The saga returns where the Straw Hats are most comfortable. Omega Force takes steps forward in playability, but falls back in other respects.
Five years have passed since Omega Force found that it was, without a doubt, the studio that best knew how to transfer the essence of One Piece to the video game universe. Pirate Warriors 3 closed the trilogy almost brilliantly, a very complete, varied and respectful title with the license of Eiichiro Oda, which was then beginning one of its most important arcs.
Five years is nothing for a weekly Shonen Jump manga, where it is customary to publish just over 40 episodes annually. And if it is Oda, with its pauses, the plot advance is even less than desired by the readers; But if there is something that is clear, it is that One Piece is living a very sweet moment, a climax that seems to never want to end between revelations, unexpected appearances and moments that have been waiting for years.
And that is precisely the great problem of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, which although it improves the playable scheme in a very adequate way, has not known how to take advantage of these five years to take advantage of current generation hardware or to delve into the element backbone of this genre, strategy; because as much as we are in front of a One Piece video game, it is less musou than previous installments, and that's a shame.
The best One Piece: Pirate Warriors at the controls: depth and combos
Let no one be confused: the gameplay has improved. This fourth iteration deepens from the first moment, makes characters like Luffy feel better than ever for the comfort and agility when moving, hitting or chaining combos, one of the great successes of this episode. As if it were a hack and slash, it seems that the title wants to constantly invite you to not just press the square or triangle button over and over, but study combos, chain jumps with blows and see the counter of damage increase like a stopwatch. Unfortunately, those good feelings at the controls spraying hundreds (thousands) of enemies per mission collide with a camera that can get desperate and a mission design that has been oversimplified. Let's go by parts.
The combat system has been revamped (the Kizuna Rush is left behind) and bases its gameplay on action buttons or the combination of R + action, triggering one of up to four skills selectable from the skill tree, a feature highly customizable and from which we are unlocking new options as we move forward in the adventure. The result pleases because it is not lost in long or loaded animations, but they are only seconds, it does not break the action. As can be expected, the depth is greater when there are combinations of land, air blows or a combination of both.
The script of movements is wide, varied, with winks to the manga that many will know how to recognize. We can not only equip special attacks, but also power-ups or transformations, so it's time to calculate what we want for each moment; if we are worth a basic hit enhancer or if we prefer to be able to activate a Gear 2, for example, in the case of Monkey D. Luffy. We liked it, because it gives meaning to the resistance bar and makes us have to save with every move. To finish, each character has its own peculiarities, they are not mere skins, so it does not have much to do with controlling someone like Usopp with respect to Zoro; It goes without saying when we can access the giant characters in a playable way, such as Kaido, a great success that we prefer to discover for yourself, as it is one of the rewards of the final stretch of the story mode. If we had to list among all the musou of recent years, surely One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is one of the three most satisfactory at a playable level. The contrast with the lack of tactics, of strategy, is very strong.
Where we are: the plot choice, a double-edged sword
Things continue where they stayed then, however. If in PW3 we saw the credits at the end of the Dressrosa arc, this time the crew of the Straw Hats arrive in Zou with a few wandering around Whole Cake Island and others, meanwhile, in Wano, where Big Mom and Kaido respectively take center stage in parallel. Obviously, the facts of this latest saga are not conclusive and, to solve the role, Koei Tecmo and Omega Force have narrated an original story from beginning to end. So much for what is said for the way it is done, has not convinced us, but the way of narrating the six great arches covered in the game, does not leave too many fringes open on the way.
This time we started in Arabasta, we went to Ennies Lobby and Water Seven, we traveled to Marineford and we entered the New World, where from Dressrosa we went to Whole Cake and Wano. A successful selection, as if it were a One Piece greatest hits. That is the global feeling: it is a tribute to the series. It is not as ambitious as its predecessor, which wanted to cover almost all of the manga's main canonical arcs. The problem is that, seen that, now this falls short, with an adventure that barely reaches fifteen hours in its main story and denotes a lack of interest in improving, going further and deepening the tactic.
Forgetting everything the East Blue narrates is like a Dragon Ball Z video game without Dragon Ball or Naruto without Shippuden; It is not serious, but those who want to find here a playable encyclopedia from start to finish, this is not an ultimate work.
Playable depth at the cost of simplicity in mission design
Omega Force has perfectly channeled the path that the saga should follow in the future in control and gameplay, but not in mission design; They are all very similar, with little strategy (or point of comparison with the proposals of Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem: Warriors or Pirate Warriors 3) and an overall below-average level. The Normal level of difficulty (we have Easy, Normal and Hard) is the equivalent of the easy level of any video game of the genre; not so much because of the damage we receive from the enemies, but because of the demands of the final bosses. Some areas are excessively linear and there are not a lot of side missions, but we normally go from point A to point B, thus losing some tactics. The title unlearns what was seen in the past in this same series.
One of the great novelties of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 was its giant-sized zone bosses, where there is no other option but to fix the camera, surround the enemy and strike when we find a deadlock. The idea, on paper, we love, because it allows us to recreate mythical anime battles with well-measured action, recreating scenes with great fidelity and accompanying everything with scenes recreated with the game engine. However, the patterns are easy to identify and there will be no enemy to put us in too much trouble.
The conquest of areas to dominate terrains, something that does not change with respect to any other musou, sins of not changing its search and advance process. In the world of Whole Cake we will find the odd puzzle, but the strategy we saw in PW3 has practically disappeared. Fortunately, the design of the stages is artistically very colorful, colorful and is enjoyed in every second; Furthermore, the rhythm of the game does not give a break. There are no moments of transition: it gets to the point. With more simultaneous enemies on the screen than ever and with hardly any drop in performance, it is the most dynamic delivery… weighed down by a lack of strategic or cooperative incentive with allies that relegates the controls to be more punches than they should. Too bad. The biggest problem in the game is the camera. It has made us sigh on more than one occasion for two reasons: the first, which is capable of leaving us sold both indoors and outdoors by colliding with and overlapping textures; the second, who does not know how to position himself. If we run, it goes crazy; if we turn sharply, it is lost. In the end, we have been forced to constantly reposition the camera. Luckily, many of the stages can be destroyed by hitting, although it does not change or affect too much.
Leaving aside the Dramatic Diary, which serves as a story, we would like to highlight that everything can be played cooperatively. The multiplayer mode, in times like today, seems like a more than valid option to retaliate at ease with friends — it also reduces the difficulty of each zone quite a bit. We also liked the so-called Treasure Diary, a succession of small made-up stories where we have to face somewhat random but unpredictable, unimaginable enemy teams. Anything goes and the result is quite gratifying. In addition, this mode also gains importance or weight as it is an ideal way to collect money and unlock more skills and movements in the development tree of each character, a map in which we can improve movements or improve attributes. Very well designed. It's worth taking a look at it, especially if we've finished story mode and want something (new) more than a mouthful.
For the rest, a figure that exceeds 40 selectable characters, with unprecedented novelties such as Kaido, Big Mom, Bege and Katakuri, although we especially liked how fun it is to play with Luffy's Gear 4, everything is said. In the future there will be three batches of DLC throughout 2020, all of them for a fee. If we are pessimistic, this invites us to think that there is content that could perfectly have been included in the base commercial version and is going to be used so that the buyer checks out more than once, especially when it comes to sagas. We prefer not to speculate now, as that content is still unknown.
The version we have analyzed is that of the PlayStation 4 Pro, so we cannot give evidence of whether the port complies on a technical level on the Nintendo Switch – as Pirate Warriors 3 did in that regard – but Omega Force has managed to perfect the visual technique seen from the beginning of the saga with that mixture of cel-shading and elements typical of the animation series, without going overboard with the lighting or the black outline of the characters. The animations have also improved, with Zoro, Sanji and Luffy moving better than ever, they are a spectacle. We insist: the game is as respectful of the original work as could be expected. It's nothing new, really, because Omega Force has animated each character perfectly from the very first installment. It is a pity that some enemies are still so flat and shallow, but the genre has always interpreted these as mere filler.
We cannot forget the soundtrack, which lends itself to being listened to with headphones. The moments of tension increase depending on the type of battle in which we find ourselves; to highlight, some compositions against final bosses. The original themes of the series are missing, but this is an endemic evil of almost any production of the Shonen Jump, where it costs horrors to migrate those licenses to a video game environment without additionally going through the box. Of course, the voices are perfectly dubbed into Japanese by their original actors, so that whoever is used to listening to Nami, Chopper, Franky and company in Japanese, nothing changes here.
"The power to intimidate the opponent The haoshoku haki! … This power comes from the" will power "of whoever owns it"
We have performed this Reviews using a download code supplied by Bandai Namco on a PS4 Pro model.
CONCLUSION
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is better as a One Piece game than as a musou. The title manages to improve notably in the playable plane, with a renewed combat system that has convinced us for its depth in combos and the difference between controlling one character and another. Artistically it stands out as much for what you see as for what you hear, but the simplification in the design of missions has left us somewhat cold, just like its more than improvable camera. It's a less ambitious title, and therefore worse than Pirate Warriors 3, where it covered a lot more of One Piece's story (here are six big arcs, Wano's invented in an unconvincing way). Luckily, the additional modes bring many hours of additional content, replayability is guaranteed, and respect for Eiichiro Oda's work is unquestionable. If you like One Piece, you should get it; If you are more a lover of the musou than of the Straw Hats, there are much more tactical and varied options, starting with its predecessor.
THE BEST
- One of the best combat systems ever in a musou
- The formula works: it's tremendously fun
- Being able to control giant characters, one pass
- Additional modes to the campaign
WORST
- Mission design has been simplified – there's hardly any strategy
- The camera can leave us sold
- Large arches are omitted; we expected more history
- Certain graphics issues and load times
Well
It meets the expectations of what is a good game, it has quality and does not have serious flaws, although it lacks elements that could have taken it to higher levels.
