madlantis. Hidden inside an innocuous mountain island, the salvage-strewn pirate port is a lawless, neon-and-rust-covered wonderland crammed with coliseums and on line casino tables. It is all overseen by a debonair queen ruling from atop a marooned tanker looming over the chaos beneath — although I did not get time to determine any extra Midlantis lore.
Madlantis, the pirate metropolis.
That is the place I fought Keith, a boss pirate who had apparently wronged Majima earlier within the sport and deserved a beating alongside his orbiting swarm of swarthy boys. As soon as taken down with a hurricane of slashes and particular assaults, I used to be free to sprint again to Honolulu and partake in a couple of minigames. I managed to seize the microphone and belt out one track on the karaoke parlor, 24-Hour Cinderella (scoring 86.6 out of 100, thanks very a lot), and check out a minigame delivering meals to locals on a motorbike (suppose BMX Loopy Taxi) earlier than my demo time ended.
With a naked half-hour of playtime, I can affirm that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii does really feel like a Yakuza sport, that the fight I performed was tight and pleasant, and that zany Madlantis feels prefer it meets the wild tone set by the sport’s audaciously direct title. I need to play extra, as a result of the briefest tease was not practically sufficient to say whether or not gamers ought to get hyped for this sport.
Select your outfit and resemble your favourite pirate.
But RGG (arrrRGG?) has an excellent status for producing nice video games that fulfill the promise of their premise. Furthermore, the studio is disciplined and confirmed in getting expansive video games out yearly, a powerful cadence in an trade the place AAA video games usually take half a decade to develop and launch. I am sufficiently excited for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, even when lots of my questions in regards to the sport have not but been answered. In any case, which different studio lets their beloved gangster characters take a while off from crime dynasty cleaning soap opera sagas to scour the seas like scurvy canine?
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