One Piece fans rejoice! One Piece: Pirate Warriors is back with its fourth installment of the Pirate Warriors series and it offers a lot of additions that its predecessors didn’t have. One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 takes you on an adventure, which spans over 20+ years of lore from the One Piece series.
You slash and fight hordes upon hordes of lackey marines. There’s something satisfying about killing each and every one of these lackey marines and it never gets tiring, whether it’s your first or 100,000th.
The game attempts to tell the plot of the One Piece series in an adventure that can range from 18 hours for the main storyline to over 36 hours if you are a hardcore completionist. New and old fans can relive the story through the Whole Cake Island arc, as well as a new original story, located within the fabled Land of Wano. The game also offers co-op gameplay through split-screen or with other players online.
The gameplay requires no real skill, except for occasionally dodging and planning specific combo moves on bosses. This game is a true button mashing experience. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 includes over forty fan-favorite characters including the main protagonist, “Straw Hat” Luffy.
You can unlock the vast amount of characters while naturally playing through the game and its main storyline. Each and every character has different abilities, which can change how you choose to play the game. There is certainly a character for everyone. The characters themselves look good for 3D models, along with the backgrounds and environments around them.
The characters are voiced by their original Japanese voice actors from the One Piece series. At the title screen, players can navigate through a glossary, which gives them full reign to listen to the soundtrack (which was great), as well as look at player models of characters and even cutscenes from the game.
There are over one hundred side missions and a new game mode, Titan Mode. Titan Mode challenges the player to execute precise timing and dodging, allowing for a more calculated gaming experience. Also newly introduced are aerial action mechanics, which allow the player to perform combos and moves while in the air, something the previous games did not offer.
Within the gameplay, its nothing special of mashing buttons to perform combo attacks. There is a dodge button, which you cannot spam as it uses up stamina. When you use up stamina, you are unable to dodge and have to wait for the stamina bar to slowly come back before you can perform more dodges and rolls.
Although button-mashing is a simple concept, there is a learning curve to it if you want to maximize the damage of your attacks. Timing your combos to get the most damage is ideal but you still can button mash your way through hordes of enemies.
The positioning of the camera in the game isn’t the best and it sometimes works as a disadvantage when using certain characters over others. Faster characters, while in theory seem like the most efficient ones to use, are hard to track due to the difficulty the camera has focusing at times.
The joy of this game is finding the best character that suits your playstyle. Maybe you want a fast character, by all means, try it out! You may like it but it is personally not my cup of tea. I preferred the slower and more stationary characters, as they were easier to track with the camera.
One Piece fans will love this game. Although I have not seen a single episode of One Piece’s anime or read any of the manga, I enjoyed playing it. You don’t need to have a vast knowledge of the One Piece lore to enjoy this game, as the main storyline introduces you to the characters and locations within the One Piece universe. Overall, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it if you enjoy Dynasty Warriors-like games.
