Saturday, September 26, 2015

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 Review (from a One Piece fan)

I am a huge One Piece fan. I read the manga, I watch the show in both english sub and dub and I plan to buy merch when I actually get some money to do so. That by no means indicates that this game will easily impress me. Quite the contrary actually. Being a rather big fan of the show, I was incredibly critical of the game. Especially when it came to lore friendly-ness. So did it live up to the name of my favorite show of all time?



Story

The games Legend Log goes through the main parts of the Straw Hat Pirate's adventure. Once you beat a level in Legend Log, you can use any character you unlocked to play that level again in Free Log mode. Along with that, there is also Dream Log mode where you can unlock characters and coins by playing certain pre-made scenarios.

Gameplay

If you played One Piece Pirate Warriors 1 or 2, you pretty much know what to expect. The basic Musou gameplay of wailing on thousands of weaklings and the occasional strong baddie. They have added a few new features this time around. One such feature is the Kizuna Rush system. The Kizuna Rush System involves a bar in your HUD filling up as you fight baddies and lowering when you receive damage. The bar has 3 levels. level 1 doesn't really do anything special but level 2 allows you to summon a team mate to unleash an attack by pressing an extra button at the end of your combos. If you fill the bar all of the way, you can activate Kizuna Rush. With this active, each enemy you defeat gives you “!” (The means by which your characters level up) and “Beli” (The currency of the game). As you level up, you unlock new combos and more power for your characters. Defeating strong characters also gives you a coin of that character which can be used to increase your stats.
Each character has 2 separate kinds of levels. The first kind of level goes up to level 5. Each level unlocks a new thing with the 3rd and 4th unlocking character head shots and voice gallery for that character. A very nice touch if you are a hardcore One Piece fan. The second kind of level goes up to level 50. This is what actually increases your characters stats. The level cap can actually be moved up to 100 if you unlock all of the required coins.

Music

The music was a bit lack luster. The songs aren't bad but they aren't really good either. Just kinda meh. Also, right before you start a map, there is an annoying and unneeded 5 second loop of a song that will repeat over and over until you start the game. Why they didn't use one of the many ACTUAL SONGS I will never know.

Graphics

I wasn't expecting breath taking graphics and I got exactly what I was expecting. The graphics are mediocre with the exception of during the cinematic cutscenes. These cutscenes look beautiful and were a treat to view. Not so say they are stunningly realistic. They are beautifully stylized while still keeping faithful to the art style of the show. However, (and this may be because I have the PC version). The character's skin during the comic strip cutscenes look . . . . . really just awful. What is supposed to be sweat is poorly done and just makes the characters look terrible with the sweat textures phasing in and out of their bodies.

Lore Friendliness

I feel as though it is necessary to add in this extra category for this game. I was pleasantly surprised with how well this game stuck to the One Piece lore. From Usopp not being effected by Perona's Negative Hollows to Sanji being very weak against female enemies. Should not disappoint.

Overall

I enjoyed this game and I still play it with over 90 hours played on it. I still have yet to unlock every single character. I have about 5 more to go. I really wish there were certain people I could play as that were only available as support characters. I will not divulge any of the playable characters because I believe part of the fun of playing is discovering who you get to be. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

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