Bandai Namco released many One Piece related games in recent years, and I happened to play One Piece: Unlimited World Red two months ago. A fairly entertaining game, but unfortunately it became very repetitive after a longer time playing. One Piece: World Seeker is an action adventure game that puts the player in the shoes of Monkey D. Luffy, the protagonist of One Piece. One Piece: World Seeker is also the first game from this franchise that has been released that incorporates an open world. Instead of bumping into an invisible wall all the time, you can walk around freely in this game and discover the world of One Piece.
The game starts with an opening scene in which you see Luffy walking in a prison, also a part of his crew are present in this place. They are looking for a treasure but it turns out that it is a trap. In the end everybody manages to escape, but they are split up. After Luffy escapes from the clutches of the prison guard and is rescued from the water by Jeanne, Luffy finds out where one of his members is and from here your adventure begins as Luffy. One Piece: World Seeker is set on Jail Island which is a completely new environment that has never before occurred in the manga and anime of this series, this game also introduces you to two completely new characters. Jeanne, the leader of the anti-navy movement and Isaac, the prison guard Luffy encountered in the beginning. Isaac is the highest ranking marine officer on this island. In addition to the new characters, there are also a set of familiar faces including Akainu, Aokiji and Fujitora, the three Marines Admirals.
While you are busy with your main quest and exploring Jail Island, you regularly come across sparkles in different places, these are in blue – which are marked as white dots on the mini map – and in gold, which are in the mini map are marked as yellow asterisks. These are materials that you can use to complete side quests or to build equipment, this is something that is introduced into the game after you’ve been in the game for a few hours. Other ways to collect materials is to open crates, these are also indicated on your mini map. If you open the larger folder you can even see exactly how many crates there are in each location. And then you also have wooden boxes that you can destroy and defeating pirates and marines also sometimes gives you materials.
Building relationships with different people is a new thing that has been introduced in this game. In the menu this can be found under Karma, the more often you help certain people and grant their favours the more karma points you can build up with that person. The more karma points you get, the more they like you and this can result in you getting side quests that are specifically aimed at that person. It is also possible to unlock special scenes when you have been able to build up your karma points to the maximum, a nice bonus for the completionists. There are a total of 16 people with whom you can build a bond, including of course the new characters Jeanne and Isaac, the pro-navy group, the anti-navy group and then a few other characters that you will recognise when you follow the One Piece anime/manga. Another thing that you can also find in the menu is the Skills heading, here you can get different skills. You can unlock these through skill points, SP for short, which you can earn by defeating enemies and completing quests. The stronger your enemy, the more skill points you earn. When you have finally saved up a lot of points, you can choose to spend them on new attacks, more life points or skills that make exploring the world a lot easier by shortening the time it takes to open a chest until you launch yourself so that you can travel longer distances through the air.
One Piece: World Seeker sounds very attractive, but the longer I played the more I realised that it still felt quite unfinished. You have an open world that you can explore, but you can’t go into any house and the world seems to contain relatively little variation. The NPCs also don’t seem very lively, they are standing a bit in one place and do little. And then the fights, these became very repetitive at one point, you don’t have to think about beating most enemies. However, this is not only the case with One Piece: World Seeker, there are several games from popular anime series that do not score very high.
All in all, One Piece: World Seeker is a fun game with nice extras, but if you are looking for a game with a lot of variation and challenges, you might skip this one. For the casual gamer who doesn’t have many demands on his/her games, OP: WS is a nice game to have in your collection.
Rating: 65/100
