Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii - Tips for pirate ship battles

Pirate ship battles are an important part of Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. While the standard, random ships you find on the seas will be easy enough to deal with, not all pirate crews are equal. Whether it’s the Devil Flags, the Mortimer Armada, or the standard pirate ships, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty on open water a few times, at the very least.

What makes pirate ship battles so great in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is that they're part ship combat and part melee combat. Once you’ve defeated someone significant, you board the ship and overwhelm their crew with physical violence. It’s a brilliant system. Here are a few tips to get yourself ready for battle.

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Tips to succeed in pirate ship battles in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Before you really get to doing pirate ship battles in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, you’ll need a decent crew and some ship upgrades. That means you’ll want to go out of your way to play mini-games and complete side quests in Chapter 2, at the very least, to pick up some quality recruits in Pirate Yakuza.

You want to have crew members manning cannons and machine guns that have solid stats for that, so think about who you position where. This goes for your guns, and your squad leaders. Once your meter is full during the melee combat portion, you can activate a series of buffs for your team.

I recommend people who heal, those who can make you ignore defenses, or attack buffs. You can get all three without much effort, especially if you have the Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Digital Deluxe Edition - but you don’t need it, so don’t feel like it’s a requirement.

I also recommend going out of the way to farm up extra money, through bounties and the treasure hunting system, once you’ve got access to it. That will likely also require pirate ship battles and melee combat in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, so keep an eye on the difficulty of the encounters.

You can craft new cannons and weapons at Julie’s Gearworks, and you can also increase your defenses while aboard the ship. I recommend focusing on the defenses of your ship, as well as having extra repairs, just in case. Since your ship is pretty slow unless you’re boosting, I recommend dumping as much money as possible into defenses. Then you can worry about a solid cannon.

Do a lot of sailing to pick up crafting reagents - this will make the process of getting powerful cannons and laser cannons very easy. It didn’t take me too long to get a series of powerful weapons onboard.

Now that you’re outfitted and equipped, the best strategy I can recommend in pirate ship battles in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is to use your boost, and drift towards the boss ship when in battle. The weaker ships you can just blast down with machine gun fire while you’re sailing in. I wait to start my boost/drift until the enemy has their attack prepped - look for the red lines on the water.

That green reticle means it's time to open fire! (Image via SEGA)

Then, hit the boost, drift so your cannons are aiming at the enemy, and open fire. If you’re using regular cannons, you’ll see a reticle pop up on the ship - that means you hit them. This will maximize your damage, but it does take some practice to do. If you can boost again, you can spin around, and drift again to get your other weapon on target.

I tended to focus on having one side of my ship with much more powerful armaments, because I tend to drift in one specific direction. That way, I always had something strong to bombard with. Then I’d use the other weapon - typically a laser cannon - to fire on the opposite side and shred any weak enemies that remain.

Don’t be afraid to ram the other ships - especially if you have high health and defenses. This deals tons of damage in pirate ship battles in Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Especially when dealing with random encounters, I machine gun the weak ships, open fire with cannons, and if anything’s left, I just ram them. It also keeps me close, so when my weapons recharge, I’m nice and close to resume bombardment, if I need it.

This is my favorite combo for melee battle buffs, but there are other great options (Image via SEGA)

Finally, do not use Repair while close to the enemy if at all possible. You can’t attack while repairing, so I do not recommend doing this while the enemy can still hit you. If you can drift out of the way, then a repair is a good idea.

Melee combat in pirate ship battles is pretty standard - only you have a huge crew of people with you. Prioritize any “boss” enemies - First Mates/Captains, because they can trigger powerful buffs you have to contend with as well. Get those characters out of the way as soon as possible. That’s really the most important thing - the rest is just being good at combat.

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