SEGA announced an new upcoming game called "Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii."

Here is a trailer for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCmDF0NqZQc

Here are my thoughts about:

- The trailer is ambiguous about whether the game will, or will not, have ship versus ship gameplay.

But the fact that the trailer is obfuscating this point implies that even if it does have ship versus ship gameplay, then it probably won't be very good. If it was good, then they would show it off proudly.

- I think it's dumb how they are still portraying Majima as a one-dimensional zany psychopath. He was far more interesting in Yakuza 0, where he was actually a deep & believable character, instead of the bland & unbelievable & shallow caricature like he is in the subsequent games (including this upcoming new one, clearly).

- Why is GOG not doing a better job of negotiating with SEGA to get all of the Yakuza games here in a timely manner? This is the third newly-released Yakuza game that will be missing on GOG - as proven by how the end of the trailer has no GOG logo, but it does have a Steam logo - since after the times when GOG has already released many Yakuza games here.

What do you think about this Pirate Yakuza game?

How do you feel about GOG's inability to acquire these newer Yakuza games in a timely manner (if ever)?

For those of you who have already played many Yakuza games: are you going to buy the Pirate Yakuza game on Steam, since it won't be on GOG at any point in the foreseeable future?

I can't see how someone who is heavily invested in the series will wait around for a GOG release that may or may not happen at some indeterminable time in the future. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

The ship battle looks more like a set piece, but we'll see, I hope they're not just fancy backgrounds for normal battles

I don't mind waiting a year for a fully patched game, of course having it day 1 (or after a month) would be even better, but if GOG teaches you something is to have patience

The second? newest title, from 2020, "like a Dragon" is still with Denuvo on Steam, but even the older titles are far from being DRM free... with the exception of the GoG version. PC game wiki is apparently "down"; so i can not check it yet. In general those high rated franchises from Japan is something rarely offered on GoG. To me it was a miracle most of this series was coming to GOG, and indeed, a instant buy for me. However, it seems this series was very welcome on the GoG gamers so i would say, a release of further titles is very realistic, at some point.

I do not even mind if it takes 1-2 years because at this moment it will be mostly patched and fully "ready to play". It is not always of advantage always to be "first" and in the time until release there are a lot of other great games i can play.

Of course, "what goes best" or simply the popularity, is not always in line with the true quality of a game. Thats why we call it "popularity" not "quality"; this is not necessarily the same but in general many of the quality-franchises may become popular as well, yet not always. With Yakuza, despite its high quality, it is rather difficult to reach a huge customer base. Surely not the new "Wukong" in popularity but not any worse i say. Besides, though Wukong is "fully protected"; i think at some point it will become cracked, this is almost certain, because the interest is to high. It is not even impossible to see a GoG release someday too but this is surely many years into the future.

Sure, the Wukong-devs could not care less... by the time anyone may get it almost for free they already got several times the dev cost "back". With Yakuza it is a bit more difficult and i fear they could even "rush" to many new titles which can ultimately lower the quality. Only 1 year after the last title is a bit quick... so i guess they was rushing it, this time... with questionable results. However, "Like a Dragon" is great and on GoG, and the next in line from "2023 and 2024" "Infinite Wealth/Ishin" surely is rock solid as well.

The one you are talking about in the topic, is not even released yet... so, patience is not your strong spot.

The 2024 title i would like to see on GoG but not sure about the upcoming pirate title... it smells like a rather cheap "spin off". Of course i am "a fan of great games"; not "a fan"... as a fan i may want every single game, no matter its quality.

Besides this is funny:
Wukong price: https://steamdb.info/app/2358720/
Yakuza price: https://steamdb.info/app/2072450/
Oh yes i am rich... i drive almost a Porsche... although apart from a 6-flat engine it is not called "Porsche"... sorry for the to high expectations: I work hart fulfilling those high expectations related to my wealh!

That's definitely not the "newest" game in this series. As the OP correctly states, this new pirate game will be the third newly-released Yakuza game that GOG hasn't gotten even after GOG has released many Yakuza games here (including a very inaccurately & misleadingly named "complete series" bundle).

As for the point to have patience, the problems with that are:

1) there is no guarantee that the missing newer games will ever be coming to GOG. Maybe they will, and maybe they won't. Definitely GOG has tons of serial games where one or many entries in the series remain missing on GOG for a very long time, or even forever.

2) patience is, reasonably so, a lot harder to come by for a series like a Yakuza, where the storylines & character arcs of the games continue on from all of the previous games, and therefore players want to see what happens next...but cannot do so, at least not for a long time, and maybe never so, if they are GOG customers.

Yeah i had to investigate the entire matter. Apparently they was releasing a new title in 2023 and 2024... dunno how this is even possible releasing such huge games almost in a row. Seems like they put a lot of resources into it.

What i have to say first, spiritually, those Yakuza games may come closest to a game such as Shenmue and for a lot of people this Sega-concept which originally came from Arcade is hard to understand. Simply a huge story with a lot of "mini-games" and whatelse, pretty much action and exploration oriented. Spiritually, i would say Shenmue was the forerunner of this series.

In general, i know only one series with "this size", which is the Legend of Heroes Series, currently 11 titles (without spin off) released so far... GoG and Steam same are with the newest release so far and it seems it will keep continuing "on par".

For Yakuza, if i calculated it properly we got 10 titles now (without spin off) which is surely already huge:

Yakuza Complete (collection): 7 games, which is considered "The Yakuza Series", hence the name "complete".

Then we got the "Like a Dragon Series", which is... it seems, the second part of this... lets call it chapter or arc. From this chapter GoG only got the first "Like a Dragon", so in total 8 games from this series.

Steam got 2 more titles... "Infinite Wealth and Ishin"... which makes it 10 titles released so far.

Ship combat might be an activity like the hostess clubs or Dragon Kart in previous games, time will tell. :)

I'm so happy we're getting a physical release in the west and I don't have to import the game like Like a Dragon Gaiden.

Looks hilarious. I'm in... but have to play Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth first

Quite impressive. Not bad mediocre average project Sega. I wonder if it might be considered as DLCs'.
I'm giving you link of what I wrote in the comments section below.
For instance right there.
https://www.ppe.pl/news/352076/gracze-w-szoku-pirate-yakuza-in-hawaii-to-nowa-gra-segi-zwiastun-z-data-premiery.html