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.

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.