One Piece Odyssey review

One Piece Odyssey is the newest adaptation of the popular manga series that has been going on for 25 years. Let me tell you from the beginning, I’ve been familiar with the series since Star TV released the anime with the name “Rubber Boy” and while doing this review, I had a lot of trouble between looking at it as a “just a game” and as a “fan of the series”. I have also seen that being familiar with a series for the first time can create a bad impression on the game. Anyway, we’ll talk about that during the review.

One Piece Odyssey review

Did One Piece Odyssey go beyond an anime game that appeals to the fans of the series, how well it applied the features of the JRPG genre, how it made it possible to experience both a new story and past events, all in our review.

We’re Back in Alabasta Again!

The new adventure of Luffy and his crew begins this time in the sky. Shocked into the air by a current (New Earth, anything happens) the crew find themselves on the mysterious Waford Island. The crew, whose ship is stranded and badly damaged, meets the mysterious inhabitants of the island while searching for Luffy’s missing hat and the missing crew members.

Waford Island is home to different versions of creatures such as monkeys and penguins, as well as guards called the mysterious Colossus. The two human inhabitants of the island, which even the World Government is watching, soon meet the team, Lim and Adio. Just like our crew, Adio is a sailor who crashed with his ship and stayed here and started to live. Lim, on the other hand, is a mysterious person who has the power to touch people to steal their powers and relive their memories. We experience this power as soon as Dressrosa returns our crew, who went on adventure with all their might, back to their powers in season 1 with a touch.

The story of the game is a long adventure on Waford Island to get our powers back. It is very difficult to defeat the guards guarding the secret in Waford, even for the full-powered crew, and Lim’s fear of us taking our power and spreading it to various parts of the island makes it even more difficult. Lim says he will help us, to regain our strength we must first collect the cubes that are scattered around the island, but some of these cubes are too big and we need to rekindle the memories inside first. We do this by reliving old adventures.

I love most One Piece adventures, they have very enjoyable stories set on islands, each with its own characteristics. The Odyssey includes the Alabasta Kingdom, Water 7, Marine Ford and Dressrosa stories. Of course, this is a land of memories called Memoria, and the stories may not work as we remember them. The enemies are as strong as the memories of the crew, and the danger is very serious as dying here will cause the mind to disappear.

I don’t have many complaints about reliving old adventures, but the story flow is so divided that it started to bother me after a while. For example, in the first episode, Alabasta, we chase silly elephants for almost 6 hours to start the main story. I haven’t started complaining about the gameplay yet, I’m just grumbling on the story side. Let me go bro, if I have to hit that Crocodile’s head with a water demijohn, why “the monkey stole the wallet, keep it!” That’s why I’m running again through the desert I just passed? I’m not going into the part of why we run after money in our memories.

They tried to choose the most emotional stories in the series but it had a bad effect and Brook and Franky were absent from the team for a very long time. Brook fell into the water, and Franky was repairing the ship, and they found the excuse. I would understand if the episodes were a little shorter, but Franky’s joining the team is around 15 hours, until then, the squad you have is clear. The problem with this is the “elephants” episodes, which are the things that anime viewers dislike the most.

Memories are different from what we know and so it can be more difficult to reach various places. Our goal is clear in the first episode, to go to Vivi’s place and help her again and stop Crocodile. We cannot go there because even its geography has changed. Every once in a while there are good scenes that will delight the fans, it’s nice to see the reactions of the characters (Law was my favourite), but most of the missions are purely time-wasting. It would have been a lot more fun if they had kept Alabasta shorter, maybe added episodes of Skypiea or Thriller Bark. Or if they spread all the action into 9 hour episodes instead of cramming it into the last 2-3 hours.

Alabasta tired me a lot, after a while I couldn’t be patient and went to advanced sections on the account of a friend who passed the department. I’m glad I went, Alabasta, which is almost the longest part of the game, apart from that, there are some tempo problems towards the middle. Speaking of story, I loved the care taken to keep the characters sticking to the main material. They talk among themselves, give appropriate reactions to their characters, everything is very good. It seems a bit strange that Sanji didn’t react to Lim in any way, but I’m going to ignore it.

Gomu Gomu Noooo!

One Piece Odyssey chose JRPG as its genre and that’s great. It has been bothering me for a long time that anime games are stuck between the “musou” and “fighting” genres, and the different games that are rarely released are generally bad. The number of other notable games I’ve played on the Nintendo DS, like Bleach: The 3rd Phantom, is quite few. Odyssey has successfully adapted the JRPG genre to the world of One Piece, albeit a bit too much like old-school JRPG games.

In the exploration part of the game, we wander around, take side quests and collect materials. Each character has special abilities that will come in handy during exploration. Sometimes we build bridges, sometimes we remove obstacles, we can jump far, or we spot objects. Even Chopper’s small size has the ability to run through small spots such as caves. If the character transitions were a little faster, I could use more, but it’s nice that the characters have different abilities.

The exploration part of the game is very similar to old style JRPG games. You run to a place, they say, “Oh, it was on the other side.” Fortunately, there are no enemies attacking randomly on the way, instead you see the enemies, they chase after them or you run towards them and attack. me at the 10th hour “Don’t come after me aaa!” I was running in the opposite direction. Also, our characters can jump, but we cannot jump from places that are not in our series.

When we come to the fighting part of the game, the best part comes out. Each member of our crew has unique attacks and abilities. Also, each character has mastered one of the “Speed” “Power” “Technique” styles. There is a Rock – Paper – Scissors system in the fights, moreover, there is an area where each character fights and it determines your effectiveness in the fight. With Zoro in Tech style, you want to beat two “Power” type enemies in the other area, but you have a “Speed” type enemy on your side. In this case, if you do not have the appropriate attack to jump to the other side, you have to wait or change your character. It sounds a little confusing when you describe it, but it has a very simple application system.

The fights are quite easy at the beginning, even if you do the mini-missions in the fights, you can easily beat your opponents thanks to the bonus experience points you get. This situation continues for a long time, after a while you even leave it to automatic warfare. Towards the end of the game, the fights really need tactics. Since you didn’t care about the equipment of your characters until then, you suddenly start to eat the stick and start to think about the details of the system. There is no learning curve, we go downhill all of a sudden.

We can control 4 characters during the fights, but we have the chance to change between them without any waiting, a system that those who play Final Fantasy X will remember. There are a lot of “Tech” type enemies around, but if your character is “Power” type, you change it right away with Zoro and you clear it all together. Of course, there is a problem in the beginning that our crew is generous in terms of power-type characters and gives less than the others, but whatever.

Our team members are clear, Franky and Brook have been busy for a while, so we play with the first squad for about 15 hours. Then Franky joins, Water 7 followed by Brook. I did not understand why they followed such a path when I could easily add these characters to the story. It’s another matter that Robin is overpowered in the first episodes, she only has 2 – 3 abilities and they don’t work most of the time. Meanwhile, Nami rains the skies on the enemy. Anyone following the series might be hooked on this, I’m stuck. Occasionally, side characters join our team and help us in the fight, but we don’t control them.

One of the Best Anime Games

The difference is, I keep complaining about things throughout the review, but that doesn’t mean the game is bad. If we can ignore the lengthy chapters, the missions that keep the player running around to keep them entertained, the weak variety of enemies, and some strange story choices, which I accept is a bit difficult, the game has been a very solid JRPG game.

It gives the impression of watching a One Piece movie, with both the story and the successful portrayal of the characters. It’s like movies that don’t contribute much to the main story but reflect the world well. Moreover, there are pieces from the series all over Waford Island, and there are even references to the characters in the movies.

The game is visually quite good and PC performance is smooth. PC ports of anime games would often be problematic, so that’s a big plus. The music is fine, the environment details are fine, the voiceovers are original, almost everything I look for in an anime game is here.

In the game I play with both keyboard and mouse and controller, I am very satisfied with both options. My biggest problem with the controls in the game was using too many keys to switch between characters in the free roam mode. For characters that can be changed easily with a single button, entering the menu, selecting them and switching to that character after a short black screen makes you say “I can’t work” after a while. The character switching during the fight could also be made faster, but it’s not a big problem.

Conclusion

One Piece Odyssey has some problems such as unnecessary sequences made to prolong the gameplay, missions that keep running back and forth along the same corridor, and keeping the intro – training part too long. On top of that, it has problems such as keeping the difficulty level very low for hours, increasing it like pushing it down a cliff, not bringing new characters for a considerable time. Despite that, it’s a solid JRPG game and might be the best One Piece game I’ve ever played.

If you like the One Piece series, definitely try it, you just have to be patient for the first part of 9-10 hours. If you can get past this place quickly, an enjoyable JRPG game with a story like One Piece movies is waiting for you. Speaking of going fast, the fact that even the fast battle mode of the game is slow is another problem. Considering all these cons, I can recommend you to try at least the demo of the game and follow the discounts if you like it.

PC version of One Piece Odyssey via Steam It is on sale for 719 TL. The version that includes the PlayStation 4 and 5 versions via PSN It is sold with a price tag of 700 TL. Xbox Series S / X version with a price tag of 600 TL on Xbox Store on sale. It’s the first time I’ve seen consoles get cheaper, though Xbox is only in the new generation and the difference with PS isn’t huge, but it’s noticeable.