Review: One Piece Pirate Warriors 4

I’m a sucker for musou-games if that’s a term that you don’t know it means a game with large-scale fighting. Killing hundreds of enemies or even thousands in a single mission, it is epic and being so overpowered gives you a special kind of feeling. Dynasty Warriors is my favorite in this genre, although the latest one was a big disappointment. I’m totally over that bummer since One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 released all the way back in April. For me, this is one of the best Koei Tecmo games on Xbox! Even for gamers who aren’t really into the genre, I would still recommend trying this game.

What we liked!

• Ultimate love for One Piece franchise! No less than 43 characters playable One Piece characters, all of them have specific powerful moves that allow for different playstyles. And a flesh out story mode that follows Luffy and his crew through multiple storylines from the original Japanese manga. While I am not really familiar with the franchise it was immediately obvious that it focuses on brand loyalty. The same distinct characterization and funny moments can be found in One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, making it one of the best video games that you can buy as a fan!
• Impressive visuals: There is something particularly impressive about joggling hundreds of enemies in the air in the colorful and detailed worlds from One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, all with perfect performance. I never noticed a dip in frame rates or engine struggles, after Dynasty Warriors 9 it is surprising and hopeful that Koei Tecmo managed to accomplish this. The hack-and-slash nature is more fun with many enemies and they don’t fail on that important part too, I never saw so many fighters on one screen before with so many different locations. Absolutely fantastic work!
• Content: The game has been out for months and I’m still playing it, it is without a doubt one of my most played games of 2020. The Story mode is robust and with some heavy RPG elements to improve every character. The leveling system allows for new move sets and skills making the impressive fights even more devastating.

Somewhere between

• Quite repetitive: You either love or hate this kind of games, I personally just don’t get tired of the required button-mashing and constant fighting against dumb AI enemies. It helps a lot that you play many different characters who use different fighting tactics but the heart of the game remains a musou-game…

What we disliked

• Without One Piece knowledge, things will get confusing: The game tries to inform players about what One Piece is and you’ll understand half of it. It just requires some pre-knowledge to follow the large story mode, it doesn’t really help that cutscenes and brief conversations are all in Japanese. Obviously you have dialogues but who reads that with full attention? Especially with flashy and brutal fight cutscenes?
• Constant resetting of the camera: My one and only complaint are that you have to constantly manually reset the camera because it completely fails to follow a boss or region captain. (a slightly more difficult to defeat mob with a bigger health pool) This becomes an issue with larger boss fights as the camera gets stuck behind every house or even small rock. Fixing this is easy with manually pressing the camera lock button but it is far from user-friendly.