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.
