Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s naval battles are more than minigames

digitaltrends.com:

Table of Contents All hands on deck A pirate’s life for me

There’s been a renaissance of pirate games over the past few years, and the quality of them has been all over the place. Rare’s Sea of Thieves dominates the space with its wondrous sense of adventure and swashbuckling exploration. Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, on the other hand, is filled with mundane tasks that make for a live-service slog.

Now it’s Like a Dragon’s turn at the wheel with the series’ latest spinoff, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. While Sea of Thieves and Skull and Bones put ship battles front and center, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii uses them as side dishes to the main Like a Dragon formula. It may be a minigame, but it’s a surprisingly well-fleshed-out one considering its relative scope compared to the rest of the game.

At a recent preview event, Digital Trends spent two hours playing Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. While that included your standard Like a Dragon gameplay, it’s those pirate ship battles that stuck out to me most. Traversal and combat are both more exciting than I anticipated.

• Sega reveals the reason why it pushed Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii up a week
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii just converted me into a series fan
• Yakuza Kiwami coming to Switch after years of developer resistance

All hands on deck

A spinoff of last year’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a side story focused on everyone’s favorite Mad Dog, Goro Majima. He’s living a pirate’s life this time around, and no captain is complete without a ship. Over in Madlantis, a place where pirates from all over the world gather, Majima can participate in naval battles against other ships in a coliseum setting. My ship, the Goromaru, would face off against three other opponents.

I had a variety of different weapons at my disposal. By default, the Goromaru was entirely maxed out with all possible weapons and crew members unlocked. Along with the traditional cannonball