Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Hands-On Preview – Ahoy, Matey! (TGS 2024)

The Mad Dog of Shimano, Majima Goro, stars in his own game this February, and we got a chance to sit down with a hands-on demo during our Tokyo Game Show visit this year. Cancel the Game of the Year awards because we may have just found our Game of the Year, and it involves a mad dog dressing up as a pirate while cruising down the streets of Hawaii in a Segway, beating up punks as they go.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Yakuza’s Pirate’s Life for Me

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s TGS demo began with Majima Goro sailing into Honolulu and hoping to play it cool for a while. However, wouldn’t ya know it, shit gets real on the beach. Confronted by ruffians almost immediately, it was time for combat. Goro told his teenage-looking crew member to stand aside while he took out the trash.

The boy was surprised to learn that, quite simply, there are bad guys around. Goro, of course, knows this all too well and cautioned his junior that there are scumbags everywhere, even in paradise. It’s a mad world, and in it, you’ve sometimes got to become a mad dog.

Goro had two styles to select in combat, switchable mid-fight with the d-pad. One was his own regular self, and the other was a pirate dual-wielding hiller knives. Fighting was, for the most part, the same smooth, accessible, flat-out excellence one expects from the classic entries in the Like a Dragon series (formerly known as the Yakuza series). It followed the familiar pattern of lighting a guy up with fists, ducking his attack, and hitting him from another angle to make that health bar disappear. Combos, air juggling, and Heat Actions were all there to liven things up. If you’ve played the series before, you’ll feel right at home; new players will still get the hang of this pretty quickly.

Our boy was usually outnumbered, because of course, but dodge rolls and fast sidesteps were there to help him survive. He could also do an almost teleport-like dash up to the face of the next enemy to start whipping him with less delay. Grappling with the O button was there for enemies who were blocking or foolish enough to show you their backs.

Heat Actions — Like a Dragon’s cinematic attacks, which usually defeat an enemy — that I saw were the usual over-the-top, brutal fun. Every installment of this series, I wonder how they came up with this stuff and every time, they impress me again. For example, Goro throws a spinning knife into the air and then kicks the handle to jam it into a dude. God, I want to be in the boardroom when these ideas are first tabled.

And we get to the best part: riding around town on a Segway (as previously seen in Infinite Wealth). Faster than running but definitely not a teleport, it was funny and convenient. Frankly, it was hilarious to see Goro rolling around the streets on that thing, then hopping off to smash some assholes, finding an energy drink on the ground, then hopping back on.

Goro and company rode their pirate ship into Madlantis, which had plenty of side stuff that was not yet available in this demo version, as well as the main story bits I was supposed to chase. It was a dimly lit ship graveyard that also served as a sort of hub for pirates and other shady types. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of time here other than a few fights due to my time limit expiring, but it looks like the type of place players will be returning to now and again over the course of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Despite playing the PS5 version of the game, there was nothing visual that made me go, “Wow, so that’s what the new generation looks like!” Despite this being maybe my first experience with a PS5, I didn’t notice anything that I didn’t already see in PS4. NPC models looked a little rough around the edges and moved in their pre-determined paths, taking clunky walkarounds if something interfered. This is cross-gen, so perhaps some things had to be held out or kept simple in order for previous-gen versions to exist. It’s hard to say.

Speaking from the experience of playing both the PS3 and PS4 versions of some of yesteryear’s cross-gen titles (including Yakuza: Ishin), I’d have to guess that the PS5’s version runs more smoothly and has less pop-in. The difference isn’t always immediately visible with games like these. These performance advantages being in Pirate Yakuza are, I reiterate, my own speculation and not confirmed by the devs or publishers.

Either way, as a longtime Yakuza fan, I left the demo feeling overwhelmingly positive. Everything was clicking.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is currently on track for a Feb. 28, 2025 release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can check out the game’s pre-order bonuses and different editions here.

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