One Piece Odyssey tried demo at Gamescom 2022

Apart from the prehistoric appearances on Game Boy and the sleepy One Piece: Romance Dawn for Nintendo DS and PSP, One Piece video games They never adopted the turn-based RPG genre. And that’s weird, because it seems like Eiichiro Oda’s stories and characters were born to become the most classic of JRPGs. A team of diverse characters who travel the world, learn new skills, participate in epic battles, seek treasure and complete quests collected along the way. In short, the recipe was there, you just needed someone who knew how to cook (perhaps as good as Sanji).

Together with ILCA studio, Bandai Namco decided to fill this void with a new role-playing game, in which footage from Oda’s famous manga finally meets the rules and typical rhythms of Dragon Quest. at Gamescom 2022I tried the One Piece Odyssey demoA small moment of the adventure is useful for getting an approximate idea of ​​the production, but still too short to say whether the game can mark a qualitative leap for One Piece video games.

Straw Hat Odyssey

The One Piece Odyssey demo shown at Gamescom 2022 is the same demo that Bandai Namco presented at Anime Expo a few weeks ago. This is an episode set shortly after the start of the game, when the Straw Hat crew arrives on the mysterious island of Waford. unpublished story. A story that needs to be told doesn’t start out in the best way: With Thousand Sunny half-sunken, a straw hat to be found, and some missing crew members, Luffy and his friends take their first steps in a populated area. from hostile creatures.

demo, a short training: Traveling through a narrow, linear path, you learn the basics of combat and exploration, picking up objects along the way, or the ability to use Luffy’s Gom Gom Rocket as a harpoon. Not that there is any danger: it is not possible to fall into the valleys even if you wanted to, and the first path is a narrow path that accompanies the player in every fight.

The biggest doubt left by the demo is precisely about the size and breath of the environments: map It is not known whether and how much the areas will be opened after the promotion is over, how the different areas will be connected and how much the curiosity of the explorers will be rewarded. It is also known that Luffy will meet new characters, but at least for now there is no trace of outposts or settlement cities where the money obtained in the war will be spent. Sanji should be able to use mushrooms and other harvested ingredients to cook healing dishes, but he’ll be upset if you get close to a camping barbecue. “Now the priority is to find Nami!” says.

The aim of the demo is actually to find Nami and save her from the attack of a huge gorilla. It must be said that it wasn’t a particularly bright start, but despite the unoriginal premise, fighting the monsters that populated the island turned out to be more fun than expected. According to tradition, you must decide which characters to use in your party, taking into account their special abilities, role in battle and strengths. this One Piece Odyssey battle system It’s based on a simple triangle of weakness: Tech-type characters are more effective against Power-type characters, which has an advantage over Speed-type characters.

In addition to choosing between bindings, special techniques and healing items, in turn, it is also possible to replace a party member with one of the characters from the bench; this is important when you find yourself up against enemies that have an advantage over their type. During the adventure, there can also be certain situations that bring unexpected dynamics to the fight: at a certain point in the journey, a cinematic showing how Usopp is surrounded and attacked by a group of penguin-like creatures. At the start of the battle, the sympathetic inventor is thus paralyzed and isolated from the group, and it becomes necessary to eliminate the opponents in the middle first to help him.

But right now it’s hard to get an idea of ​​how difficult the fights will present. The demo has already started with level 40 characters to let the Gamescom audience fast-forward and try the most amazing skills right away. This means that each opponent is knocked out by one or two hits and makes minimal use attempts. strategy was completely unnecessary.

However, by browsing and experimenting with different special techniques, it’s clear that the combat system has some potential for interesting combat: aside from being spectacular and top-notch fan service, Skills They can have numerous effects in battle, creating status changes, improving or worsening stats, or pushing enemies further away from the rest of the group. By combining these options with the special encounters described above, One Piece Odyssey can put some original challenges and battles on the plate where the battles are turned into little puzzles to solve.