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One Piece Odyssey Review

One Piece Odyssey

Developer: ILCA
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X (Reviewed), PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $59.99 USD – Available Here $109.95 AUD – Available Here

Overview

Generally when a video game is made off a popular anime or manga, the end result tends to be a very middle of the road experience at best and a cash grab at worst. The One Piece series has mostly avoided these issues over the many games released for the series but none of them have seen such direct involvement from the original mangaka Eiichiro Oda like One Piece Odyssey has. One Piece Odyssey takes everyone’s favorite Straw Hat Pirates and places them in a new wholly original story with interesting “what if” moments and turn based RPG elements in what becomes a game that is developed solely for the fans of the franchise, though that is far from a bad thing in this case.

Story

Set sometime after the events of the Dressrosa Arc but before the Zou Arc, One Piece Odyssey wastes no time trying to introduce who the Straw Hat crew is, their histories, or even what they are capable of as they find themselves sucked into a mysterious storm, stranding them on the beach of the legendary island of Waford with the Thousand Sunny half-sunk in the ocean. After a short journey to gather their missing crew and finding that Brook is having an out-of-skeleton experience, the Straw Hats find that they are not alone on Waford as two original characters also reside on the strange island alongside the mysterious guardians and countless monsters.

These two happen to be the pirate hating Lim and the explorer Adio. Knowing that the Straw Hats are pirates but not realizing who they are or their intentions, Lim immediately uses her special ability to steal the powers of the Straw Hats and seal them away in cubes that are then scattered across the island. Not only has this made it so Luffy cannot even remember how to stretch his limbs or Zoro wield his swords properly, it has also affected their memories of major moments in the crews’ history. WIth their powers forgotten and sent away by an early misunderstanding, the Straw Hats must recover the memory cubes scattered across the island and in the world of Memoria as well as try and uncover the mysteries behind the strange island of Waford that is said to contain a priceless treasure.

By having the memories of the Straw Hats stripped from them One Piece Odyssey not only helps establish some of its best plot points but it also serves as a reasonable explanation as to why Luffy and the rest of the crew aren’t capable of just blowing their enemies away at a glance. It also allows the creation of Memoria, a location that involves taking the Straw Hats as well as Lim into the past memories of the crew as they revisit key areas such as Alabasta, Water Seven, Marineford, and Dressrosa. While this would already be interesting in its own right, as seeing the current New World experienced Straw Hats revisiting areas where they were far less capable is an interesting concept, Lim explains another aspect that makes things far more enticing. The memories that people have can be fuzzy or tinted by age, meaning that they can be unreliable and here comes the “what if” scenarios. This means that characters that never appeared in the original storyline may play a significant role, a foe may act entirely different or be incredibly powerful in comparison, or the story that everyone knows may play out differently for our forgetful Straw Hats.

None of the various twists and “what ifs” are exceptionally shocking but they are rather interesting to see as they play out and One Piece Odyssey is at its strongest when it takes advantage of these familiar story arcs and puts a new spin on things. The original characters and storyline that plays out back on Waford is similarly quite interesting with Lim standing out as a truly great addition to the cast as players get to watch as she grows from being distrustful of the Straw Hats to embracing them in true Oda fashion. 

In fact, it is quite apparent that One Piece Odyssey has taken advantage of Oda’s presence as not only does the Straw Hat crew interact with one another organically like they would during any other adventure they remain true to their personalities to the letter. As mentioned before, this may be a bit off putting for newcomers as the game doesn’t try to establish the cast, it expects players to be more than familiar with everyone and as a result it manages to make the most of character interactions and their various reactions to the memories and emotions they experience going through a classic scene once again. This makes One Piece Odyssey more for longtime fans than anything else, though considering this is a turn based RPG based off of a series that has well over a thousand chapters and episodes, this approach was for the best.

Gameplay

Despite being a turn based RPG where players will also find themselves exploring dungeons that can have puzzles in them, One Piece Odyssey is simple to a fault. Exploration in the game is straightforward with very few areas off the beaten path, giant markers pointing where to go as well as what can be interacted with and a constant “index” of what each button does on the screen, and while players will occasionally swap the character they are exploring with to solve a puzzle or reach an item these moments are few and far between. These puzzles are generally simplistic in nature and even while exploring most hidden items or obstacles are surmounted by swapping to Usopp to shoot an object, having Chopper crawl through a hole only he can fit through, slicing through a gate with Zoro, and other simplistic things that will usually see players traveling as Luffy simply because his stretch ability allows him to not only grab distant items but also navigate gaps and even use his Haki to identify enemies that give bonuses when defeated.

Combat happens anytime the player touches a monster on the field and takes place in a separate battlefield entirely. One Piece Odyssey puts a bit of a different spin on turn based combat as players will find themselves able to not only swap between what active fighter they want to attack next but even swap in a reserve Straw Hat with a current fighter at no cost. The reason that players will want to do this is due to a strength and weakness system where every character in the game is given a damage type of power, speed, or technique with power beating speed, speed beating technique, and technique beating power. The four fighters that can be on the field at a time will all be able to take a turn before combat refreshes, with enemies also being able to attack in-between character actions once their action gauge fills up. This means that should a technique style enemy be ready to attack next, players can swap to Nami who uses speed abilities to deal extra damage and defeat the foe before it has a chance to attack.

The title does try and add some extra elements of strategy by separating every fight into multiple zones on a battlefield. A character within a separate battlefield will need to first defeat any foes that are in their own zone before they can move to another location. Of course, there are skills that can target distant fields allowing a fighter to still target other locations with these skills also having unique variations such as targeting a single enemy, targeting all enemies in a field, or only hitting foes within their own field. In theory this means that players would usually need to worry about properly targeting foes with certain characters as well as swapping out their favorite fighters with more effective ones but in practice this is completely unnecessary.

Even until the end of the game where things do start to get a little more challenging the battles against every enemy, including bosses, requires basically none of this strategy simply because combat is so easy. In fact, the game offers an auto mode to allow the computer to take complete control of the four active fighters and not once did one even come close to being knocked out in a fight when tested. It is worth noting that this is also completely without grinding for experience as One Piece Odyssey makes gaining levels and strengthening characters an incredibly easy affair. This is thanks to the “Dramatic Scenes” element of combat that will often see certain requirements appear during a random battle. These almost always involve simply defeating a certain enemy type with a specific character or killing all enemies before they knock out one of the Straw Hats. Should the player finish these easy bonus objectives they will be rewarded with a massive amount of XP or other useful reward that at times will help characters gain five levels in a single fight.

Combine this with the ability to cook healing items as Sanji, throw parties at camp sites that increase XP gain even further, craft and enhance the various accessories as Robin that players will obtain and equip to their characters in a grid-like system to boost their abilities even further and players will quickly find themselves becoming powerhouses without even trying. It is worth noting that there are some interesting and fun combat mechanics that are introduced a bit later into the game such as powerful Bond moves that see multiple Straw Hats unleash a devastating attack on enemies once a certain gauge is filled but few fights feel as if they were designed to match just how powerful players quickly become.

It is also worth noting that, outside of the side-quests that unlock the aforementioned Bond moves, very few of the side activities within One Piece Odyssey feel like they are actually worth the player’s time. This is primarily due to the fact that many of them simply involve backtracking through previously visited locations, often multiple times, to complete an objective with minimal rewards.

Visuals & Audio

The developers of One Piece Odyssey, ILCA, deserve a lot of credit when it comes to matching Oda’s unique art style and designs as all of the returning characters and even the original ones match it perfectly, this includes even the random monsters that players will battle against. Unfortunately these random monsters end up suffering from palette swaps far too often, making players battle against a disappointingly small amount of unique enemy types. In combat the various skills that the Straw Hats use mimic their original counterparts exceptionally well with Luffy’s various Gum-Gum moves looking as powerful and outrageous as ever, Zoro and Sanji’s abilities coming off as brutal, and much more. There are a few modifications to some of Nami’s moves but these are only a slight change from the originals.

It is worth noting that while One Piece Odyssey has been released with only the Japanese voice track, the development team has managed to retain all of the original Japanese voice actors from the anime. This means that everyone’s favorite characters will still sound the exact same and, thanks to the writing matching the source material, act the same as fans remember. The soundtrack features a fairly standard collection of music with some nice tracks mixed in but it is otherwise a bit forgettable.

Overall

One Piece Odyssey is a great RPG for fans of the Straw Hat pirates as the art style and characters all fit perfectly into the game but between the high barrier of entry for those unfamiliar or not caught up with the source material and some incredibly easy gameplay it is also an RPG that likely won’t attract many outside of the fanbase. The fact that there is basically zero challenge to this adventure does make One Piece Odyssey accessible to anyone wanting to experience a fresh new tale that feels right at home as a One Piece arc but anyone wanting at least a little bit of difficulty, any sense of tension, or even interesting side-content will be left wanting.

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Summary

Good
7
One Piece Odyssey has all the heart of the original manga and tells an enjoyable storyline filled with interesting "what ifs" but is far too easy and often simple to the point of detriment.
Travis Bruno
Travis Bruno
After playing games since a young age and getting into anime a bit later on its been time to write about a little bit of everything.
<i>One Piece Odyssey</i> has all the heart of the original manga and tells an enjoyable storyline filled with interesting "what ifs" but is far too easy and often simple to the point of detriment.One Piece Odyssey Review