A basic turn-based RPG within the fashion of Dragon Quest is not the primary place to go after I consider recreation genres, as One Piece Odyssey proved. It is really sort of an important match. Straw hats make one hell of a celebration for RPG characters; Ichiro Oda’s one-of-a-kind artwork fashion lends itself to populating the world with whimsical and enjoyable creatures. And the over-the-top nature of battles lifted from precise manga and anime supplies loads of materials for among the coolest (and funniest) particular assaults I’ve seen in any turn-based RPG. These fights would have been higher in the event that they had been a extra constant problem, and I might do with a bit extra backtracking in areas I’ve already explored, however that is nonetheless a surprisingly satisfying JRPG that does not rely.
The story begins with Luffy and his crew out of the blue discovering themselves stranded on the mysterious Wofford Island. They quickly meet two major characters, Lim and Adio, who understandably have a deep religion in gangsters. So after they first meet, they steal the Straw Hats’ energy, giving Luffy and firm a handy technique to clarify why they do not win each battle by taking a look at their enemies. (However that may come later.)
What follows is a superb story that performs out on two fronts: the journey in Wafford sees the Straw Hats making an attempt to assist Adio and Lim defeat a number of elemental colossi accountable for an enormous storm across the island (I do know, what is the worst that may occur?); And one other that performs in Memoria, a reminiscence world created by Lim’s distinctive abilities that permits the Straw Hats to revisit sure locations and occasions of their historical past. The revelations and twists will not shock anybody, however I nonetheless loved each side of the Odyssey story. Lim, particularly, is a superb addition to the solid, and I beloved watching her go from being very reserved and chilly to being drawn to the crew and infrequently being charmed by every of their whims, and ultimately accepting the Straw Hats as her buddies. .
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It needs to be famous that Odyssey is aimed immediately at longtime One Piece followers, selecting up the story after the Dressrosa arc (in 750 episodes). present This makes it a troublesome advice for anybody new to the sequence, however when you’re deeply invested on this planet and characters of One Piece, there are some actually nice payoffs in Memoria’s chapters. These “what if” situations enable the crew to revisit key moments from the sequence with new views. Even small issues, just like the crew seeing the Going Merry cease at Alabasta, are {powerful} emotional gut-wrenching moments for a longtime fan like myself. Moments like these are the guts of the One Piece Odyssey story, they usually’re dropped at life brilliantly with writing that is utterly on par with the anime and manga, nice performances, and a improbable artwork fashion that completely captures One Piece’s distinctive fashion. Slice into 3D
Piece of straw hat
One Piece Odyssey’s fight is refreshingly easy, although simplicity seems to be a double-edged sword. Conventional turn-based fight is enhanced by rock/paper/scissors logic, which assigns a kind of energy, pace, or method injury to every social gathering member, enemy, and boss. Energy beats pace, method beats energy, and pace beats method. What makes this method work is that there isn’t any conventional flip order, and you might be free to decide on any character you wish to take step one in battle. Even when 4 characters aren’t in your energetic social gathering, freely swap them with out taking turns. You may also attempt to plan which of your enemies will take their flip and so forth. As soon as all 4 characters in your energetic social gathering have acted, the fight spherical ends and everybody can act once more.
One complication of all that is that there are a lot of zones within the battlefield, and to ensure that a personality to maneuver from one to a different, they have to first defeat all of the enemies in their very own zone. So on paper there’s some technique for deciding which of your characters ought to assault first. For instance, there’s a group of enemies in a single zone which can be weak to method, however my strongest technical character, Zoro, is caught in a zone with one enemy that’s weak to hurry. I might have Usopp, my character of pace, go first utilizing ranged assaults to hit enemies in different zones to free Zoro; Then Zoro can clear the opposite zone with one assault the place he hits a number of enemies.
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That is an instance of how the technique works. can They got here to play. The issue is that One Piece Odyssey is just too simple for 95% of the battles, so technique is not a lot wanted and there is not any technique to repair it. I by no means grinded – the truth is, I bumped into many enemies that might have given me extra – and nonetheless many enemies that took me 40 or extra hours to achieve the top. A lot of this stems from the Dramatic Scenes system, which randomly provides you an additional objective throughout sure enemy encounters. They’re virtually all the time easy, like “defeat an enemy earlier than a crew member falls,” however the bonuses they award are astronomical, generally doubling or tripling the price of a combat. I fought packs of rats that gave me extra exp than the chapter-ending boss battles. That appears unbalanced.
There is a vital bump in problem in the direction of the top, however even then I by no means felt prefer it made for tougher or notably fascinating battles. It compelled me to pay extra consideration to my characters’ gear loadout, which is at the least fascinating in itself. As an alternative of discovering new weapons or armor, you may discover equipment of assorted styles and sizes that it’s essential to match onto an ever-expanding grid. It is a very versatile system the place you may assign your individual roles to every character and simply change them if you wish to give attention to a selected character or strengthen a selected character. You can also make Nami an enormous injury vendor by loading her up with an assault weapon, which is extremely efficient as she will hit each single character within the zone for a restricted period of time. Lastly, you may mix these artifacts and achieve the power so as to add as much as 4 results to them, turning your social gathering into an absolute beast. It lets you change.
Regardless of the dearth of rigidity in the course of the battles, I nonetheless loved Odyssey’s fight general, primarily as a result of the particular talents are so enjoyable to look at. They nail the look, impression, and irony present in all of Straw Hat’s fashionable assaults. The ridiculousness of Usopp’s Rubber Band of Doom, absolutely the badassness of Zoro’s strikes, or the sheer destruction of Luffy’s Gear third and 4th talents. The eye to element in how the builders took these improbable strikes from the supply materials and put them into Odyssey is actually one thing to behold.
In reminiscence
In your journey via Memoria, you may go to 4 main areas from One Piece of Historical past, and developer ILCA did a tremendous job of constructing each really feel like an actual, lived-in atmosphere. The Kingdom of Alabasta is huge, with two bustling cities to go to – Nanohana and Alubarna – and huge deserts connecting them. Water Seven has the vibe of a cool Venice with its many streets and rivers operating via it. And even when it is simply to discover it after the birdhouse-related insanity descends, there is a chilling sense of unhappiness and profound loss as you stroll the streets of the lately destroyed Kingdom of Dressrosa.
Among the many 4, Alabasta’s first memorial website was the one one which overstayed its welcome. The principle mission decks take the sting off by switching you backwards and forwards between areas you’ve got already visited, sending you a number of missions, and forcing your method via fantastical dungeons. It is a gradual burn to get to the true meat of the story you are leveling up, and it is repetitive as a result of you aren’t getting any new methods or talents, particularly as you degree up. As an alternative, you solely unlock a number of talents on the finish of the chapter, which makes progress really feel uneven. So it is simply hours of largely the identical battles with the identical enemies till you attain the top of this extraordinarily lengthy chapter.
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It was particularly arduous for me as a result of Alabasta is one among my private favourite One Piece arcs. Fortuitously, the others strike a greater steadiness by relegating extra menial duties to non-obligatory facet missions, highlighting their major mission and specializing in the story, of which there are a lot of, although few of them had been actually compelling to begin or rewarding to finish. Domains of Hysteria are an exception, as they reward at the least three social gathering members with neat group particular strikes for one super-powerful assault.
Outdoors of Memoria you may discover a handful of extra puzzle-based dungeons, which usually require you to make use of every character’s distinctive discipline methods. Luffy can use grapple factors to cross gaps and seize gadgets from a distance, Usopp can use his slingshot to knock over gadgets or activate sure switches from a distance, Zorro cuts via metallic doorways, and Chopper suits via small passages and hidden entry. areas. None of those talents improve the puzzles or exploration in any vital method, however they do a great job of adjusting the visible design of the frontier, including some hidden collectibles off the overwhelmed path, and letting you do one thing aside from stroll. Combating enemies for hours alongside the best way.
