One Piece Odyssey

With a visual section that perfectly portrays the strokes of Eiichiro Oda, One Piece Odyssey promises to leave us with our mouths open by presenting us with an original story that starts from nostalgia. He is a JRPG that takes up turn-based battles and shows off Luffy’s most spectacular attacks and his nakamas. Will we be facing the best game of one piece? I share my impressions below.

Looking for the treasure

It all begins when the straw hat pirates suffer an accident that causes them to run aground on the shores of a mysterious island. After touring the place and facing a powerful enemy, the crew meets the Lim, a young woman who steals her powers and spreads them around the island in the form of cubes. Although it is an original story, the truth is that we soon dived into 4 well-known arcs to hook anime fans.

After knowing the fate of the protagonists, we went straight to the action and from the beginning the great work that this title has in the background caught my attention. The cover letter of One Piece Odyssey It is its visual section; It looks fantastic with a mix of realism and anime style. This causes, that although we see 3D models with detailed textures, they do not look strange as in Jump Force. The settings and characters are very colorful, and the creatures that inhabit the worlds maintain the adventurous essence of one piece.

The deepest section that gives merit to the game so that it goes beyond being another anime is that it lets us see all the power of Luffy, and his crew in full battle. At the beginning of the adventure and before they lose his powers, we will have a taste of all the available pirate abilities. Each attack has its own animation and looks amazing. As we progress in the game we will be recovering all the abilities and adding new ones. For example, there are team attacks that combine the abilities of 3 characters to deal a devastating blow.

A pure JRPG

The battle system is turn-based, like the old days, but it has interesting mechanics that work well together. Some examples are: rock-paper-scissors weakness system; altered states; distances and sections on the battlefield; use of items; and the ability to reset mana or pm when using the attack command. It is also possible to change characters at any time, which allows you to change the strategy and obtain better results. This system is very solid and has the potential to be taken advantage of in a sequel.

Despite its successes, there are some flaws in the development of the fights that you will notice after playing for a while. The battles can be very long and boring, and you will be seeing the animations of the attacks over and over again. It is true that they look very good, but after seeing the same attack 15 times you will wish that the encounters would end soon. This happens because the difficulty level is very low; there is little challenge in most fights. Bosses and some special fights are the exception to the rule, so if you don’t go well equipped and with enough items, you will probably see the game over screen a couple of times.

We can also reinforce the statistics of our characters with accessories that we must accommodate on a table in pure Tetris style. If this part makes you desperate and you want to spend less time preparing, you can choose a predefined profile. Don’t worry about access to character attacks, they will all be available once you recover them during the development of the game. You can also merge these accessories and thus obtain special effects.

Pirates don’t need rules

In addition to dealing blows, one of the strengths of an RPG is knowing the locations while looking for items or exchanging information with some characters. In One Piece Odyssey You will be able to go through the levels but with many limitations, and you will realize that everything happens repetitively. As a good RPG, you will have to fulfill errands, go from point A to point B and vice versa, get items or information to reveal a secret and continue advancing. All this weighs because it happens over and over again without something interesting to do on the way; The option is to face enemies and level up, but since the game is little complicated, you don’t need to level up at full speed. There are moments in which the story makes you go from one place to another without stopping with very tangled pretexts. It gives the impression that everything is planned to add some extra hours to the game, and that means that there are problems to keep the player’s interest for a long time.

The exploration system also has its flaws. Most of the time we will walk paths marked by invisible walls that define the corridors and the limits very well, so that we can jump and run, but not freely cross where we want. All the time we must follow paths and look for chests or some specific point that takes advantage of the abilities of our characters. There are moments where we will have to go through corridors with Chopper; we will find invisible bags of money with Nami or we will cut metal boxes with Zoro; but most of the time it will be enough to use Luffy’s abilities.

If you are one of those who have dedicated their entire lives to watching the more than 1000 episodes of one piece, you will be very happy to know that there are winks and references by the loads. The story is more or less original and we will meet the charismatic characters created by Eiichiro Oda for this game. The interesting thing is that the route will be different from the anime and we will experience other situations. We’ll find some familiar characters and mentions of other arcs in the middle of the conversations, so the load of fan service is enough to keep us happy but not too much to cloy us either. For the first few hours the story looks good, but the initial idea gets lost as we go along. When the new characters cross our path it is confusing to identify if they are allies or enemies. This is interesting at first, but after a few hours they become mere companions. The start is good and the first arc takes about 15 hours, by which time we are so soaked in one piece that it’s easy to forget there’s a new backstory.

Finally I would like to highlight the audio work, which is perfectly suited to the JRPG genre. The effort of the sound section complies by having the original voices in Japanese and a soundtrack made for the game with great themes for all occasions. It is certainly a game for true fans.

One Piece exists

One Piece Odyssey It has execution problems but it is the best game in the franchise so far, due to its visuals, art direction and its classic battle system. It has the merit of trying to tell a new story from great moments in the series, in addition to trying a different genre than usual. The result is a long-running game that needs polishing up and has the potential to be something bigger in the future. If you are a fan of one pieceDon’t think about it: you must play it.

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