Like a Black Flag.

The game feels bloated with story and the sailing sections are terrible even though the actual ship combat is really fun. The updated brawling feels great but the coliseum is sorely missing as almost every one-on-one battle is a story boss. On top of that, it just would not stop crashing for me making the finale a repetitive slog of combat encounters and cutscenes with no autosaves between them.

The combat feels so sluggish and clunky. Huge step back comparing it to newer entries like Lost Judgment where the fluidity is peak. It takes so much fun out of it.

I am the captain now.

the best pirate game since black flag and i'm not joking

What the hell did I just play why am I dancing during the credits

I'm a huge fan of the series. I've played almost every entry and will get around to playing the remainder.

This entry is by far the worst. The stories are long drawn out text with none of the usual character. Majima is not particularly interesting. The secondary character is a child and it's... annoying and boring?

The pirate sea battles were dull and I lost interest VERY quickly. It all dragged on and was insanely repetetive.

I love this series.. But this game is entirely skippable. Buy it on sale and charge forward through the story as fast as you possibly can. The side stories are NOT good, they're endless pages of text. I had NEVER before skipped over text in the yakuza games I played.. But I was even skipping cutscenes in the finale just to wrap the game up... I only finished the game because of my deep love for the series.

Great pirate game, and the gameplay is fantastic, but the story has a lot of padding.

The best pirate game since Black Flag. The ship combat is amazing. I enjoyed the different crew customization and the ship upgrades. While the ship overworld is pretty simple, the ship combat and the gameplay carry the game. The fighting styles are also amazing, and both fighting styles are super unique and fun to use.. It is also another short game like Gaiden, but I feel like they did everything they wanted to accomplish. Majima is a great character, and I loved to see him back as the protagonist since it’s his first time since 0. The side content is also amazing. The Pirate Colosseum is perfect, and the ship combat made me do every single battle. Going back to Hawaii was also great, along with Crazy Eat and Dragon Kart returning. Substories were very hit-and-miss, and some only make more sense if you’ve played Infinite Wealth.


The story isn’t great. There are high points, but a lot of padding in between. Too much story set up to unlock a lot of the ocean maps and other activities. The story was also pretty slow, with a lot of it being tutorials for the ship gameplay, and the game even gives you a lot of time once you get to Hawaii to do substores and get cash. The main antagonists didn’t have any weight to them and only really presented themselves at the very end of the game.

Overall. If you’re interested in Black Flag style ship combat, I highly recommend this game. Even if you haven’t played a Yakuza game before it but enjoy ship-to-ship combat. However, if you don’t, I wouldn’t recommend it, as that gameplay loop is the best part to this game.

ship combat isn't fun and grindy. It's basically like mixing the Battle Dungeons from Ishin with the Buggy/Wasteland parts of Fist of the North Star Lost Paradise. (The most boring part of each game respectively)
Regular combat is way too easy and not a lot of fun
Story writing and characters are a low point in the series
comparatively weak side content. Especially the "minato ward party" which is just half an hour (or so, I had to skip most of these out of boredom) of non-interactive videos that will make you cringe for the entire duration.

Previously I used to say there may be weak Yakuza games, but none that were outright bad. This might be the first time I will say a Yakuza game is actually bad

the title is very accurate, this is a game about a pirate yakuza in hawaii!