Out of all the One Piece games that have been released since I got into the series, this was the one I was least interested in getting for a few reasons. It is yet another Musou game and unlike the other games in the series, it only covers a few of the major arcs instead of the entire story. Since there was absolutely no way I would willingly pay the full $60 to play this, I decided to wait until it was cheap enough to be worth purchasing. It may not be the best Pirate Warriors entry or One Piece game, but there was still enough to make the $20 I decided to spend on playing this worth it.

The most noteworthy thing to mention is this game got a complete visual overhaul. One thing that always peeved me when I played through the other 3 games is that they all looked the same. Not only does it look different but the visuals are quite pretty too. The extra detail added complemented by the new graphical overhaul make most of the stages look almost identical to how they look in the show. Some of the characters also received updates to their moveset which was a breath of fresh air as the other 3 games pretty much reused the same moveset for each character. These were changes that had to be made at some point and they were handled beautifully. However, there are other changes that prevent this from being the definitive Pirate Warriors game.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 1 & 3 each covered most of if not all of the story. This game only has Alabasta, Enies Lobby, Marineford, Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island, and Wano which has an original story since the arc wasn't even close to being finished in either the anime or manga. It is a major step back from those two games in terms of recapping the story for fans and newcomers to One Piece. Even though the roster adds some of the new characters introduced in the most recent arcs & some other characters that could have been added in other entries like Kidd and Hawkins, there are a good amount of cuts. The most notable cuts being Garp, Moria, Eneru, and Kuma. All of whom I don't think should have been cut.

Even with some of the bad choices they took with this game, it was still an enjoyable experience which is why I rated it a 3.5/5. If you've played one or all of the other games and want a slightly different Musou then I could still recommend playing it but not at full price. For those new to the Pirate Warriors games or One Piece in general, it's better than the first two games, but in terms of story & content Pirate Warriors 3 is the way to go.

I just recently caught up on One Piece after watching it for the first time and became an absolutely die-hard fan
of One Piece and Eiichirō Oda's work. So I decided to play One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 and it was the second musou game the I played if you take Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle into consideration. The gameplay loop is very repetitive but enjoyable enough for me thanks to these iconic characters and all their different powers, which give 's you some sort of variety inn the gameplay. But only if you're not like me, who just played as Zoro for 90% of the game. I also love that they included the characteristics of the characters like Sanji's disadventage regading fighting against women, the game even gives you a warning if you choose to play as him in certain mission. The part that I liked the most is the Coop aspect of the game, it makes it so much more fun and I loved the teamwork of the Straw Hats in the dight against Big Mom. But the graphics can be bit weird since they are 3D and not 2D like in the Anime and in addition, the graphics are not the prettiest either and not very detailed.
The decision to skip large portions of the story like Skypia made Nico Robin's character development feel very rushed when you jump straight into Water 7 and Enies Lobby. You can't really understand why the Straw Hats want to save her because you've only spend a few minutes with her. The same applies for Brook and the Thriller Bark arc. I can definitely see this be a problem for people who aren't familiar with the source material. But if you are familiar with One Piece the iconic moments still hit hard and Nico Robin's "I want to live" scene gave me teary eyes again. I didn't like that they have changed so many scenes and that the Wano arc is a game original. Which means that many important characters like Yamato in Wano or Pedro in Whole Cake are missing and they add new characters which weren't present in that part of the story. There is also no Gear 5 because the whole Raid on Onigashima comes with paid dlc which isn't tbe best choice. I would have liked it more of they either created a completly new story for the game like they did with Wano or wait until you can adapt the complet story from the manga/anime. Overall a enjoyable game for fans of One Piece and it's even more fun with a friend. But sadly it only covers some major Arc's and not the entire story.

Games I finished in 2023 Ranked

Actually a really good Musou game. Most of the characters are really fun to play (except Bege fuck Bege) with some good missions, as well as being able to customize your special loadout, as well as a shared upgrade map for all characters undoing the usual grindiness of other musou games. Captures the spirit of the manga greatly. Only issue is when you lose a mission you can't switch characters without ending the mission entirely. Also you can't play as Perona, Kuma, or Garp so it loses points for that

This is such a terrible game I can't fully express it.

Usually these cheap, awkward, ugly, rushed out abominations known as 'anime games' are, at the very least, fun for the fans. But I can't in good faith recommend buying, let alone playing this game to anyone. It looks awful, has grade-C animations, the character designs are pre-Wano Toei level at best, the UI is awful beyond belief, the gameplay is repetitive and runs out of steam 2 minutes in, and, like stated previously, the fan-service is bad or just not really there. With these cheap, awkward, ugly, and etc and etc fan-serice games, usually you can at least count on the fans being serviced, but this game somehow doesn't even manage that. Its just another empy shell wearing the ragged, dried-out skin of your favourite characters, and the skin is not even the shell's size. But I guess we ARE talking One Piece fans - people infamous for automatically loving everything that has One Piece on it - even if it's a passionless cheap ugly awkward etc etc cash-grab that doesn't build on the original work, or adapt it in any interesting way, and only exploits it's popuarity. And with this kinda fan-base, it's not a surprise that this game is even remotely positively received, even though there's honestly nothing of worth to be found here.

The only good thing about this game - it's kinda cool controlling these characters and hearing them say one-liners for a few minutes. Also the music is alright

Gave this a quick re-evaluation before I started my new musou marathon in earnest.

My existing feelings haven't really changed, so here's some new ones bullet-pointed:

- Story mode is alright but it suffers from an issue most modern musous have wherein it's so highly scripted that you can very easily outpace it. Especially notable on boss-only levels, where it's pathetically easy to beat the fight before the exchanges end.

- So much content has been grandfathered in from older games that in terms of consistency this game is a fucking mess. Music from all 3 previous games shows up and leavers this game with 3 types of song: Penis music, elevator music, and Dynasty Warriors buttrock. Story arcs that were covered in PW3 often reuse that game's cutscenes wholesale, and many NPCs just use their portraits and even moveset from that game. It's especially notable with Tashigi, who has been almost entirely untouched since PW3 and is now bottom-tier because of it.

- Difficulty is whack. GirlNamedYou said it on my last review, but in the postgame Omega Force simply give up and stat-bloat everyone. Unlike many other musous, simply styling on enemies to prevent them attacking isn't an option; you need to bloat your own stats. Why? Because someone apparently thought it was a good idea to give enemies the ability to cancel out of combos whenever they wanted, getting temporary (or for Logias, permanent) super armor and a resistance to being launched or staggered. I hope whoever designed the armor mechanic sleeps on the warm side of the pillow for the rest of their life.

- Character balance is also whack. Power types pretty universally dominate since the above-mentioned difficulty issues result in a need for damage above all else. There are some good speed types, but those're typically the ones that can dish out as much damage as power types (So, Kiku, Carrot and Katakuri). Sky and Tech types feel superfluous, and indeed some characters are so OOC for their type that it makes the system feel even more meaningless than in WO4.

- The coin system for unlocks is just... Awful. Many characters don't get to reach their full potential until the game is functionally over, as the coins for their skills are locked behind late-game Treasure Log stages. Here's hoping that datamined TL expansion is real and not just a red herring or leftover cut content.

its a musou alright, but sometimes you get the musou itch, and this one was free on gamepass NOT sponsored btw microsoft my DMs are open.

I like that your characters are aggressively mobile, it's almost made me think i'm playing a DBZ musou the way im spending most of my time in air and air dashing around people. And on hard the game puts a lot of emphasis on said mobility, has even common commanders can do a lot of damage when you get hit, and in some levels I'd get 3 shot by fancy bosses. However this game feels particularly mashy even amongst its genre, and characters with weirder movesets either feel kinda clunky or jsut bad. Infact, if you're playing on hard, playing different characters isn't a great call, because you wont have enough resources to pump up the stats on the new characters and you'll find that New Guy does 1/8th of the damage of Luffy or Zoro or whatever strawhat that always shows up that you pumped up your resources into. Normal's probably a better call if you want to play a lot of different character, but also of what little I played of normal it felt really really easy, and honestly if you're not playing an underleveled character even on hard this game was pretty easy outside of on really weird difficulty jump in the marineford arc.

This game is particularly action focused, with by the half way point of the story mode having levels with a metric fuckton of bosses, id argue most levels are walking between bosses. I wish territory control had more of the focus, because outside of the occasional side mission where it asks you to cap a zone it's basically a nonfactor, but maybe I'm alone on that opinion. But, even if it's pretty mashy, it is fun to punch people while constantly dashing around people.

Like most musous, this game has a ton of content, with a pretty substantial story mode and then a ton of extra side missions and 30~ characters. It's probably nowhere near the content behemoth like hyrule warriors, but really i don't think anyone as every actually 100%'d that game.

Also, speaking as someone whose never actually read/watched one piece and my knowledge of the franchise is all second hand, and I know this is the most watered down version of the story I can partake it in, I think it still did a pretty good job, even if between arcs it'll just blatantly tell you that it skipped arcs and give you the speed recap. It also makes the game only arc stand out like a sore thumb because it's the worst of them all lol.

Particularly mashy and I wish territory mattered at all, but it is fun to run around and airdash around bosses. Lots of content, and a surprisingly decent way to take in a chunk of the one piece plot. It's all around okay.

This game is such a painful monkey's paw. Really, it's like a textbook definition of the term.

On the plus side, this is Omega Force's creativity at their finest. Having curbed some mechanics from arena fighters, PW4 has some obscenely enjoyable and complex characters that're the best in their genre. Officer vs officer fights are a joy, and the sheer amount of momentum every character has stops traversal feeling slow. A universal dash mechanic only adds to this.

But... Man, there's a problem. This game would be an exceptional arena fighter, but it's not. It's a musou.

To me, musous are objective-centric games where there's tons of enemies between you and the goal. Even the more flashy musous like WO4 hold to this. PW4, though? The downside to the increased freedom of movement, character power and new mechanics is that... How do I put it?

When Musou boomers accuse the new games of being "grass cutting simulators", this game feels like a window to their worldview. It's a great beat 'em up, but it's a horrible musou. The player's power skyrockets so hard regardless of difficulty that you can, for many characters, simply mash normal attack with impunity to win.

It's not a bad game. It's very enjoyable on its own merits, but if I ever think "Golly, I want to play a musou!", this game rarely comes to mind. If I think "I want to destroy stuff!", it's at the top of the list.