ONE PIECE ODYSSEY

Review

After multiple adaptations from the best-selling manga ever created by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece finally turns into a proper JRPG (perhaps for the first time in its history) and let me anticipate that is going to be one of the best to date. The plot of Odyssey can be considered like a sort of spin-off, meaning it has nothing to do with the events happening in the main series. While sailing across the New World, Luffy and his crew are shipwrecked on Waford, a legendary island surrounded by raging storms and populated by mysterious golems. Here the Straw Hat pirates are stripped of all their powers by two new interesting characters, Adio and Lim, who somehow have developed a deep hatred towards pirates. Lim has the special ability to make people forget about their powers and she uses it on the Straw Hat crew, thinking they are just like all other evil pirates. With their powers lost and the ship heavily damaged, Luffy and his friends are unable to leave the island, thus they accept Lim and Adio’s help to recover their powers by visiting “Memoria”, a dreamlike dimension in which our protagonists can relive their past adventures and remember how they gained those skills.

Obviously, the story is just an expedient to make you relive the Straw Hat journey, starting from the Arabasta arc and moving forward with Adio and Lim stories, which are unfortunately overshadowed by the most memorable episodes of Luffy and his crew. Fans of the series who have already read or watched those might feel tired of re-living them again, just like in Pirate Warriors 4 before, although Bandai Namco was smart enough to include many new secondary events for each chapter. Those who are new to One Piece should know that there is a lot of fan service, such as references to other characters and events connected to the series, that newcomers wouldn’t be able to catch.  Thankfully, each story arc has short recaps that give plenty of info on what happened in the canon storyline, so there isn’t any risk of being confused.

Speaking about the gameplay, I’m not exaggerating when I say that Odyssey pretty much resembles Dragon Quest XI (the developer ILCA collaborated with Square Enix during its development). Not just the graphics, which are really great and perfectly in line with the anime art style, but also the narration, with its countless dialogues, the funny monsters’ design and the focus on exploration, gave me plenty of DQ vibes. Plus, it is possible to swap characters and use their abilities while exploring. For example, Luffy can use Gum-Gum Rocket to grab items or reach distant areas by stretching out his arms, Sanji can sense rare ingredients, Chopper can explore small tunnels, Nami can find hidden money and so on. This encourages swapping characters on the go and helps to diversify the gameplay during exploration.

Each story arc accessed from the Memoria dimension can be freely explored through multiple maps that offer a great amount of secondary content, such as side quests, bounties and time-space fractures that will transport some of your characters into a new space called Hysteria, a corrupted memory that needs to be fixed to allow them to go back safely, increasing their bond level and unlocking powerful new group attacks. There are also some greatly appreciated quality of life options, such as the ability to fast travel from any position (towards predefined locations), the option to increase the combat speed and even an auto-battle mode controlled by the AI, which can be helpful when facing low-level enemies that only need a few attacks to be defeated.

Combat is turn-based, meaning you will have a party of four members taking turns to fight against small groups of enemies. Each character is initially positioned in a different area of the battlefield and must defeat all enemies on its front before moving to another area. All characters can be replaced at any time with the reserve crew, even if they have been knocked out (but one must still be alive). Replacing the team is recommended, as each one has a different type of attack based on a simple rock, paper, scissors scheme that defines strengths and weaknesses. Luffi, Sanji and Chopper belong to the Strength category, meaning they are more effective when facing enemies in the Speed category (such as Nami and Usop), who are more advantaged against enemies that use attacks based on Technique (like Zoro and Nico Robin), the latter being best suited when dealing with enemies of the Strength category. Other weaknesses and resistances are represented by Burn, Freeze and Lightning elements, so you always need to keep an eye on the enemies’ stats to understand how to deal heavy damage by exploiting their weak points. All members can also use special skills by spending tension points (TP), which can be accumulated with standard attacks. During the fight it is also possible to incur in “dramatic scenes”, which activate specific conditions such as “defeat the enemy before it unleashes a powerful attack” that grant additional experience if completed.

While combat is satisfying enough, it can often be too simple and easy, perhaps to not scare off those One Piece fans who are new to RPG games. It makes sense, but on the other hand, veterans of the genre could be somewhat disappointed by the lack of challenge and customization (though camping and crafting accessories are also present).

Overall, One Piece Odyssey is a great JRPG that shows this might be the best formula for adapting the series into a videogame, with a simple, but effective, turn-based combat and huge amount of content and variety. It’s a pity that the story only gives an excuse to revisit the story arcs from the series without adding much new content aside from Waford island. I think this was a missed opportunity for Bandai to build something different and completely untied from the series (more like World Seeker but with better gameplay), so I really hope to see their next RPG with a brand new original story offering a unique adventure that has never been seen before.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

ONE PIECE ODYSSEY Steam Store Page