We tested the new Yakuza game on Steam Deck and it runs great with the right settings

The Yakuza franchise has long offered a unique gaming experience that mixes action-adventure, beat ’em up, and RPG elements into a glorious blend – generally with an over-the-top aesthetic to enjoy. There’s a long list of games in the series at this point, and it has relatively recently rebranded to ‘Like a Dragon’ to align with the original Japanese title. In any case, the latest entry to the series is called Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be released on February 20th, but you already have a chance to play the trial version. Over on the Steam store page, you can now download a demo for the game, so we thought we’d give it a try on our Steam Deck. Yakuza in Hawaii has already been Steam Deck Verified, so let’s see how it performs.

How does Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii perform on Steam Deck?

The first thing we tried to do was run the game at max settings with upscaling and frame generation turned off. As expected, this didn’t return the best results, with the gaming running at a choppy sub-30 FPS. Either way, it was worth a try. Switching down to the medium preset seems like an easy sweet spot to start things off. However, we did some further tinkering and settled on the settings below.