One Piece is a pop-culture behemoth that, unaccountably, never gained traction outside of Japan. Officially the biggest-selling manga comic series ever, it is now celebrating its 25th anniversary, and One Piece Odyssey honours that milestone. Previous attempts to expand this fun-loving pirate crew’s story beyond comic books have lacked credibility, but with this game, Bandai Namco goes a long way towards redressing the balance.
It is, simply, the One Piece game that fans have been crying out for all this time: a classic, 40-hour-plus Japanese RPG that brings in all the genre’s best-loved elements (and some lesser-loved ones). It has turn-based battles, embellished with retina-frazzling special moves that emphasise each characters’ style and abilities; bizarre, often baffling terminology; layers of side-quests and sub-quests sprinkled with puzzle sequences; and an obsession with cooking and food. The only thing it lacks is a fishing mini-game.
Story-wise, in keeping with the comics, it’s bonkers. Forget coherence, but expect quirkiness. Main character Luffy and his motley band of Straw Hat Pirates are marooned on the mysterious island Waford, deprived of their powers by local resident Lim. Swiftly realising that Luffy and co aren’t like other pirates (they’re too nice, for one thing), she then helps them to regain those powers via epic quests set in recognisable places from the One Piece canon, reconstructed from the crew’s memories.
This narrative conveniently allows you to build up your characters from scratch, shaping them to a large extent, and one of One Piece Odyssey’s strengths is that the characters’ signature abilities feed into both battling and puzzle-solving. Luffy has a body made from rubber, so he can launch barrages of punches on distant enemies, or extend an arm to reach inaccessible areas, or catapult enemies across the battlefield. The game divides its battlefields into areas, giving characters close-up and ranged special attacks that can be applied to a single enemy, or several. It introduces a welcome, fresh strategic element to what could otherwise have felt overfamiliar.
One Piece Odyssey isn’t perfect: it takes a while to hit its stride, and it’s hard to ignore the scantily clad, anatomically unfeasible presentation of two of its female characters. That feels at odds with the game’s general vibe of naivety and sweetness, which at times treads the sort of territory occupied by the Zelda and Ni no Kuni games. Its overall theme is an examination of the nature of friendship, although thankfully, it’s too funny and bizarre to ever become twee.
This is a distinctive, appealing example of the JRPG genre that also nails the essence of the One Piece universe. Fans from both worlds will adore it, and I found it to be a perfect appetiser as I await The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom later this year.
One Piece Odyssey is out now; £49.99
