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Analysis | One Piece Odyssey offers classic JRPG with ups and downs

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Published

1 year ago

March 22, 2023

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One Piece Odyssey – Games based on successful anime often suffer a lot from their video game adaptations. The few that are saved are, generally, restricted to the fighting genre and, in most of these exceptions, they are unable to match the quality of the original work. One Piece gamers and fans are among those who suffer most from this dynamic as they wait for a more polished game that does the series justice. With over 25 years of history and beyond the thousand chapters in animation and manga, they definitely deserved better games.

One Piece Odyssey

One Piece Odyssey comes to try to fill this gap and bets on the RPG format with an unprecedented story to conquer players. Although it easily manages the position of best game in the franchise, it still stumbles on some fronts that leave the game at a very average level and still below the saga of the straw hat pirates.

A journey through memories

One Piece Odyssey’s campaign is demanding in terms of anime knowledge. It takes place after more than 700 episodes of the saga of Luffy and his friends, without making any attempt to explain the background of each character or the universe itself. Therefore, it is an adventure reserved and made more for die-hard fans than indeed for the general public. The Straw Hat crew is shipwrecked on a mysterious island called Waford, where they are unable to even fix the iconic Sunny to sail again. While exploring the island a little, in a slow tutorial full of interruptions, Luffy and his friends come across the two most important characters in this adventure: the mystical and mysterious Lim and the imposing and powerful Adio. In a battle against a colossus that protects the island, Lim strips the entire crew of their powers and places them in Rubik’s Cubes, which in turn are scattered across the island. In this way, Luffy no longer remembers how to use his powers and Zoro struggles to cut with his swords. This creates the perfect opportunity for the classic RPG journey from the level one hero, but without resorting to the cliché of complete amnesia, giving the writers plenty of room to work with the extensive source material. One Piece Odyssey

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The premise is pretty cool and gives the impression that the story is going to take unexpected turns, but you soon notice that the output here was to retell the events of the anime. Lim makes peace with the group and needs to teach them how to use the collected cubes. For this, she takes them to experience memories of the past, revisiting four of the main arcs of the saga: Alabasta, Water Seven, Marineford and Dressrosa. If on the one hand it is a disappointing output due to its initial potential, on the other hand it creates some remarkable moments for taking the liberty of making some changes to the original story. Crew members know how these events play out and that nothing will change in the real world, yet they still struggle to make things better than the first time around. Some reunions between characters who are gone in the anime and members of the group are exciting and make several special moments for anyone who is a fan of the anime. The pace ends up playing a little against the campaign, which reaches over 30 hours in length – not counting almost the same number of hours for all the secondary content. These past arcs are pretty long and feature a lot of back and forth between maps that, while linear in many ways, are vast and hide a lot of secrets. When there is a return to the real world and the main conflict, the duration of the chapter is generally much shorter, often reduced to a dungeon and a small advance in the mystery behind the events on the island. Add this to predictable resolutions and that constant feeling of filler that won’t lead anywhere and the result is a story that, in addition to being told in a tiring and uninteresting way, is also far from remarkable. On the positive side, everything is localized with very well done Portuguese subtitles, which is always welcome for our audience.

Ease compromises gameplay

The game’s combat is turn-based, as you’d expect from a classic Japanese RPG like this, but the developers surprised me by trying to create a more original system, with small clusters of combat happening at the same time in each battle. It works like this: the characters in the group start the fight in random positions, in areas with or without enemies. To attack another area, you must either clear enemies from your area or use some skill, either ranged or movement to go there. This creates a very cool and strategic dynamic, which unfortunately ends up undermined by the ease of the game. There are no more difficult modes and during the first fifteen hours the player will spend most of the fights choosing practically the same attack. Since buffs can be stacked at will, most bosses will go down within a turn or two. Over time, I just avoided the world’s combats as much as possible, as they were predictable and unchallenging. Luckily, there’s an option to speed up animations, which last longer than necessary for repetitive fights. For those who get even more bored, you can put combat on automatic and the AI will repeat the character’s strongest blow for you.

One Piece Odyssey

Character progression doesn’t help either. It is only possible to equip jewels on the characters to modify the attributes, which can be more or less rare. Several of them are extremely powerful early on and break the game’s balance even further. New attacks are only learned through the cubes and improved as more of them are found, which leaves the progress of levels insignificant. The secondary content basically involves delivery missions or combat with a wanted pirate. There are certain nice points in this medium, like comic scenes of these famous pirates or local memories that unleash powerful group attacks, but nothing too special. "One

The highlight in the gameplay is really for exploration. The level design is very well done and each character has a skill that can be used by the scenario. Luffy can climb high places with his rubber body while Zoro can cut through boxes and metal doors, for example, giving a cool replay factor on maps in search of more hidden treasures. There is also the possibility of cooking, creating some bombs and improving accessories with everything you find snooping around. All of this would be elevated if the combat wasn’t so easy, leaving it feeling like unnecessary work. Not directly related to the gameplay, but also a highlight worth noting is the art direction. The graphics are beautiful and the combat animations and during the cutscenes are very well done. Perhaps the walk of some characters is less worked, but it is little to compromise the visual immersion that is well above average for games of the genre, especially with this scope.

Conclusion

One Piece Odyssey manages to be the most interesting game in the franchise, even if it has ups and downs in both gameplay and story. The first aspect ends up undermined by the ease of combat and little inspiration in the progression of the characters, while the second falls into the sameness of recounting past arcs and submitting too much to the original content of the work. In the end, it’s a game worth playing only for the anime’s most ardent fans, who should hold on to the campaign’s coolest moments. pros

Beautiful graphics and good animations
Interesting and creative combat system
Reunion between characters who separated during the anime

cons

Over-easiness compromises most of the gameplay
Story turns out to be predictable and can’t get out of the filler feel
Uninspired Secondary Content
Tutorial slow, long and full of interruptions

Grade: 7.0/10.0

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A PC (Steam) copy was provided by Bandai Namco for the purposes of this review.

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Analysis | One Piece Odyssey offers classic JRPG with ups and downs