About five years after the previous chapter of the saga, Bandai Namco and Omega Force release One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, the new entry of the musou based on the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and companions.
From the release of the first trailers, it was immediately clear that the gameplay storyline would go as far as wano, the narrative arc that is currently continuing on the pages of Eichiro Oda's manga.
New playable characters, recreated stages, made bigger and, above all, an even greater number of enemies on the screen: these are the cards that the fourth Pirate Warriors seems to want to play, largely confirming the formula proposed with the previous incarnations of the franchise.
And then we immediately come to the fateful question: Has One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 convinced us? The "secret recipe" of Omega Force is confirmed as a winner this time too? We will try to give the most complete answer possible, but we can anticipate that, this time, something seems to have jammed, and we will explain why in the following lines.
Relive a great saga ... all in one breath!
Let's face it: is there really something that hasn't been said or written about One Piece? Rivers of words have been spent on the mammoth work of Eichiro Oda, almost reaching its XNUMXrd anniversary.
If the first Pirate Warriors had told us about the beginnings of Straw Hat and his singular crew, leading us up to the battle of Marine Ford, if the second chapter of the series was perhaps the most clumsy of the "what ifs" on which the eye human has ever settled, if the third chapter had gone as far as the Dressrosa saga, this fourth episode decides to ... start all over again!
That's right, you got it right: in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 you will relive all (or more or less all) of the main narrative arcs of the manga, starting however from the Alabasta saga. The choice of Bandai Namco is understandable: we want to provide the most complete product possible, both to old players and, above all, to those approaching the franchise, or even One Piece, for the very first time.
The result of this choice, however, is fluctuating, both for technical and "logistical" reasons. As fans of the Oda saga surely know, One Piece is huge, probably the greatest story ever created in the world of manga and beyond, and for this reason it is practically impossible to compress it into a single video game.
For this very reason, they will come skip important sagas and iconic such as, for example, that of Skypiea, that of Thriller Bark, that of Impel Down, etc. who will be given only fleeting hints in the various animated sections (which will often have the role of real "explaners").
In some respects, it would have been preferable to focus on the more recent sagas, like that of Big mom, present in this fourth videogame, or that of wano, also included but whose plot, due to the contemporaneity problems with the manga, is however completely unedited.
In search of the treasure island
By opening the game menu, the most experienced players of the saga will have a sense of déjà vu: the items that we will find before us, in fact, are more or less the same with which we had already interfaced in the previous chapters of Pirate Warriors.
The usual "Narrative Diary"Will open the way to the main narrative arcs of the game plot, which will in fact constitute the main quest. Next to it, we find the "Treasury diary", Dedicated to certain secondary characters of which we will be able to face their respective adventures, divided into" Eastern Sea "," Rotta Maggiore "and" New World ", and not all available immediately.
Finally, we also find the "Free Diary“, With which we will be able to relive the various stages of the Narrative Diary with the characters that we like best to impersonate, after having obviously unlocked them. A modality is added to what has just been said multiplayer online which allows you to tackle certain stages in the company of three other players.
Wanting to renew the formula compared to the past, in Pirate Warriors 4 the Berry and the various coins collected will allow us to progress in different skill trees. These are map-shaped skill trees, with various islands present within them. We will find a "Start Map“, Whose perks extend to the entire roster of fighters, and other maps related to the single character that we intend to use.
In both cases, we will be able to acquire skills, enhance the health, attack, defense, resistance of the fighters who will accompany us on our adventures, being able to enrich their own "technical park" with new combos.
Never change a winning team (?)
By diving into the gameplay of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, we can say with certainty that nothing or almost nothing has changed compared to the recent past of the franchise. Fight against hordes of enemies, which little or nothing will be able to stop our advance, is still the beating heart of the gaming experience.
The combos of the various characters are mapped to just two keys of the pad, while the special techniques can be used with the combined pressure of the previous buttons and the backbones.
The various missions that you will face in the various narrative arcs can be more or less summarized as: defeat the enemy X, conquer the Y area, prevent Tizio from reaching Caio or, in rare cases, press the button to access an otherwise unreachable area.
Depending on the time taken to complete the stage and the number of enemies defeated, you will be assigned a grade and, based on this rating, you will be rewarded with a certain number of Berry and monete, whose function has already been addressed in the previous paragraph.
A gameplay that tastes like you've already seen ...
As you will have easily understood, the formula proposed by the Bandai Namco saga has remained practically intact. The only two novelties consist in the fact that it will now be possible to destroy certain game elements (such as towers, buildings, etc.) and in a roster that comes to include 43 different characters, to which new fighters will be added with subsequent DLCs.
In this respect, we must say that the characters are very well matched, each with their own style, their own aesthetics and, obviously, their own special techniques. high rate of showmanship. However, we must add that most of these moves have a purely aesthetic function, as, to progress in the various stages, you can even limit yourself to the wildest of button mashing.
Love it or hate it, Pirate Warriors is this: a continuum defeat hordes of enemies that they will not offer the slightest resistance, and that they will be able to cause you practically no damage. Some bosses may be a little more challenging, but nothing that can make you fear a premature game over.
However, as said at the beginning, in this fourth chapter of the series something seems to have broken; there background repetitiveness of the gameplay seems to be even more pronounced, and we do not hide from you that, as lovers of the saga, we did not enjoy ourselves as we did previously.
What we saw in Pirate Warriors 4 is too similar to what has already been played in the previous chapters, both from the point of view of the gameplay and from the technical one.
… And a fluctuating technical sector
One of the sides in which this Pirate Warriors 4 limps the most is precisely the technical one. From a graphic point of view, for example, it is surprising that there has not been any step forward compared to the previous chapter of the series, of which there are also some gaps.
The maps of the various stages are very similar to those already seen in the previous incarnations of the franchise, although larger and, in some cases, more confusing, also due to a camera often a dancer, who tends to "get stuck" and to be anything but precise.
The decision to bring more enemies to the screen and to add the "destructibility" of certain parts of the game environment has burdened the graphic engine, which does not always manage to guarantee a stable framerate, which should be an essential feature of this kind of titles. To what has been said, there are also continuous loading screens and not exactly short-lived.
I 3D models of the mobs and almost all the various NPCs that we will meet in the stages are practically the same already seen in all the other Pirate Warriors, with very few changes and very few additions. Among the latter we can include the giant enemies, including Kaido and Big Mom themselves; in these cases, you will have to take a slightly different approach, but not so much as to require an elaborate strategy.
From an aesthetic point of view, however, this Pirate Warriors 4 is the chapter of the saga that disfigures more than its predecessors. It will be that by now the end of this generation is approaching more and more, it will be that by now we are used to an increasingly high graphic detail, but to see some texture so grainy, gods angular 3D models and with some cumbersome animations and often reduced to the bone made us feel very bad, especially in the case of a video game that carries "One Piece" in the title.
Final judgement
But, at the end of the fair, Is One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 fun or not? If this is the question you are asking yourself, the answer we have to give you is: ni. The formula is practically the same we are already abundantly used to, without major variations on the theme: destroy the first horde of enemies, head to zone 1, defeat the boss, and repeat everything. Despite a varied and vast roster of characters like never before, this time the Omega Force recipe seems to have become stale, and probably needs a makeover, both in terms of gameplay and from a graphic and technical point of view. Mostly recommended to die-hard fans of the franchise, One Piece and musou.
