The delightfully-named Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is set to be a little bigger than the last spin-off in the series, but it’s not the developer’s fault. Adding more stuff to Yakuza games is just too irresistible.
RGG Studios director Masayoshi Yokoyama has acknowledged that Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name was acclaimed partly because of its more compact structure and focused story, but despite the team’s best efforts, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is breaking that streak.
“It’s more like the volume ended up increasing due to the story,” Yokoyama said in an interview with Automaton, referring to the length of the main story, which is purportedly 30% longer than The Man Who Erased His Name’s 13-ish hour playthrough. In true Yakuza fashion, the upcoming pirate-themed entry is also stuffed with zany side activities and mini-games – including one arcade classic’s first ever port, returning pizza delivery runs, and what looks like another all-too-realistic dating sim – so running through everything could easily take us over 30 hours or so.
Yokoyama also explained that the developer could have padded out the playtime even more by adding fetch quests or other time-sinking detours, but Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is already big enough without any such tactics. “The map is huge, there’s a bunch of places to visit, and there are still features we haven’t announced yet. The volume increased by itself.”
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii reuses some parts of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s humungous summery map, and adds all new areas from the surrounding islands we never got to see, so its inflated size is no surprise here.
The next Yakuza game is the most newcomer-friendly and “least shackled to past events in the Like A Dragon series” – all because main man Majima has dementia this time around.
