[Review] One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4

[Destrix]

“One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4” is the fourth game in the series of “One Piece” inspired games in the “Warriors” franchise.

The previous three games had already covered the bulk of the story arcs, plus some fanfiction of their own, but “Pirate Warriors 4” again throws you back to the Alabasta Arc, and moves forward through the time skip into the current events of the manga. However, the game has a habit of skipping big chunks of the story, and remedies this by providing cinematic cutscene synopses of what transpired.

However, if you thought they’d put in the actual important details, you’d be wrong. Even in the story arcs the game does actively cover, pretty much every vital story detail is removed for absolutely no reason. And this doesn’t keep to skimping on story details, this extends as far as removing innumerable characters from the narrative as well.

For example, following the tutorial mission, the first cinematic opens up and brings us back to Luffy’s childhood and his meeting with the pirate “Red Haired” Shanks. As Shanks is saying farewell to Luffy, giving him the iconic straw hat, the player can see the many copy-pasted background characters you fight through in the game as crew members for Shanks, the same character models used in the first “Pirate Warriors” game.

Those filler models wouldn’t be an issue if the developers actually took the time to put in the real members of Shank’s crew. These characters are not a mystery. We’ve known who they are since the very first chapter of “One Piece.” Lucky Roo, Ben Beckman, Yassop… all of these characters don’t even exist in the game, the latter of which being Ussop’s father.

All they had to do was stand there. They didn’t need to move, and they didn’t need to talk. They just should have been in the background.

And later, in the Marineford arc, where we got the legendary scene of Shanks appearing with his crew behind him in the manga, “Pirate Warriors 4” instead gave us Shanks alone with the fodder enemy models as his crew. Seriously?

Moving on into the story, all the Number Agents of the Baroque Work criminal organization have been stripped from the story, save for Mr. 2 and Mr. 1, meaning we didn’t even get to see Nami, Ussop, or Chopper in their iconic fights during that arc. And to my greatest dismay, Carue the duck was omitted, despite being a vital piece to the outcome of that story arc, and a temporary member of the straw hat crew just like Vivi.

           

Helmeppo, Jewelry Bonney, “Mad Monk” Urouge, Scratchmen Apoo, eleven of Whitebeards division commanders and all the captains of his allied fleet, every member of Blackbeard’s crew besides Burgess, most of Luffy’s grand fleet, none of these characters even appear in stagnant cutscene images, and the list goes on and on.

Finally, to add to the list of sins, the game takes entire cutscenes from the previous games and reuses them here. I’m serious. I checked. People who’ve played the previous installments are going to notice some striking similarities, and the graphics aren’t too much in these cutscenes either.

To be fair, if it covers the same story arc, it should have the same cutscenes in general, but what they did was they took what they’ve already done and just pasted back into this game and re-sold it to the player. That goes for some cutscenes, the fodder character models, etc.

On the other hand, the characters that do show up tend to have pretty well made 3D models (except for the crying animation. The tears actually look terrible), and I generally didn’t have any problems with the maps and characters in game. While the combat was just mashing buttons and had little to no depth to it, as a “One Piece” fan it’s a fun experience to run around using the various abilities at the characters’ disposal.

However, detail again seems to be the biggest hindrance to this game. It’s in the story, it’s in the characters and it’s in the combat too.

           

Moving through the story of the game, we started off in Alabasa, a relatively early story arc. So you would think that abilities characters develop later wouldn’t show up until later, right? Wrong! The developers actually gave Zoro access to his ranged attack, the 32 Pound Hawk Cannon, right of the bat as his charged attack, despite this not being something he develops until Skypiea.

Secondly, one of Luffy’s basic attack combos involves his use of the Gomu-Gomu no Fuusen, a technique he doesn’t actively employ in basic combat in the manga. Otherwise, there are a number of other things thrown into the game, such as Ussop being able to put people to sleep somehow, but all those are minor things to make those characters more combat viable in-game.

What I’m trying to get at is, there is very little attention to detail across the game.

There are things I like though. For one, the title screen camera shifts it’s view around the Straw Hats’ ship, be it the Going Merry or the Thousand Sunny, as the player advances through the game, showing off different members of the crew. And the models in all these scenes really do look good.

 

          

Furthermore, from the hub of the title screen, the player is able to navigate through glossary pages, the game’s soundtrack, a gallery of models and images, and all of the game’s cutscenes. You can also choose from a number of game modes, from the Dramatic Log, the Free Log, and the Treasure Log, all together resulting in a large amounts of maps and scenarios to play in with a big cast of playable fighters.

The game even offers online play where you can fight against other players, adding to the fun of running around as your favorite characters, destroying buildings and plowing through endless masses of fodder characters.

And for the most part, once you have your characters at their full abilities, they are generally faithful to their canon counterparts, complete with customizable special-move sets and different combo attacks. You can even change the clothes your character is wearing if you’ve unlocked different sets for them from across the series.

                 

 

I mean, running across Sabaody Archipelago as Trafalgar Law and stealing peoples’ hearts, but dressed in a Dynasty Warriors outfit, is pretty cool.

When I first turned on the game and loaded into the tutorial mission, I was stoked at using all the powers of Luffy and going head to head against Big Mom and Kaido. It’s a cool feeling to say the least.

Despite that, the spectacle of the game really does fall flat on its face when everything that makes “One Piece” great gets stripped away from it.

As far as a game adaptation goes, I don’t think “Pirate Warriors 4” does a great job, but it isn’t terrible either. If you’re a fan of “One Piece” you’ll probably get enjoyment out of the game, more so online or in the Free Log. But as far as the Dramatic Log is concerned, its generally not the fighting that fans cite when talking about how good “One Piece” is, it’s in the writing.

“Pirate Warriors 4” throws good storytelling to the wind.

I’d really only recommend this game to people who are already fans of “One Piece” and know the story going in. Furthermore, it’s very possible fans of the series won’t get too much enjoyment out of the game due to its simplistic button mashing.

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