If you were to rank all the things in the world from most cool to least cool, there are precisely three things that would share the top spot: pirates, cowboys, and samurai. They each offer a certain disaffected grace, capable of aesthetically pleasing and thematically loaded violence, as lone ranger rebels and highly trained warriors. It’s odd, therefore, that neither pirates nor cowboys have too many video games to let you live out these fantasies. Thankfully, the pirate army gains another soldier next year whenLike a Dragon: Pirates In Hawaiilaunches with Goro Majima at the helm.
Knights just miss out on the top spot, also being pretty cool, but like samurai, we already have a lot of games about knights so it’s neither here nor there.
I’ve previously lamented the lack of cowboy games in our midst, and it’s whyAstro Bothad me pining - amongst other things - for a return of Wild Arms. Call of Juarez modernised itself into obscurity, and whileRed Dead Redemption 2remains one of the best games of the past ten years (the best, in my humble opinion), the problem is it’s too good. Unless you’re an indie game with a kooky angle on the Wild West, any cowboy game will inevitably be compared to RDR2. Thanks toRockstar’sbudget, experience, and quality, it’s a comparisonpretty much every studio would lose out on. Red Dead Redemption 2 might well be the last big cowboy game until Red Dead Redemption 3. As Arthur Morgan once said, their time has passed.
Where Have All The Pirates Gone?
But pirates don’t have much in the way of competition. I still hold a candle for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, but it’s not the domineering, marauding beast that RDR2 is. While it’s my favourite game in theAssassin’s Creedseries, it’s clearUbisoftitself is targeting far bigger adventures nowadays. The likes ofOriginsandOdysseyhave become the blueprint, with the games no longer concerned with exploring the unique depth of each historical era, but using the past as set dressing for its standard RPG skeleton. Black Flag’s true legacy wasSkull and Bones, a game whose existenceit’s kinder to ignore.
Skull and Bones' butterfly effect on the industry hada larger impact on me than many of my peers. Black Flag seemed to be Ubisoft striking gold, inventing a new genre inside its A-List series, and it decided to spin off away from it to get two gems for the price of one. But while Assassin’s Creed could continue onwards,Skull and Bones was repeatedly delayed and retooleduntil it was nothing like Black Flag, or anything it had promised, or anything resembling a video game people might want to play. In the huge delay between its inception and arrival,Sea of Thieveshadfilled that void. However, it focused too much on multiplayer griefing and building an endless gameplay loop to satisfy the pirate fix I was craving.
Now, after years of waiting,Like A Dragon: Pirates in Hawaiiis here to save the day. It features Majima, which already makes it very cool, and seems to be fully embracing the piratical side of the adventure rather than just leaning on the aesthetics because of Majima’s eye patch. The three locations RGG showed off in its showcase earlier today all perfectly suited a deep dive into the pirate’s life. For me, anyway.
Like A Dragon Is Offering A Pirate Paradise
First is Rich Island, where Majima washes up, and where he evidently begins his pirate empire. Next is Hawaii, as both the title and RGG’s habit of reusing maps to maximise development time would suggest. This is likely to have more time away from the boat as we play some classic minigames and visit haunts that grew familiar by the end of Infinite Wealth, but the map had a strong connection to the sea in any case.
But most compelling is Madlantis. This ship graveyard has a huge cruise liner rusting away at the centre of it, and acts as a pirate commune away from the land lubbers. Not much has been revealed of what exactly will go down here, but Majima is likely to end up going head to head with some of the meanest pirates around as he navigates his new life on the seven seas… or at least the one sea around Hawaii and its immediate island territories.
In the lengthy presentation, details were kept under wraps about the ship itself. We saw Majima sailing and there seemed to be sections where the player had control, but whether we’ll see naval battles to rival Black Flag remains a mystery for now. However, the pre-order bonus allows you to add Ichiban and his faithful crawfish Nancy to your crew, which suggests you will need to recruit sailors and put them to work. In turn, this suggests the boat has some deeper mechanics beyond steering and cutscenes, giving you even greater control over your pirate fantasy.
RGG is on a mammoth run with the Like a Dragon series, with this set to be the sixth game set in the universe in just four years, with a couple ofSuper Monkey Ballgames thrown in the run too. It’s had a highly consistent output, and Super Monkey Ball aside, has always produced premium quality games despite the rapid-fire releases. Here’s hoping Like a Dragon: Pirates in Hawaii continues that trendwhen it launches June 27, 2025, because we are in dire need of a good pirate game.
