Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is… Not What I Hoped For

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Jun 192026
 

All right. It’s time to talk about Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

The winner of my last contest picked the review prize and had me play Pirate Yakuza, and…

Wait, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t do contests this past February or May. Yes, I’m talking about the winner of my Celebrating All Things Spooky contest, back in October.

So how did it take me this long to finish one of the shorter games in the series? Two reasons: first, I had to finish Infinite Wealth before starting Pirate Yakuza, and second…

I hate to say it, but I honestly found Pirate Yakuza to be a bit of a slog.

If you follow my blog regularly, you might remember I had mixed feelings about Pirate Yakuza early on. Its premise felt too silly to me, and I would have preferred a historical pirate spin-off instead. That said, I started to warm up to the idea after a while and hoped I would at least enjoy it as a fun, silly adventure.

(Don’t forget, I’m a Dead Souls defender, after all.)

Let me start with the positives. There are some great substories in this game. The substory about Majima and the other pirate captain going through training about workplace compliance ranks up there with the funniest in the series, and Masaru’s Love Journey, which I’d worried I’d find boring, was so uncomfortable that it circled around to being hilarious.

The story, however, falls flat, and not just because of suspension of disbelief.

First of all, it’s not actually “a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas” like I described it when anticipating it in my earlier blog post. I imagined Majima and his crew sailing from island to island, searching for the location of a treasure they know is out there somewhere… but that’s not really the direction the main story takes. The main narrative focuses on a few locations you travel between.

This includes Madlantis, a haven for all these modern-day pirates who act like old-fashioned pirates… and some of the most boring antagonists I’ve seen.

I thought Infinite Wealth’s antagonists, aside from Yamai, were pretty boring, but they’ve got nothing on these guys. Maybe it’s because there were too many of them, forcing the already-thin story to be spread even thinner across its villains, but I just didn’t find them compelling at all.

On top of that, there is something strange about Pirate Yakuza’s tone, and not just because its premise requires such suspension of disbelief. I’m a fan of romanticized treasure hunter pirates like in Skies of Arcadia, and I love how the Yakuza series usually has moral protagonists despite the crime drama focus, but this game feels like it goes out of its way to emphasize that we’re the wholesome good guy pirates. It just feels a little off. Meanwhile, Majima’s amnesia feels nearly pointless, and I really think they could have told a more interesting story without it.

Click for Pirate Yakuza spoilers
Especially with the post-credits reveal that Majima wanted to find a cure for Kiryu, having Majima keep/regain his memories and actively search for the treasure because of that might have made the plot feel more compelling.

His amnesia feels like it’s just an excuse for him to not care about abandoning his duties, but wouldn’t him abandoning his duties on a desperate hope that he could save Kiryu be even stronger?

Instead of the Saejima scenes having a general tone of “Bro, you have responsibilities,” “Quit calling me bro! I don’t know what you’re talking about,” it could instead have been Saejima being more level-headed and rational about the likelihood of finding a magical cure while Majima is dead set on trying.

I don’t know, the amnesia just felt to me to be pointless at best, damaging to the plot at worst.

Now, you might think I’m being too harsh on the silly Majima pirate game. Who cares if it has a weak plot, right?

Unfortunately, when I mentioned the game feeling like a slog, that also extends to my feelings about the gameplay. I did find the combat fun, though; I’ll give it credit for that. I wasn’t sure about the combat system at first, especially since I didn’t like how jumping felt, but once Majima’s Sea Dog style got expanded with the gun and grappling hook, I started to have a lot of fun with it. It’s more focused on taking down large groups of enemies, but it has a lot of fun features.

Ship combat, however, I didn’t enjoy. This is partly because of a complaint that I also extend to the general gameplay: why is the ship so slow?

Why is the ship so slow??

Why is the ship so slow???

Maybe it’s for realism (in this, of all games), but the ship felt painfully slow to me whenever I wasn’t boosting… or sailing through the rings that boost your speed and carefully guide you down the paths from island-to-island that the game clearly wants you to take. Island exploration should have been interesting, at least… except it isn’t island exploration, not really; the optional islands are more like combat arenas that reward you with treasure for completing them.

The more I played, the more I started to feel nostalgic for Kingdom Hearts III, actually. In the Pirates of the Caribbean world, you got to sail around the map stopping at little islands to explore and find treasure, and I realized what I really wanted was a Yakuza version of that.

I loved customizing my ship. I loved being able to see all my crew members. But I didn’t love the actual ship gameplay.

My save file says I finished Pirate Yakuza in about 30 hours. I’m not sure I believe it. It felt like I was playing this game forever, although maybe that’s because it struggled to hold my interest. When I started Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, I worried I wouldn’t be able to take it seriously, but I never thought I just wouldn’t be having fun. More than anything else, it feels haunted by the specter of what it could have been, the sort of game that’s disappointing because you’d hoped for more from it.

It did have some great substories, and the combat was fun, and the post-credits scene was good, so I can’t completely complain about it. But Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii might be my least favorite Yakuza game now, and glad I’m done.

Stranger Than Heaven Seems to be a Tojo Clan Origin Story (and It Looks Great)

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 082026
 

All right, the Stranger Than Heaven showcase provided us with the deep dive they promised, and now it’s time to lay some theories to rest.

There’s nothing supernatural going on. It’s not even a separate universe from the Yakuza series.

In fact, it appears to be a prequel story that will include the origins of the Tojo Clan.

I’m one of the people who didn’t want that; I’d hoped Stranger Than Heaven would be a whole separate IP. So when the new trailer almost immediately mentioned the Tojo Clan, I was a little disappointed. However, the trailer and showcase were so good that I came around on it. I’m excited for Stranger Than Heaven again.

Let’s start by taking a look at the new trailer.

That is a good trailer.

For all my ambivalence when they immediately brought up the Tojo Clan, the rest of the trailer really caught my interest and left me intrigued about what’s going to happen in this game.

Our main character, Makoto, is half-Japanese and half-American. He sneaks onto a ship heading for Japan in 1915, and that’s where our story begins. I’d previously questioned if we were going to visit the game’s different eras in order, and it sounds like we will after all. We’ll be traveling through 5 different eras as Makoto rises up from his meager beginnings.

The subsequent showcase went into more detail about the game, and what really took me by surprise is the showman aspect.

Makoto becomes a showman and scouts singers and performers. On top of that, there’s a gameplay mechanic where you can pick up different pieces of audio, like the sound of a train or someone snoring, and work those sounds into new pieces of music. It sounds pretty detailed, and I’m not sure if this is an optional side activity or actually a central part of the story, because it seems pretty important.

Meanwhile, even though combat looks like a more visceral version of Yakuza combat, it sounds like it’ll be fairly different, because you use different buttons to attack with the right or left sides of Makoto’s body.

One other thing that stands out as unusual about Stranger Than Heaven is that unlike recent Yakuza releases, there won’t be separate dub or sub options. Instead, some characters will speak Japanese while others speak English, just like in the trailer. Infinite Wealth already did that a little bit, but it sounds like this will take it even further for immersion.

So, after all of this, I’m excited for Stranger Than Heaven. The story sounds interesting, the gameplay seems intriguing, and even though it’s tied to the Yakuza series after all, it has a ton of potential. It does seem a little weird that Snoop Dogg is playing a character, but it’s not like they haven’t cast celebrities before.

Finally, while it doesn’t have a release date yet, it has a release window of “this winter.” Whether that means this year or early next year remains to be seen.

What do you think about Stranger Than Heaven?

Yakuza Kiwami 3 Marks the Start of a New Game Line? What?

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Feb 112026
 

I was tempted to ignore this entirely and just blog about Danganronpa 2×2 today instead, but we’ve talked about Yakuza Kiwami 3 enough that I suppose we should discuss the latest developments.

Kiwami 3 + Dark Ties is now out, and the reception has been… interesting.

It got mostly decent reviews despite a few questioning whether the series needs to slow down or decrying it for cut content, but a lot of fans are upset with the new information.

We’ve briefly discussed the shadows hanging over this remake, but it got worse after the revelation that Yakuza 3’s 119 substories are reduced to 31 in the remake. Yes, a lot of the original substories didn’t have much substance, but apparently some of the more involved ones like Murder at Café Alps were also cut.

On top of the ill feelings toward the Kagawa situation, the recasts in general, and technical difficulties with the demo, it seems like this was the last straw for a lot of fans.

Personally, I never thought Yakuza 3 needed a remake, and I was mainly excited because of Dark Ties… which turned out to be significantly shorter than the Gaiden games after all, despite what we thought. Maybe they shouldn’t have marketed Kiwami 3 + Dark Ties as “two games in one” and a “double feature,” with Dark Ties being “an included separate game,” because that’s led to people feeling they were lied to.

But leaving aside all of that, now we have to contend with the puzzling statements from director Masayoshi Yokoyama about where the series is going from here.

In a recent broadcast, he made some statements that were translated on Reddit to the bewilderment of everyone, as he said the Kiwami line of games will come to an end and “a different series will begin.” He described it as not being Like a Dragon 9 but rather “a new series on a different line, with a different meaning” and added that we’ll understand if we’ve played Kiwami 3.

Okay. What?

Now, this isn’t actually the first time he’s said something similar. In a PlayStation Blog interview last year, he said Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties would “point toward the series’ future direction,” an odd statement that at the time made us wonder if it would retcon something.

Earlier this year, the script leaked and revealed changes that divided the fanbase. Without spoilers, one change made it feel like Kiwami 4 was a shoo-in, made mandatory since it requires certain scenes in Yakuza 4 to at least be given different context.

So if there’s not going to be a Kiwami 4 but rather a new line of games… what does that mean?

The biggest fan assumption right now is that they’re actually starting a different continuity, that Kiwami 3 will be followed not by Yakuza 4 but by a whole new sequel, creating a separate series following this new timeline. It’s also possible that they just intend to make a spin-off series related to the new plot elements and aren’t altering canon at all (in which case fans who have only played Kiwami 3 rather than 3 will just have to shrug in confusion when those Yakuza 4 moments come up). Or maybe there’s some third meaning that no one has figured out yet, because both options feel baffling.

I don’t know what to think about this. Just last year, Yakuza was a series I could always count on to be fantastic. Even if Infinite Wealth’s story didn’t always land for me, even if I had misgivings about the direction of the pirate game, I knew the games would always be great. And… maybe Kiwami 3 will still be fun, despite sounding like it’s lost a lot of the original’s soul.

But right now I don’t have that unshakeable confidence I had before.

How are you feeling about the current state of the Yakuza series and Yakuza Kiwami 3 + Dark Ties? What do you think Yokoyama meant when he said this will lead to a new series of games?

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