(jazz music)
- [Mitchell] I love One Piece.
I love its world, its characters, its sense of humor,
all of which are wonderfully realized
in One Piece: World Seeker.
It's an original adventure
that actually delivers a pretty solid story
with interesting new characters
written by Eiichiro Oda himself.
The only problem is that in order to see that story,
you have to play One Piece: World Seeker,
which is about 20 hours of boring, repetitive, and at times,
downright infuriating open-world gameplay.
(jazz music)
Though it starts slow and the sheer volume
of inconsequential side quests
get in the way of the main plot,
the overarching story is by far
the best part of World Seeker.
Prison Island is an interesting setting
that I was happy to learn more about.
And the two original characters,
John, and the warden, Isaac,
wound up being the highlights
as the story approaches its climax
and surprisingly emotional ending.
It helps that it looks way better than it plays.
And while it's not all voice-acted,
the big moments are told
with beautifully-rendered cut scenes
featuring the Japanese voice cast.
(game character speaking in Japanese)
Unfortunately, while the story
gets much better as it goes on,
the actual gameplay of World Seeker does not.
(characters grunting and screaming)
(punches and kicks thumping)
World Seeker is a formulaic open-world adventure,
which means you'll spend a lot of time following way points,
finding treasure chests
that take an excruciatingly long time to open,
(water whooshing)
(bell chimes) (chest creaks)
and taking on tedious missions
that either have you going to a spot,
beating up a bunch of dudes,
or collecting a bunch of meaningless sparklies.
Combat in World Seeker is just as repetitive
and boring as its missions are.
The limited variety of enemies barely do anything
that would require you to give any thought
to how you would take them down whatsoever.
For the most part, it didn't matter
which of Luffy's two hockey stances I used,
because I could just get up in their face
and mindlessly mash the same button
until everything was dead.
There are a few enemies
like the shielded marines and robots
that required me to use my ranged attacks.
But apart from that,
almost every fight against regular enemies
played out the exact same way.
That got old within a hour,
and there were 19 more to play.
Sure, getting the bazooka skill and the armor man stance
gave me a way to deal huge damage to single targets,
but ultimately, all it did was make it
so that instead of running into a fight,
pressing one button a bunch of times,
I just ran into a fight holding one button
for a few seconds.
The issues in its combat and mission design
go way beyond just repetition, though.
There are insta-fail stealth missions
despite the fact there are basically zero stealth mechanics,
needle-in-a-haystack missions where you must talk
to virtually every NPC on the island,
and the worst is the required treasure hunt mission
with an extremely misleading map.
(intense whooshing)
(character screams)
World Seeker gets close
to making navigating its large open world of joy
with Spider-Man like movement,
but doesn't quite hit the mark here either.
While Peter Parker has a whole assortment
of moves designed to keep his momentum going
despite just about any obstacle,
Luffy's movement is much more stop-and-go.
He can't run up walls.
He only has one air dash that can only be used
once he loses momentum.
And while his UFO ability can extend his range,
it feels sluggish and isn't super satisfying to use.
Not to mention the fact that if you try to rock it around
any heavily-guarded city or base,
snipers will just shoot you out of the sky,
forcing you to take the long way around.
Fortunately, there's a generous fast-travel system.
Perhaps the biggest shame about World Seeker
is that One Piece's greatest strength is in its characters.
And yet, the rest of the crew
are not much more than glorified NPCs.
None of them are playable
so the entire burden of 20 plus hours of gameplay
falls squarely on Luffy's rubbery shoulders.
(comet whooshing)
(comet explodes) (Luffy grunts)
(jazz music)
World Seeker looks the part
of a breakout single-player One Piece game
but its many problems become apparent
almost immediately after picking up the controller.
Repetitive combat, cumbersome movement controls,
and a few outstandingly bad missions get in the way
of what otherwise would've been
a very respectable One Piece story.
Quite simply, One Piece deserves better.
(characters screaming in foreign language)
(punches thumping)
For more anime games,
check out our reviews of Jump Force, Dragon Ball FighterZ,
and for something completely different,
check out my review for Devil May Cry 5.
And for everything else, keep it here on IGN.
(jazz music)