GameCentral speaks with Like A Dragon producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto about mini-game creation, spin-offs, and how the studio’s approach to development has helped it survive.
Based on our initial hands-on last year, we were still unsure how distinctive Like A Dragon spin-off Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii would end up being. The game is built on the bones of its predecessor Infinite Wealth, only this time with fan favourite character Goro Majima taking the spotlight in a sequel set six months later. There’s plenty of eccentricities in combat we already knew about, to match the swashbuckling pirate theme, but the question was whether it would be just a brawler-skewed retread with some shivering timbers.
We’ll have to wait until the full game launches next month to answer for certain, but following a second hands-on session, we have a better idea of its biggest selling point: ship battles. Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has teased this component since the game was announced and while past games have a knack for sidelining extravagant ‘mini-games’ as optional diversions, sailing the seas as Captain Majima is an essential part of Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii – and it’s all the better for it.
Infinite Wealth was impressive because of how robust many of its side activities were, but we were still surprised by how deep the pirate stylings go here. You can customise practically every part of your ship: between the hull, masts, cannons (more on that later), leading figurehead, and the crew aboard the vessel. You’ll recruit new members over the course of the game, usually by beating them up in dedicated battles, which adds them to your growing roster of outcasts (yes, nappy men included) you can assign them to different parts of the ship.
The crew management aspect is similar to other mini-games from the Like A Dragon stable. You can level up assigned crew members in battles (like Clan Creator in Yakuza 6), with each having different stat boosts. Majima can also throw pirate-y parties and feasts, or give individuals gifts, to keep their morale up, in a similar vein to the business management activity in Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The systems behind the pirate life are bolted together from the series’ past, but it’s the combination of all these things together which stops it from feeling like reheated booty.
We’re also perhaps burying the game’s biggest asset: laser cannons. As you might hope from Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, the ride can be as silly as you want it to be when sailing the seas. Gatling gun turrets can be turned into coconut shooters, the cannons can be upgraded to fire flamethrowers, lasers, and even sharks; while Majima himself, at any time while on the ship, can let go of the helm, fly up the mast, and freely aim a rocket launcher at enemy crews.
While the ship combat isn’t exactly deep, the overlapping mechanics and options make it compelling. Ship battles at the Coliseum also involve jumping aboard the enemy ship (sadly, only through a cut scene) to brawl in classic Yakuza fashion alongside your assembled crew of oddballs. Much like the Swashbuckler Showdown mode, where you brawl against another crew in a chaotic island scrap, the visual spectacle feels like the main draw, but Majima’s versatile arsenal, now complete with Dark God summons ranging from a parrot to a squad of jellyfish, keeps it engaging.
Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii is built around four main islands (including Hawaii from Infinite Wealth) which are connected by surrounding waters you can freely sail around. Based on this preview, the freedom is somewhat limited, with relatively narrow pathways to follow and only the odd enemy fleet to encounter. There are bonus islands you can discover and explore, but the ones we encountered were very small areas littered with a few treasures, so we hope there’s more incentive to seek these out in the final game.
We’ve focused on the ship battles because it’s the main new addition, but when placed in the overall package, Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii appears to be surprisingly robust for a spin-off. The satisfying cooking mini-game is back, from Like A Dragon: Ishin, while Hawaii is populated with a bunch of new side stories and returning activities. The main unknown at this point is the narrative itself, which might be the make or break factor of whether this all hangs together.
As a spin-off in the same vein as the compact Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii feels ready to catch people off-guard, who are heading into this with lowered expectations. It is clearly beholden to Infinite Wealth, but Captain Majima feels on course to prove there’s life in the old mad dog yet.
Following our hands-on, we spoke with Like A Dragon series producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto about Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s fast development cycles and the origins of Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii. The interview was conducted through a translator and has been edited for clarity.
GC: It’s surprising Goro Majima hasn’t had a solo game before this, considering he’s been a favourite for so long, were there ever any plans for a spin-off prior to Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii?
Sakamoto: There was a little side story where you could control Majima in Yakuza Kiwami 2, and outside of that we never really planned any games featuring him [as the main protaganist].
Our series has a lot of really interesting, fun characters that you could probably focus on and write a story for, but we wanted to keep the spotlight on the primary characters, the protagonist of the story and make stories around them.
So, for example, in Yakuza 4 and 5, we had [multiple] characters you could control and that was a multi-faceted story, but whether it was Kiryu from most of the series or Kasuga Ichiban from [Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth] now, we wanted to really just focus on these core protagonists.
GC: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii dials up the absurdity to even greater heights, did you feel more freedom with this entry to go to further extremes?
Sakamoto: So the general idea for this game was to create… we didn’t really have the ending of Majima’s story after Infinite Wealth and we wanted to wrap a bow tie on that and tell what happens after those events. So we have Hawaii, we have Infinite Wealth, this is the general story that we’re starting with.
Then we’re like, ‘OK, if we’re using Majima as the protagonist, it’s less that we have more freedom, more that if it’s Majima we can do this, if it’s Majima we can do that.’ It wasn’t our goal but it was a result of the choices that we made to get where we were. We said, if we had Majima we could do some of the things that will exceed your imagination. There’s a lot more possibilities with Majima.
GC: I was curious about the process of creating mini-games in this series, as they do vary so wildly. Is everyone pitching in across the studio or is there a dedicated team?
Sakamoto: So I think this is something which hasn’t changed since the advent of the first Yakuza. We always wanted to make something that really fits the world that we’re building, like regular everyday entertainment that you would have on the streets.
In the original Yakuza, there’s a darts bar, so [we were like] wouldn’t it be really cool if we could play darts? Wouldn’t it be cool if we had karaoke in the game? So that’s really what fuels our ideas. We’re not trying to create like, ‘Hey what would be a wacky mini-game we could put in there?’ We’re thinking, what can you do in a town to entertain yourself in real life? And then we build off of that.
For each mini-game we have one person in charge of it. So if we have a darts game, we’re going to have one programmer in charge of bringing that from start to completion. If it’s a Mahjong parlour, we have the same thing. That’s what fuels how we create mini-games and the process of how we do that.
For example, Uber Eats has recently taken off in Japan, so we said, ‘Everybody’s talking about Uber Eats, why don’t we make a mini-game based around that? Let’s make Crazy Delivery.’ Seeing trends and things that are happening in real life is our main inspiration.
GC: I’m thinking about the Dondoko Island mini-game in Infinite Wealth specifically here, but it feels like some of these games could be sold as standalone experiences. Is that something you’ve considered? Is there a reason you haven’t done that so far?
Sakamoto: We’ve talked about that in the past. We’ve had so many different cabaret games that we thought, maybe we could make a cabaret island? And have an entire simulation cabaret world or something.
These ideas come up but we make games at a really fast pace, so [we think] do we have to dedicate resources to making this kind of side game? Or do we want to make the next Like A Dragon game? And we always prioritise the things that we want to make, and all of these other ideas fall by the wayside because we want to make the main things.
GC: You’re renowned for releasing games at a very fast pace. With so much talk around the rising costs of development in the AAA space, I’m curious if you see the way your studio re-uses assets as a potential solution to that problem?
Sakamoto: This is a really good question. In my personal opinion, we’re a studio that makes games at a really fast pace, and in order to create really timely and costly games, you really have to think about how you make your games and how you approach it.
Especially for us, we don’t want to leave huge gaps between the games that we create. We want to keep things moving, and especially because we’re making games set in the modern world. If you create games set in the modern world and you start working on it and then five years pass before it’s even released, the world is going to be a different place. It’s not going to land as nicely, so we want to keep that development pace going.
The longer your development cycle, the bigger your budget, the higher and higher the risk gets when you’re making a game, right? So the cost of, say, messing up when you have those larger, big budget titles becomes much higher. But when you’re releasing a bunch of more compact titles, the risk becomes a little more mitigated by the fact you’re already creating another one that can cover.
So even if you make a mistake in one title, you can learn from it and grow from it as a studio and as individual developers, and find ways to overcome that deficit and then make a better game in the future. So it’s a really good method for growing as a studio as a whole [in terms of skills].
We talk about how we’re able to deliver a lot of games at a very fast pace, but there’s a lot of really basic research that goes into a lot of these games that [means] the actual time developing it, and the time that some of us think about it, research it and so on, might be very different for some of these titles.
So having this kind of hybrid [model], where you have these shorter titles that are a little bit easier to work around, and these bigger titles where you spend a lot of time researching and doing the basic legwork, it’s a good way to create good games but also to survive in a very turbulent industry.
GC: To bounce off that, we know Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is working on several games seemingly outside the Like A Dragon series at the moment, between Project Century and Virtua Fighter. Will the development of these impact when we might see the next game in this series, or are you planning to keep up the current pace?
Sakamoto: We almost always have multiple projects going on at the studio, so we’re always working in a very hybrid method, where we’ll shift people from one project to the other and move staff around. It’s kind of like business as usual for us in a lot of ways.
GC: Brilliant, I look forward to them both. Thank you very much!
Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Release Date: 28th February 2025
Age Rating: 18
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