Here's something I guarantee no one expected. Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is the next game in the storied, always surprising series - and it's coming out little over a year after the last Yakuza JRPG.
Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios announced the next spin-off today at its annual RGG Summit. Set after the events of this year's Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the next game sees fan-favorite recurring badass Goro Majima waking up on a beach close to Hawaii with none of his memories intact, before quickly donning the titular Pirate Yakuza suit for some high-seas crime-busting. He does have an eyepatch already, to be fair, so this was the perfect time to have him lead a game for the very first time.
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii comes out on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One on February 28, 2025. If you're keeping track, Infinite Wealth only launched this January, so that's a pretty unbelievable turnaround in an era where big-budget sequels can sometimes take half a decade to release.
Studio director Masayoshi Yokoyama previously explained that, in stark contrast to your GTAs or Assassin's Creeds, Yakuza is a series that continually iterates on what came before to quickly get out new sequels. Pirate Yakuza seems to be following the same formula, as some shots in the announcement trailer has Majima walking around the same Hawaiian streets that were in Infinite Wealth, plus an all-new island and an entire city built on a "ship graveyard" called Madlantic, naturally.
RGG Studio has confirmed that the mainline Like A Dragon games will remain as turn-based RPGs, but that means the spin-offs that bookend each mainline adventure can iterate on Yakuza's button-mashing action. Majima can jump for the first time in series history, switch between at least two stances, and has access to a bunch of whacky, surreal moves ripped straight out of Ichiban's imagination. Oh, and there'll of course be more substories and minigames to get lost in.
Yakuza has seen a “large increase in new fans, including women,” but the JRPG series will continue being about “middle-aged guy things.”
