Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a fun, pirate romp across the sea, with Majima and his crew trying their best to track down the Lost Treasure of the Esperanza, and with it the elixir of eternal life. On the surface, it’s fun, silly, and the high level of bonkers you’d expect from a Majima game. But by the time the end credits are on the horizon, the wind changes and the seriousness drifts in on the tide.
Plot spoilers ahead. Avoid reading if you don’t want to ruin the ending for yourself.
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We see Majima at his lowest, but then get to witness him rise to his finest.
At the end of Pirate Yakuza, the treasure has been found but the elixir remains lost to the team. By the time the scene cuts to Majima sitting on his throne and regaling his pirate adventures, you can fully believe that’s the game wrapped up well enough.
It’s a fitting though stereotypical end to your grand pirate adventure that it wasn’t really about the gold, but all the friends you made along the way. But it doesn’t really end there. You’re subsequently hit with punch after punch of information and emotion in a quick burst of various scenes, with the final interactions leaving me floored.
Final warning. The ending is about to be detailed after this point.
The Elixir Of Eternal Life, A Potential Cure For Kiryu
From the moment the elixir of life was mentioned and given credence with that throwback photo to Bryce Fairchild, I immediately thought ‘Oh yeah, that explains why he didn’t look old’ before quickly pivoting to ‘Wait, this could save Kiryu?!’. And thus my obsession began. Sorry, Noah. I don’t care if you want the elixir for your asthma, I want it for the Dragon of Dojima.
When Majima left the mountain of treasure behind with only a photograph of him and his friends to show he’d ever encountered the spoils, I wondered whether he’d secretly pocketed the elixir as his share, intending it for Kiryu, as by then his memories had returned. My suspicions of this grew when the next scene showed Rodriguez talking about how his father had died, but before doing so had cleaned up the house, taken his boat out, oh, and claimed to be one of the original pirates from the Esperanza.
This comes as no shock given the hints until that point. We know Rodriguez’s father was not only close buds with Bryce, but that he had already found the treasure but chose to take a few coins. And clearly the elixir to boot. If Bryce alone wasn’t enough to signal the elixir was real, this ending scene that doubles down on its existence is. So did Majima have it?
No. The next scene shows Jason and Masaru lamenting over not finding the elixir to help Noah, and there’s no way Majima would take it and not share it with the poor kid. And thus my Kiryu hopes were dashed. At this point, I was questioning how cruel Rya Ga Gotoku Studio had to be. It’s one thing to introduce a mythical cure and have it fizzle out, but it’s another thing entirely to reveal it’s a very real cure for a cancer-stricken Kiryu, only to then never let the protagonists obtain it.
Noah wishing to explore the world and his father finally getting the treasure he’d long sought would have worked well enough as a plot for a fun piratey spin off without the elixir as an added detail. The elixir had to mean something, and if that something wasn’t the answer to every fan’s prayers to get Kiryu back on his feet, what was the real message here? Even a magical cure won’t bring Kiryu back.
I don’t think Kiryu’s cancer is as simple as we think. It’s not a plot device to make the narrative emotional or a new challenge for our hero to overcome. It’s a clear and irreversible passing of the torch. If Kiryu was still healthy and simply retired, as he has tried so many times before, fans would always clamour for his return regardless of how far or successfully Ichiban goes in forging a new path.
So Close, Yet So Far
But the cruellest part was yet to come. Do you know what makes Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet just that little bit more gut-wrenchingly painful than the original play? It’s that brief moment when Juliet awakes and Romeo is still alive but dying and they look at one another. That flicker of knowing that happiness was within touching distance, yet was missed because of the smallest detail. For Romeo and Juliet it was a matter of timing, for Majima it was a lack of knowledge.
Jason and Masaru’s scene continues with them realising that the elixir is likely an incredibly pure version of ambergris, and they search online and find it looks just like a plain old rock. Immediately, I couldn’t help but think back to Majima complaining about all the rocks around Rodriguez’s father’s house in the third chapter.
If you don’t get there on your own, the game draws the lines between the dots for you. You’re given flashbacks to the old man tidying up and taking the boat out, just as his son had said, but this wasn’t last-minute spring cleaning. He was taking all the rocks—the elixir of eternal life ambergris—out into his boat and channelling his inner old lady Rose from Titanic by throwing them into the sea. Majima and Noah were literally within touching distance of the cure, making it all the more painful that they didn’t get it.
More importantly, it emphasises all the more that RGG is purposefully choosing not to cure Kiryu. We’ve missed the point about the poor guy having cancer and we can’t just wish it away, even by magical means. If the series chooses to have him recover at some point in the future, he will never return to full health. This is a permanent retirement, and fans need to finally understand that.
Majima Represents The Fandom
RGG wasn’t done punching you in the heart though, as if it felt we needed the truth pummeled into us a bit more. In the final post-credits scene, we see Majima and Saejima on their way to visit Kiryu, discussing how unfair it is that while they can grow old and retire, the man who shouldered so much responsibility for so many people is suffering from cancer. For the final twist to the gut, you find out that before Majima lost his memory, he learned of the treasure and the fabled elixir, and it was the whole reason he went to Hawaii.
It’s not lost on me that the elixir is called the Heart of the Dragon, and Majima was searching for it for the Dragon of Dojima.
“Kazuma Kiryu. You never could give up on that one,” Saejima says to him. That’s true of the fandom as much as it is Majima. We can’t give up on him and the idea that one day he might burst in through the door in his grey suit. Not unless RGG forces us to. And I think that’s exactly what the studio is doing in Pirate Yakuza. It’s forcing us to realise that Kiryu will never return as the protagonist.
Majima’s comments to Saejima help sell this point.“Too long fer my taste,” he says about Rodriguez’s father’s life. “Keep walkin’ far enough… yer legs give out, know what I mean? That’s the whole reason to hunt—’cause life don’t last forever. One day, ya get to look back at how far ya got, and grow old. All yer dreams, the ones ya had and never saw come true, ya leave ‘em to the next guy.”
That next guy is Ichiban. We have to take the dreams that Kiryu never saw to fruition and trust Ichiban with them. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one we need to accept. If we keep thinking Kiryu can still magically recover and reclaim the reins, maybe he’ll really get killed off to truly settle the matter, and the Dragon of Dojima deserves better than that. Let him rest.
- Released
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February 21, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol
- Developer(s)
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Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio