Welcome to Prison Island One Piece: World Seeker is an action-adventure game where you play as Monkey D. Luffy, the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates, from a third person perspective. It is also the first open world title in the series. Having obtained all the base game achievements (I will be returning to the DLC at a later date) and amassing nearly 50 hours, I will be listing all the positives and negatives, so you can decide whether it will be worth your time. Positives + An original story written by series creator Eiichiro Oda. It's nothing groundbreaking, so don't expect the same quality you get from the manga, but it's solid enough to keep you interested until you reach the end. There are two new characters and the villain is ok at best, but he isn't someone who stands out much. + Visually, the game is impressive. From the moment you land on the island, it instantly draws you in. The detail put into the landscape is great. Whether that be a town, city, plaza, naval base, forests, etc. The game does have flaws, but this isn't one. The cutscenes and cinematics all look quite sharp as well. + The map is big. It will take you a fair bit of time to discover and explore everything. You will unlock the use of fast travel later on, but uncovering the map is a fun experience. The island easily feels like something that would fit into the One Piece universe. The wanted posters from the show of the crew and other characters you can find I thought were a nice touch. + There are various skills you can unlock for Luffy through gaining XP from defeating enemies and completing missions. To be precise, six different skill trees are present for you to upgrade. Combat will come across as slow at the start, but this will open up in due time as you get to use a number of abilities. + The Japanese voice actors reprise their roles from their characters in the anime and do an excellent job as you expect. + The story is a suitable length, and that's not taking into account all the sidequests, collectibles, upgrades and working on achievements (if you care). Basically, you will have to put in a considerable number of hours if you want to get everything. There's normally something to do so you won't get bored. + Photo mode allows you to set filters and tweak the appearance settings of pictures in order to take your favourite screenshot. As someone who takes a ton of screenshots of games, a small feature like this goes a long way for me. Just try not to take them all of Nami and Robin if you can help it. + The equipment system enables you to use materials found across the island to craft gear and boost your different styles and customise your own playstyle as you see fit. For example, focus more on observation haki over armament haki or vice versa. You can even upgrade the same equipment more than once to get a superior version, but it's not always guaranteed. + You can collect outfits from arcs of the series and films and then have Luffy change into them at the Thousand Sunny. Negatives - Combat can become somewhat repetitive. Later on in the game, you'll most likely find yourself repeating the same move over and over in battles just to get rid of the enemies faster. - Stealth combat is badly executed. You'll be able to take one target out unaware, but more often than not, groups are so close to one another, they will be alerted straight afterward. - The sniper enemy types can be frustrating beyond belief. One of the most annoying parts about combat in this game is when you get shot backwards, and you lose control of your character for a few seconds. I stuck to normal difficulty throughout my game and thought it was challenging enough, but I can only imagine how horrendous they are on the three higher difficulties. Yes, you read that right. There's hard, very hard and extreme. I wouldn't advise you to go on those, however, but you do you. - Too many of the missions have you doing the same task. Speak to someone - Go to a location - Beat up some pirates or sailors - Head back. They could have freshened it up a little. - The music could have been much better. It sounded generic and sometimes similar. Whether I was in a town, city, or in battle. It was more of the same. Not awful, but not memorable. - Besides the DLC with Law, Sabo and Zoro, you only play as Luffy. It would have been cool to have seen some missions played out as other straw hats rather than simply only talking to them as an NPC. Even if they weren't fleshed out with abilities. - You can't explore the Thousand Sunny fully! Ok, this is a minor gripe, but I would have liked to have seen the inside of the ship. Maybe place some Easter eggs in there from the anime. - The game can stutter and lag in places. Perhaps this was down to my own PC. It wasn't often, and you might have to play around with the screen and graphic settings more than once. - Remember to manually save frequently! The game only autosaves after important story events. I learned the hard way once, that if you die, you lose all progress. Materials gathered, skills unlocked, chests opened, you name it. It was a killer. Don't always rely on autosave. It's better to be safe than sorry. Conclusion Is this the perfect One Piece game? It isn't by a long shot, but do I regret my time with it? Absolutely not. Despite the setbacks it has, if you are into One Piece, there's a strong chance you will become immersed in this game as I was and get hooked. I plan to return in the near future and complete the DLC so I can reach 100%. Far as an open world One Piece game goes, you won't find much better. I do want to try Odyssey out, but as an avid One Piece fan, I can do nothing but highly recommend this. I would suggest you buy it on sale. I wouldn't pay more than £20, and it was under £10 when I bought it. Thank you for reading my review!
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