Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii may be the best (and only) pirate and yakuza simulator out there, but it went through some critical revisions at the last moment. According to chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto, producer and chief director Ryosuke Horii, and director Yasuaki Uehara, the development team was constantly worried about the game’s ocean maps and naval battle mechanics.
A Famitsu interview reveals that the sailing and ship battles were the hardest parts to develop for the usually landlubbing RGG Studio. Multiple ideas, including realistic distances between islands and true-to-life speeds for projectiles like cannonballs, were tested and ultimately scrapped in favor of a fun and intuitive experience.
Interestingly, chief director Ryosuke Horii became the test benchmark for the naval gameplay, as he is apparently well-known in the studio for not being very skilled at video games. If Horii couldn’t clear certain sections or understand the systems in a test version, they would be deemed unfit for the final game. This Horii litmus test helped adjust aspects such as the distance between enemy ships and the overall difficulty.
RGG Studio’s decision to split the ocean into several maps came as a solution to a dilemma, the developers reveal. Wanting to depict a large sea but not force players to travel far distances without any landmarks, their initial, singular ocean mapincluded multiple pieces of land visible to the player. However, this made it look less like Hawaii and “more like Japan’s Inland Sea,” the devs confess. It seems this left the pirate ship looking more like a pleasure cruiser docked next to shore.
Wanting to let players experience everything the naval portion has to offerthe team came up with the idea of splitting the ocean into multiple maps the player can jump between.
Sakamoto says that the team was only certain the ocean maps would work in October 2024 – four months before the game’s launch. Back in September 2024 at the Tokyo Game Show, Sakamoto tried his best not to talk too much about anything naval-related as he wasn’t sure which parts would make into the final game. Even then, the developers were constantly reworking gameplay elements and testing them to ensure they were up to the quality of a Like A Dragon title.
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is out now for the PC (Steam), PS4/PS5, and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S.
