Sega and the wildly prolific Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have announced the next game in the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series — and given it a release date of Feb. 28, 2025, barely more than a year after the release of the epic Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
The game is titled Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. A spinoff starring the eccentric, eyepatch-wearing series regular Goro Majima, it’s a conceptually wild tall tale in which Majima washes up on a desert island near Hawaii with amnesia and winds up crossing swords with some old-timey pirates from a place called Madlantis. Even though this is all apparently set in the present day — there’s even a plot thread involving Nele Island, which ties Pirate Yakuza into the events of Infinite Wealth — Majima somehow ends up as captain of a pirate galleon, sailing the high seas and hunting for lost treasure, because why not?
All of this is set up, if not exactly clarified, by a typically expansive 7-minute trailer which is narrated by Majima himself, recalling the events of six months prior — so maybe there’s an unreliable narrator thing going on here. Regardless, it looks like goofy fun, with flashy real-time brawling combat, an apparent return of the delivery minigame from Infinite Wealth, a pirate queen living in a secret city made of old ships, and a kid sidekick with a pet tiger cub.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. It will be RGG Studio’s fifth Like a Dragon game in as many years — not counting remasters and remakes. They cannot be stopped.
