One Piece Odyssey review – happy anniversary-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

One Piece Odyssey – better late than never (pic: Bandai Namco)

25 years after One Piece first took the manga world by storm, Bandai Namco has turned it into a heavyweight JRPG worthy of the name.

For a quarter of a century, One Piece has dominated Japanese pop culture, without ever making much of an impact in the West. It’s the biggest-selling series of manga ever and has crossed over into a vast array of other mediums, including video games – which, previously, have been, more or less, universally disappointing.

One Piece Odyssey is different though and, appropriately for a property as distinctively Japanese as this, it’s not an action game but a full-blown Japanese role-player.

This is a huge and sprawling adventure that will take you upwards of 40 hours to finish. It has a unique, turn-based battle system which focuses on eye-popping special moves that never get old. Like any good Japanese role-player it’s also shot through with bizarre terminology and is obsessed with food and cooking, but what the story lacks in coherence it more than makes up for in endearing wackiness.

There’s nothing remotely half-cocked about this game, which instantly elevates it above previous One Piece tie-ins. Indeed, it’s such a solid example of its genre that, at times, it evokes the grandness of several classic titles, especially Ni No Kuni. Even elements which initially seem less than ideal – such as boss-battles which never seem to tax your strategic skills – improve drastically as One Piece Odyssey progresses.

Story-wise, it’s hilariously convoluted. Main character Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, get into a spot of bother on their sentient ship, Sunny, as they end up marooned on the mysterious island of Waford, with various crew members missing and Sunny left in pieces in the bay. After reassembling the crew (bar Brook, whose spirit is present but whose body must be dredged from the deep) they meet a local girl called Lim who, wary of pirates, uses her mystical powers to remove their crucial battling skills.

Realising that Luffy and co. are actually the good guys, she then helps them regain their powers by revisiting various of their past adventures, in a world of memories called Memoria. That rather convoluted plot device allows the story to take in various key locations from the One Piece universe, such as Alabasta, Water Seven City, and Enies. At the same time, Waford acts as a hub – while also slowly divulging its own secrets. The crew also sometimes encounter sub-quests called Frayed Memories and if they fix those, they acquire powerful multi-character attacks.

One Piece Odyssey’s battling is typical for a turn-based Japanese role-player but has an interesting twist which adds strategic depth. Each battlefield is split into different areas populated by different enemies (you hardly ever fight just one person) and Luffy and his crew have both ranged and close-up special attacks that either focus on a single enemy or everyone in an area.

This means your characters can attack enemies from afar without risking damage. Or they can move to a different area, carry out a powerful ‘Buddy attack’ and jump in to help a colleague in an enemy’s firing line. Luffy also has attacks that can knock enemies to different areas, which adds to the strategy.

Each character also has their own special skills: Luffy, for example, has a body made of rubber, while Usopp is a sniper. Status-enhancing objects and meals (party member Sanji is a cook), as well as attribute-decreasing balls that can be lobbed at intractable enemies, also become increasingly important, as does the equipment system – which is basically a grid into which you must fit differently shaped objects that buff each character’s individual stats.

One Piece Odyssey – the combat is a highlight (pic: Bandai Namco)

There are also periods of puzzle-solving which, again, seem a bit basic at first but add a certain amount of sophistication as One Piece Odyssey progresses. That said, you occasionally encounter annoying fetch-and-carry phases, but the emergence of an array of side-quests helps leaven proceedings. Not that that’s an issue though, as each of the main story quests has its own distinctive flavour.

Vibe-wise, One Piece Odyssey is sweet, endearing, and generally naïve; the pirate crew’s deep friendship is a theme which is explored throughout the game. Although that vibe is slightly at odds with some of the character design – two of the main female characters are both scantily clad and unfeasibly busty, which can be a bit of a culture shock for those not familiar with the property.

Luckily, the game avoids any suggestion of tweeness by remaining relentlessly quirky, often entering territory which is downright weird, while being genuinely funny at times. Some bosses, for example, are so bizarre that the Straw Hat Pirates actually laugh at them.

It has taken a long time, but at last One Piece has a video game which lives up to the franchise’s status. One Piece Odyssey is a proper, meaty, quirky, heavyweight Japanese role-player that will delight fans of both the manga series and the genre in general. Clearly it helps if you’re a fan of the series already but this is good enough that it deserves everyone’s attention.

Formats: Xbox Series X (reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: ILCA
Release Date: 13th January 2023
Age Rating: 12

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