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I guess I should have seen this coming. For years, I’ve been out here saying that Ubisoft should make a sequel to their seminal popular pirate game Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and no, Assassin’s Creed Rogue doesn’t count. They nailed a full open world 3D pirate adventure, complete with detailed and easy-to-learn ship combat that’s still enjoyable to this day. It sold millions of copies, and seemed like a concept that was simply begging for someone else to come along and run with it.
While Ubisoft floundered around for a decade just to make their unloved online multiplayer spin-off Skull and Bones, Sega rolled casually up and put out a polished game in the same style in under two years of development. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii feels like both a love-letter to that classic pirate game, as well as the joyous, brightly colored arcade and console games that drove Sega to the top of the market in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s. Sonic The Hedgehog still sometimes has those vibes depending on what year it is…but for my money it was just eclipsed in terms of raw Sega heart by this new Like a Dragon game. It is the most absurd mashup of concepts and ideas that you could possibly imagine on paper, so the fact that it all came together…
