One Piece Odyssey Review

Developed by ILCA, Inc and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc, One Piece Odyssey is a role-playing game based on the popular manga and anime series One Piece. The game features a vast open-world environment, allowing players to explore the world of One Piece and interact with its inhabitants. Players take on the role of Monkey.D.Luffy the pirate and you can recruit other characters from the series to join their crew as you progress. The graphics and art style of the game are faithful to the anime and manga, and the voice acting for the characters is also well done even if it is in Japanese with English subtitles. The game also features a combat system that combines elements of turn-based and action-based gameplay.

                The plot follows Luffy and the Straw Hat pirates sailing to the new world when a storm shipwrecks them on a mysterious island. As they explore for a way to repair their boat they discover there is more to this island than they could have bargained for. You meet some giant critters and a young lady who can remove all your strength and skill into blocks which seem to be attached to memories. You need to find these blocks to regain your strength and some memories of skills that have been lost. But as you try to work out the mystery on the island there seems to be a bigger plot afoot to stop the Straw Hat pirates from unlocking the mystery of the island. The game’s story is divided into arcs that follow the events of the anime and manga, and players can also participate in various side quests and activities.

                One Piece Odyssey plays as a mixture of open-world and linear gameplay which is common with Japanese anime RPGs. This allows you to explore the maps, but it will prevent you from going to certain places until certain parts of the story have progressed. But the exploring will cause a mixed reaction I am sure, as there are a lot of vast areas with not much in them and your character runs at a half speed so traversing the map can feel quite sluggish until you can make use of the fast travel options which you have to unlock after quite a chunk of story progression. The battle encounters are not random but are more semi-controlled. By this I mean you can run around the enemies to avoid encounters unless you catch their line of sight and then they will chase you down. Some enemies cannot be avoided as they block certain paths. The rules of advantage work here if you sneak up on an enemy you gain a critical advantage and the enemy gets an advantage if they catch you from behind.

                The combat is where they have added a new dimension to turn-based combat. Usually, in RPG turn-based combat you are on one side and the enemy is on the other, but in this game, it is split between 3-4 areas. One of your team could be facing 2 enemies and the other teammates are in different areas facing one enemy each. How this works is that you can only use a standard attack on the enemy in front of you. Your characters do have skills which do allow them to hit one or more enemies but either those that are close to you or enemies in another area. This is where strategy comes in as the game has a paper-scissors-rock style battle element, where your characters are one element out of strength, technique or speed and your enemies are another. So the enemies in front of your character may be resistant to your type but the enemies in another area are weak so you’re better off trying to attack them. But skills cost TP to use and you only have a limited amount and the only way to recover TP is by using items or hitting with your standard attack.

                I like what ILCA Inc. have done in controlling the volume of battles as turn-based combat like this can get repetitive and draining if the balance isn’t correct. They have also included an intuitive AI auto battle mode which you can switch on and off to make the battles autocomplete. However, this auto battle mode seems to be smarter in that it uses the right skill against the right enemies and it doesn’t use a skill when the enemy is nearly dead to preserve the TP. It also knows to use a healing move or item when one of your team is low on health. That’s not to say it’s perfect and you could and should take it off when fighting boss characters as there is no replacement for human strategy. But it does speed up the process of the normal encounters so it becomes less of a chore. They have also included a speed option to make the battle go quicker but I don’t think they went far enough with it. Every character likes to say the name of their move before performing it which is fine for the first few times but you would have hoped the speed-up option could have just cut that bit out to speed it up further.

                There is plenty of side quest content to keep you busy whilst you explore. You can and will need to change your lead character as you run around the map to find and access different things. Each of the story arcs is played out like a memory of the events that you have to relive albeit slightly differently. But even after you complete the memory and regain your strength you can revisit the memories to complete side quests and other activities to gain experience and items to help with your progression.

Conclusion

One Piece Odyssey is a great game for fans of the series, as it offers a chance to explore the world of One Piece and interact with its characters. The combat system is engaging and the open-world environment allows for a lot of exploration and replayability. However, some players might find the controls a bit clunky, and the pacing of the game can be slow at times.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.