After 25 years of hanging out with Luffy and friends, Bandai Namco aims to show the One Piece series still has a few tricks up its stretchy sleeves by converting the beloved pirate crew into a proper JRPG. But the challenge in taking one of the most popular names in anime and making it fit the mold of one of the most beloved game genres is not a small one, and so developer I Love Computer Art has switched up many of the fundamentals to make it better suited for the iconic pirate adventure. In my time with it, I was pleasantly surprised how many of these changes felt like improvements over the standard JRPG recipe, and more importantly, made things feel much more in line with what one might expect from One Piece. After three hours running around as Zoro and Chopper, I barely felt like I’d scratched the surface.
One of the major ways One Piece Odyssey mixes up the stock JRPG formula is by doing away with the standard turn-based battle system where your party squares off against a rival group of enemies. While combat is still turn-based with standard attacks, more powerful skills or special abilities that can be activated a limited number of times, and consumables that can be used up, each character was sorted into four different zones and faced their own slate of baddies instead of fighting as a group. Importantly, this did wonders to make combat encounters more closely reflect fighting sequences in the anime, where all members of the Straw Hat Crew are strong enough to swat aside numerous enemies on their own and show off their mad skills. It was also nice that every character got their time in the spotlight, as I was compelled to use them equally to get through encounters, whereas in traditional JRPGs it might be more expedient to just take out the enemy using my most powerful characters and make short work of the enemy. And luckily, if one character dealt with their enemies early, I was able to direct them to help out nearby allies and wrap things up more quickly.
Even more interesting though, was a unique new feature called “Dramatic Scenes,” that would sometimes occur during combat. These sequences interrupt your regularly scheduled butt-whooping to interject some drama that adds some special challenge or twist in the story, and it was easily one of the coolest things I saw in my time with Odyssey. In one example, Usopp was ganged up on by a group of enemies and I had to rush in and save him before he was taken out, and in another I had to finish off a boss using Loofy to prove my rightful place as pirate captain. I didn’t see enough of these encounters to get an idea of how common they are or if they’re randomly triggered, but the idea was interesting enough to keep me on my toes (and was a nice break from standard turn-based battles that can get repetitive).
“Sometimes you’re just in a mood to run around as a pirate reindeer, y’know what I mean?”
Another great way Odyssey impressed me was in the variety of ways I was able to explore its areas, specifically the ability to instantly switch between One Piece’s cast of playable characters, each with their own abilities. Usopp had the ability to snipe things with his slingshot, making him very useful in knocking down items tucked away somewhere up high, while I was able to slash through troublesome obstacles using Zoro. Swapping between characters while running around Arabasta opened up completely new possibilities depending on who I was controlling at the time, and gave me plenty of reasons to backtrack in search of new pathways and hidden items or side quests. Plus, it was just nice to be able to switch between different characters to mix things up – sometimes you’re just in a mood to run around as a pirate reindeer, y’know what I mean?
But while I was mostly pleased by Odyssey’s efforts to mix up JRPG conventions with some fresh new takes, there were certainly other areas that made me raise an eyebrow, like their insistence on sticking with static save points – a JRPG mechanic I’ve long despised. I’m largely a fan of JRPGs, but part of me hopes Odyssey won’t stop at the few evolutions I got to experience so far. Either way, I’m looking forward to continuing my pirate adventure when One Piece Odyssey is released on January 12.
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