Review: One Piece Odyssey fails to represent the essence and humor of the saga

EITHER

One Piece Odyssey is a turn-based adventure RPG that was originally released on January 12, 2023 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the popular pirate adventure created by Eiichirō Oda.

From the trailer, the game excites fans a lot, because One Piece Odyssey It features multiple interesting aspects, such as a never-before-seen story with new characters created by the original creator and multiple moments where we will relive some of the most emblematic moments of the Straw Hat Pirates.

It’s no debate that One Piece is one of the best narratives in both anime and manga; while in the world of video games it is clearly not the first of them, as there are an immense amount of other games.

However, what makes it different One Piece Odyssey It tries to get involved with a story, innovative gameplay that presents a fun and quality experience, but does it achieve its goal? Read the article until the end to know our opinion.

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A story as simple as it is predictableand

The plot basically consists of the Straw Hat crew being shipwrecked on a mysterious and remote island called Watford after unfortunate events that severely damaged the Thousand Sunny. As soon as they get there they have to reunite, since the water dragged each crew member to different places on the island and in the case of poor Brook, he lost his body in the depths of the sea.

Once the pirates are reunited they meet Adio and a woman named Lim, two new characters created for the One Piece OdysseyWhen Luffy and his friends first meet the girl, she steals their powers because she believed they were evil pirates, causing them to scatter across the map.

The pirates agree to help the two aforementioned new characters as they search for their lost powers around the island and Frankie repairs the Sunny and attempts to recover Brook’s body from the depths of the sea.

In my opinion, the story is not the strong point of this game, even though it was created by the same writer. The narrative is relatively simple and somewhat convenient for creating conflict.

The plot It is quite linear, sometimes anticlimactic, due to its old RPG style; and very predictable.. Certainly, in the first few hours it promises a lot, as it even seems like it would present a fun and original narrative, which does not end up happening, because as the game progresses the story loses quality and plot twists; so it ends up falling into repetitiveness from the first missions until shortly before the last stretch of the video game.

In addition, the game creates the excuse that in order to regain their powers they will have to relive some of their most important memories, so The title allows us to play in some of the most iconic moments of the sagaHowever, this anime-to-video game adaptation fails to live up to the excitement, so its attempt to salvage the story with nostalgia falls slightly flat.

Finally, the most important thing is that despite being an anniversary video game of the saga, they failed to adapt the soul of One Piece well in One Piece Odysseybecause the title based on the pirate saga does not make any effort to give us adventure in terms of gameplay, but I will tell you about that later.

A map that is too linear and not very innovative

As I previously expressed, the big reason why One Piece Odyssey It fails to inspire the essence of the anime and the manga is as simple as its very poor level design.

The truth is that the game looked like it would be quite epic and exciting at first, but as soon as we started exploring we realized many things, such as:

The title aims to give an open world feel to encourage exploration, however it is completely ruined by the lack of immersion it proposes, having a level design that is usually repetitive (except in the towns), with an “exploration” area and an extremely linear path full of repetitive enemies until reaching the level’s Boss, bosses that by the way they do not hesitate to reuse.

As far as exploration goes, the game doesn’t reward you beyond some measly food or dialogue about the things you see.which although sometimes they give us fun conversations between the Straw Hats, the vast majority of the time they present us with very long and boring filler comments.

Besides, The design to advance through the levels is too simplebecause as we advance through these extremely linear corridors, which are built in a certain way to make it seem like the place is larger and there are no invisible walls; we will have certain obstacles as simple as throwing Luffy’s hand to jump over the hole in the path, breaking rocks that get in the way with Zoro, going through small places with Chopper, etc.

One Piece Odyssey It’s not the most linear thing in the history of video games, but it is still terrible.; despite this, when the game proposes to innovate in the levels, such as the dungeon puzzles, they end up being too easy and intuitive.

Finally, if there was one thing I liked, it was the side missions, which although they usually have no relevance to the story, are full of references for One Piece fans, so they are nice details to keep in mind.

Even the many features did not save the battles from falling into the slow and repetitive.

As for gameplay One Piece Odyssey It tried to innovate with many things, at least in terms of its turn-based battle system, with features such as how the zones work, special powers, the system of advantages and disadvantages, team powers, the skills of each pirate, among many other things.

However, All these features do not save One Piece Odyssey from falling into repetitiveness.and after a few battles you prefer to stop playing than to face the same old rivals again in a long battle with the same strategy you used before.

While the villains have very unique and aesthetically pleasing designs, in terms of gameplay they do not change at all, since they may change their appearance but their fighting style and decisions will almost always be the same, making the battles even more repetitive.

Finally, One Piece Odyssey is not difficult at all, so beyond certain confrontations from time to time do not expect much more of a challenge when finishing this title.

The game is well polished visually

We believe that The aesthetic section was the most polished of the entire gamebecause beyond great cinematics and nice graphics; the title adds a great variety of details in the backgrounds, and various designs for each enemy.

If I have to recognize something, One Piece Odyssey It is the constant presence of cinematics throughout almost the entire game, this together with the original voices from the beginning to the end of the title are details that demonstrate that they wanted to please the fans regardless of the cost.

It is true that Its arrival on Nintendo Switch slightly worsened the graphics of the video game due to the console’s humble capabilities, however We consider that it does not affect the experience at all. and One Piece Odyssey It still has a pretty decent polished aesthetic design.

The title sound is surprisingly the best in the game (Music)

Honestly I didn’t expect much from the soundtrack of the title, but, the truth is the music of One Piece Odyssey It’s not bad at all, it usually gets you excited for great adventures and fosters the excitement of exploring the mysteries of Watford Island, even though it’s not designed for you to have fun exploring.

Should you play One Piece Odyssey?

We believe that despite the game falling into the repetitive, linear and predictable; The love put into creating this title is noticeableso if you’re a One Piece fan it’s very likely that you’ll appreciate all the references and dialogues that are in the video game, however, we don’t think that this would be very popular with players who don’t like this saga, so in my opinion it portrays the type of title that it is, one to please its fans, but not so much one that’s fun and innovative.

In conclusion, One Piece Odyssey It is a title that the most die-hard fans of the saga will enjoy. It is a game that, although it is quite repetitive and linear, there are many different tastes, so it is likely that you will like it or not. If you are looking for a challenging adventure, do not expect either of these two characteristics, as the game does not pretend to be either of the two.

Which One Piece Odyssey What it has is a very polished aesthetic design, which is not so affected by its arrival on Nintendo Switch; and a relatively innovative and varied fighting system that could give several hours of fun to any RPG and turn-based battle player.

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We played One Piece Odyssey on Nintendo Switch with a code provided by Bandai Namco.