10 years after Yakuza 0, Majima's swashbuckling return finally puts a bowline knot on decades of character growth

Up until the seventh game in the series, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the crime caper series was the domain of one man: Kazuma Kiryu. A man out of time thanks to wrongly serving jail time, a stoic ally to the downtrodden, decked out in an always sharp grey suit – he's rightly an icon that stood rock solid like he was guarding in Beast Style from 2005-2016. Even so, prequel Yakuza 0, released toward the end of that era, one of the best Yakuza games, finally let us play once-antagonist Goro Majima, and boy did he change the game.

Which is all to say that his long-awaited return to the true spotlight in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is very much appreciated, even if this time around it's an obviously smaller budget, fanservice-targeted spin-off release. Not only did we have to wait around a decade for him to swagger back into a leading role, in-universe time it's been far longer, seeing as Yakuza 0 took place during Japan's 80s economic boom. He was 24 in Yakuza 0, and now 60 in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Don't think too hard about how he does all those spin attacks and air combos.

Dog eat dog

Seriously, don't think about it too hard. At the start of the game he's shipwrecked and amnesiac, meaning for the most part we don't have to worry too much about the time in between. Yet, memories missing, Majima, importantly, is still Majima – the 'Mad Dog of Shimano', a chaotic force of nature with a moral compass very much his own. He's a smidge grounded here thanks to Noah, the young child who saves his life in the game's opening minutes, and is taken under Majima's wing during his treasure hunting journey. But he's still the same character. Becoming a pirate captain in the right circumstances is about as Majima a move as they come.

Yakuza 0 didn't just thrust a fan favorite rival character into the co-lead spotlight, it also greatly revised Goro Majima's characterization, attempting to square away his turn from hyper-violent criminal in the very first Yakuza through to a more respected rival in subsequent ones. The series never interrogated it much until that point, often keeping him as more of a bit-player. Yakuza 0 makes him more sympathetic, recontextualizing his journey throughout the saga.

Through play, it also gave justification for his terrifying reputation, giving you greater appreciation for his slugger baseball fighting style and swift knife work by putting the combos that had once ground you to dust in boss battles into your own hands. These fighting styles have remained exclusive to Majima over the years – he's the only one who can do what he can do.

Which is great, but, as I said, the recontextualization does create a weird gap when you look at the series chronologically where one of the most important characters in the earliest game takes a back seat in the ones set later. Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2, remakes of the first two PS2 games, retroactively give him larger roles because of this, the latter even giving him a short playable epilogue that ties into Yakuza 0. But it's still somewhat thin on the ground. That is, until now, with Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

While the story in the latest game can work as a clean slate for those who want a lightweight seafaring voyage, the situation does still manage to interrogate Majima's place in it all – especially as events draw to their conclusion and he begins to put things together. We, along with Majima, are outsiders in exactly how he's been feeling about the tumultuous state of the yakuza crime families, and as we re-examine their dissolution, and how former gang members have tried to build new lives within the law, we firm up the glimpses we've gotten from him during recent games.

We're both on a journey to learn about a life once led. He's puzzling out the details of his life which, ironically, reveals more jigsaw pieces about his place in the world – what do you keep dreaming of when you reach the top and it all crumbles? Every voyage has an end.

But Majima has also evolved. Combat-wise, his Mad Dog style combines many of the tricks we've come to love from across the years (absent a baseball bat, mind – though it's referenced in conversations). The Sea Dog style, meanwhile, represents a fighter animal who can learn new tricks, juggling dual cutlasses, a flintlock pistol, and a grapple hook with plenty of flips to keep big groups of enemies in line. Naturally, you can swap between them as you wish. It gives Majima his own twist on larger scale encounters than the Yakuza scraps of old, without needing the super spy gadgets Kazuma Kiryu wielded in Like a Dragon Gaiden. And a bit of piracy just suits Majima better.

So too is it nice to just kick back and spend time with Majima in the modern day. All Yakuza protagonists have been a bit out of touch (thanks to all the jail time), but while Majima brings a similar level of unfamiliarity when he meets the likes of cosplayers or idol culture, he's almost overzealous in his eagerness to get involved. While he still has a heart of gold, the options he has for dealing with substories have him leaning into being more, erm, hands-on – ready to throw down or cuss out those doing wrong at the drop of a tricorn. Throwing Majima into the same sorts of escapades Kiryu or Kasuga might tackle, they take on a new flavor from his presence alone.

While, to many, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii may seem like just a divergent spin-off to fill a gap, to those charmed by Goro Majima in Yakuza 0, any amount of time with the returning star isn't just appreciated, but necessary for threading the needle that's been hanging loose all these years. And, by the end, when Majima reflects on it all and the relationships he's built along those many years, he's also looking ahead. The tide may ebb and flow, but in that push and pull we always stay moving.

It's not just the fans that have wanted him to return, but the actor as well. Before we learned of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Majima's voice actor pitched a JRPG about the fan-favorite anti-hero and was told "that's not going to happen".