There are quite a few games based on One Piece, but not many are actually that good. Shame on those who give in, probably thought Bandai Namco and developers ILCA, and decided to create a traditional Japanese role-playing game based on the very popular manga (best-selling manga of all time) and anime series. And what they did became One Piece Odyssey, a kind of love story to the long life of the series with the help of Eiichiro Oda himself, the original writer of the manga series. The two new characters were created from Oda’s drawings.
There is, to say the least, a lot of material to work with. 1046 anime episodes and 104 volumes of manga to be exact. It’s a fine line to walk when it comes to creating material that is based on something else. However, the developers have managed to stay on the right side when it comes to nostalgia and pure copying. The story we get to experience in One Piece Odyssey is both new and old at the same time. Luffy and the gang are washed ashore after a storm on a small island called Waford. They soon encounter the only two characters who mysteriously live on this island, Lim and Adio. Since Lim has a hard time trusting pirates, she uses her special power to erase the Straw Hat Pirates’ ditto, which is an excellent ploy to explain why these super-powered characters are now back at level one. After that, the core of the story is to get the gang’s powers back. This is where the nostalgia begins. In order to regain their full strength, we have to visit memory worlds called Memoria from the gang’s history and this is something that One Piece fans will really appreciate. Also count on a heaping helping of side quests, bounty hunts and more to extend your experience.
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In order not to reveal what old enemies, locations and story sheets appear during the game, I just thought I would go through the first journey into the world of memories. After being told that the powers can be unlocked by going through the bulk of these stories, we are transported to Alabasta from season four which aired between 2001 and 2002. This is where Monkey D. Luffy and the pirates meet Princess Vivi and try stop a civil war and the villain Crocodile. It would have been easy here to just play through a shortened version of this season, but the developers added a clever way to be able to make small changes. Memories are, just as pointed out in the game, not completely correct and complete and not infrequently small details are missing. Therefore, enemies may be in other locations, locations themselves being closer than they actually were, and Straw Hats who know what will happen. It’s cleverly thought out to be able to get a real spoonful of nostalgia, but at the same time not really know what will happen.
The largely turn-based combat system is also clever. Instead of going for the old proven “fight in one group against another group” it is now “fight in one group against another group, but divided into zones”. Yes, at the beginning of the battle, everyone, pirates and enemies, are divided into different zones on the battlefield. Since you can only use four fighters at the same time, your gang can be in a maximum of four different zones, but the enemies can be in even more and also with several characters in the same zone. Let me give an example to make it easier. In zone one it could be your Luffy and Zoro against one enemy, in zone two it’s your Chopper against three enemies, in zone three it’s your Usopp himself and in zone four it’s one enemy. You then have three choices. Attack enemies in your own zone with an attack, attack an enemy in another zone (requires a weapon capable of firing from a distance), or move to another zone. In order to move over, the current zone is required to have no enemy in it or by using a special ability. The battles are otherwise built on the classic rock-scissors-bag (here power (-speed-technique where one thing is stronger against another. The problem is that if you have a disadvantage in this you hardly do any damage even with the strongest attacks. This just leads to constant switching between team members to replace the weak and replace with the strong, in a way it makes you have to take care of all the characters with upgrades and such, but after a while it just gets annoying to switch the whole time. Special attacks that you’ll recognize from TV or manga are used by using TP. When it runs out, you can only do standard attacks, but luckily, TP is replenished with a special attack. So it’s important to plan when you can squeeze in a or two rounds of normal attacks. To add another layer, mini-missions will occasionally pop up during the battles. It could be defeating Enemy A with Luffy or saving Nami before she dies. If you can do it, you’ll be given an e xtra XP boost.
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One Piece Odyssey is a game that will be appreciated by fans of the series, but what detracts a lot from the overall impression is the incredibly slow pace. There’s a lot that feels like it’s there to drag out the playing time. There are often far too many unnecessary battles (normal monsters can be seen and avoided, but there are too many mini-bosses) and backtracking. Now, this game isn’t the only one that suffers from it, but going to one side of the map to the other, being sent back, and then turning again is just sad. Also, the story progresses very slowly, but for those willing to take their time, a very beautiful, light-hearted adventure awaits with good voice acting (Japanese only) and nice nostalgia trips. The game is far from perfect, but Odyssey is probably the best One Piece game we’ve seen, which isn’t saying much considering how low that bar is.
