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

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.

Great entry into the Warriors franchise, and a great One Piece game as well. While the roster has removed some characters from the previous entry, this game is a straight upgrade in terms of both gameplay and visuals.

The story itself is just a condensed version of the already great One Piece story (aside from the lackluster, game original Wano arc), but I feel like most people do not play this game for the story. They play this game to clobber hordes of enemies as their favorite One Piece character, which this game has in spades.

While not a technical or narrative masterpiece, this game is great for shutting off your brain and punching some bad guys.