Rubber Arm Bandit Misfits
Following on from it’s PlayStation, Xbox and Windows release One Piece Odyssey has finally shipped it’s way to the Nintendo Switch in the form of a Deluxe Edition but is it a Pirates life for you or a sunken ship better left in the depths? Read on to find out.
One Piece is a well established manga and anime series well known in Japan that follows a band of misfit adventurers, the stories are usually built on wackiness, humour and its storytelling. One Piece Odyssey is a game that follows that formula but envelopes it into a JRPG, with quests, turn based battles and a story that fans will pretty much fall in love with.
The story follows D. Luffy and his fellow band of pirates as they lose all of their power and fall deserted to an island. The games premise is set up quite well although the beginning of the game has you navigating small areas whilst a lot of tutorials play out with small segments of gameplay thrown in. You will almost obliterate all enemies that stand in your way before you are soon stripped of your powers by a local mysterious girl for the sole reason of that she hates pirates. Your characters shrug it off like Okay we will just get them back and then the adventure really begins. This sets the tone of what is to come as the game is very eccentric in all aspects and does not stop.
In the first hour of the game you may ask why these characters all have rubber arms and why is everyone so mismatched in the way they dress? Well this follows the popular manga stories that has been versed for some time now so if you are playing this game for the first time like me without any prior knowledge to the books it all feels odd but once you get past the initial crux of it all there is some fun in the game to be had.
As you navigate the world you will use your characters abilities to navigate such as using Luffies stretchy arms to reach across deep chasms, there are areas of interest and Items lying around either on the ground or in pots and other smashable objects. Enemies themselves can be seen on the map and you will approach them to initiate combat.
Combat takes place in a separate field to navigating and requires you to tactfully take out the enemies who are if not just as strange as the characters of One Piece Odyssey. The combat can also be jarring at first even for veteran JRPG players. Battles can have each character in a different area of the battle fighting different foes to that of your comrades however this is not really explained. Characters have an advantage over certain monsters that essentially plays like rock-paper-scissors. The three attack types are technique which beats power, power which beats speed and speed which beats technique. It’s a little confusing at first but at least the game tells you if your current character is strong against the monster that you’re up against. Switching out characters can see you overcome this advantage but allowing the team to come together in the battle is the overall goal. I would say that the early battles are relatively easy anyway so it gives you enough time to get used to this system and if you can’t then you can still breeze through the story. Battles also use a TP system, TP is a power that can be accumulated by attacking normally and then used to carry out special attacks, it can also carry over into future battles allowing you to easily build it up for the more bigger fights.
Character abilities are equally just as weird as the rest of One Piece. Nico Robin has a move where she literally causes manhood inducing pain, ouch! it didn’t really occur to me what was going on until I saw the crotch view of the camera which became apparent after a few times using it. Usopp has move where he flicks a rubber band which lands poorly on the ground in front of him but dishes out huge damage on the enemy. It makes no sense but with what we have already seen of the game then I think we can let it slide.
If you’re into the super weird wacky world of One Piece then this game may be just the thing. There are new features in the game which will alleviate you from the main story such as side quests and crafting but these are by no means a requirement. The game remains relatively easy and grind free. The characters themselves while vividly different all have their own personality and clearly different traits but are all very likeable.
The games sound and music is really superb and some of the music later differs in that it grand and orchestral and sets the tone. The game has an English language but unfortunately lacks an English dub so a lot of the humour may be lost in translation however it is still a blast to play.
Performance on the Switch so far has been really good and there have been no noticeable frame drops during docked and undocked mode, while the game is not remarkable graphically it is good enough, the game whilst vibrant, graphics have definitely been toned down for it’s Switch version but if you want the full experience that can be played on the go this may just be the best way to play One Piece Odyssey.
A Nintendo Switch review code was provided by Bandai Namco
