This may not sound bothersome in isolation, but imagine this happening multiple times an hour across dozens of hours of gameplay. This series of events took about three minutes to complete, and I was left wondering why there wasn’t just one cutscene for this entire sequence. Walking up to it initiates another cutscene where at the end Luffy and Zoro rejoin the party. When you return to gameplay, the next objective is maybe 20 feet ahead in a straight line. In one cutscene, Luffy and Zoro jump away from the crew to rescue someone, and a notification appears stating that the two have left the party. The constant loading into and out of cutscenes soon becomes grating due to its sheer frequency.īut the one sequence that highlights the horrible pacing is actually rather simple. You will frequently watch a cutscene, walk a few feet forward, and then watch another cutscene, repeating this process with nary a battle to liven things up. Very few things feel fast, and the game as a whole feels like an episode of One Piece with way too much inconsequential filler. Simply put, One Piece Odyssey is a slog to play. “Maybe one day there will be a great One Piece video game-but if One Piece Odyssey is any indication, it will be a long time before that happens.”
But even the charisma of Luffy and the gang fail to overcome the problem which is the game’s pacing. The charm of the writing relies on the Straw Hats themselves and their interactions with each other rather than the actual plot. Both Lim and Adio are perfectly serviceable characters, but neither really grew on me throughout my time with the game. The silliness of how characters say the word cube so seriously aside, the story of One Piece Odyssey is OK. However, the fact that they’re memories means that not all the events that happen in the manga and anime happen exactly as they do here. Which means, in One Piece terms, you gain the ability to re-experience several past arcs from the series Alabasta, Water 7/Enies Lobby, etc. One of Lim’s powers enables her to transport people into Memoria, a place composed of people’s memories, in order to gather strength to unlock the power of the cubes. Getting the cubes basically involves two things: exploring ruins on the island and delving into memories.