By the time you’re reading this, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii will have been out on console and PC for about a day. The game is easily one of the most unique spinoffs in the beloved action series by SEGA and RGG. After all, it not only stars Goro Majima, whom fans can’t get enough of, but it takes place in the modern day…while also being a pirate adventure game. When you add all the elements that help make this game stand out, you see why so many are eager to give it a look. The team, especially, was happy with how everything came to be and how it turned out.
Studio director and executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama talked with the PlayStation Blog about the game and revealed that early on, RGG actually didn’t know what the game would turn out to be:
“To be honest, we weren’t sure where the game would end up when we first kicked off development. We had a story that we wanted to tell, and we started from there. There were still a number of unanswered questions after Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, like what would happen to Hawaii and how the former yakuza, after their complete dissolution, would continue with their lives. We thought the best way to answer these questions was to create a spin-off game. That being said, at the start of development, we had no idea that we’d end up implementing Pirate Battles into the game.”
Well, many fans are glad that they realized that pirate-style battles on the high seas were exactly what this game needed! Yokoyama further admitted that unlike many other elements in the title or other spinoff games, the team couldn’t just “reuse” what came before. Instead, the team had to build all the pirate battle mechanics “from scratch.”
Ironically, one of the biggest challenges for them was ensuring the difficulty wasn’t too much. Yokoyama and the others had to adjust things in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii so that the canon battles would be fun while not being too much for players:
“It did make the game slightly more challenging though, so we spent extra time making sure the difficulty level was just right for a Like a Dragon game. In the end, we decided to make naval battles in the main story easier to play, and at the same time came up with the Pirates’ Coliseum, an arena perfect for players looking to challenge themselves with back-to-back fights with powerful enemies.”
If you wish to see how it all worked out, the game is out now.
