One Piece: World Seeker (PS4)

Back in August of 2020, I decided I’d undertake the daunting task of plunging into the pirate manga One Piece from the very beginning, and after 6 months and over 1000 chapters later, I was caught up to where the story is now. Perhaps unsurprisingly it quickly became my favorite manga I’ve ever read, with its creative worldbuilding, intricately connected web of a story, and imaginative power usage to spice up the action portions. After completing this self-imposed challenge, one of the things I was most excited to do after was go and check out the world of One Piece video games and one of the most recent releases at the time was the open world action-adventure game One Piece: World Seeker.

Taking place after the Whole Cake Island arc, One Piece: World Seeker is a self-contained story about the pirate Monkey D. Luffy and his crew the Straw Hat Pirates ending up stuck on an island known as Prison Island. Here, the Marines who patrol the world’s seas and have had multiple run-ins with these pirates before have established three major prisons and have come to dominate the life of the islanders with their influence, the people splitting into two factions based on whether or not they support the occupying Marines. Being that you’re playing as the leader of a small but famous band of pirates it’s little surprise you fall in with the Anti-Marine faction, their leader being an optimistic young woman named Jeanne who believes she can reunite the island to the way it used to be before the prisons were built. However, her own brother Isaac has been made the warden of this island’s prisons, and with his cybernetic enhancements and robot creations he pressures the island’s inhabitants to remain obedient.

While you are playing as a group of character from a long-running franchise, most of the story’s progression is truly focused on Jeanne and Isaac’s relationship as well as the growing troubles involved as the island is revealed to be home to a set of powerful gems known as Dyna Stones that force conflict between the Marines, Luffy’s crew, and many faces he has met in his travels. Almost every quest, be it an important story one or a simple side quest, usually involves Jeanne in some capacity even if it’s not in a substantial role, but it does a good job of keeping her a present figure in the plot and one whose motivations and history you understand well. Isaac is unfortunately rather hands off during much of the game in addition to being a cold and detached individual, so mostly you care about him more because of his role as Jeanne’s brother rather than anything he’s putting forward himself. The cutscenes are also presented with subtitled Japanese, but despite this, when important scenes are unfolding the cel-shaded character models are well animated and expressive so the emotional tone remains easy to interpret and the large personalities of One Piece’s world are preserved in this game’s storytelling.

When it comes to actually playing as Luffy, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Since he has eaten a special fruit that his turned his body to rubber, Luffy is able to stretch his limbs and inflate himself to pull off unusual and powerful maneuvers, but there is also a system known as Haki where Luffy’s inner strength unlocks additional abilities. While using Observation Haki he can sense enemies even behind walls and label them for easy tracking, but this mode focuses on speed and dodging while taking quite a while to deal decent damage despite those benefits. Armament Haki is hard to turn down as your fighting style of choice once you’ve gotten used to it, its guard almost as good as a dodge anyway and packing huge powerful moves that can sweep crowds and easily hit even dodgier boss characters. It doesn’t invalidate the zippier fighting style, especially depending on how you decide to spend experience earned through quests and battles to upgrade your abilities, but the basic attacking is rarely about dealing good damage with the basic strikes and more about building up to your power moves.

Almost every fight that isn’t with something like rogue pirates or basic Marines will boil down to executing simple attacks until you have the energy to use special attacks. From a fiery single punch forward known as Red Hawk to the rapid fire aerial bombardment with your fortified fists known as Elephant Gatling Gun, these moves are big and flashy but most importantly deal tons of damage and speed up fights considerably. Without them battle would be a bit of bland button mashing punctuated by dodging or blocking so they at least give you something to work towards, and picking the right special move based on its coverage and power requirement can at least mean you’re thinking a bit about what you’re doing. Once you get the ability to freeze time on a perfect dodge or block, fights do get a bit more interactive as you try to time thing properly to give you that window for free hits, but there is a final battle style that enters the picture with Gear Fourth. This special mode is only usable in tougher fights like boss battles and consists of Luffy inflating his body so he’s nearly lighter than air but hardening his limbs so he still hits like truck, but due to its limited application and the fact it prevents the use of the other Haki types after its brief invincibility and power boost ends, it’s hard to justify using it unless you know you can wipe out the foe within its time limit. It matches the risks of the mode from the source material, but it’s often better to just stick to basic fighting techniques, dodging, and the special moves even for the toughest foes.

While a lot of the generic enemies are a bit unexciting, the 22 foot tall Pacifista robots can sometimes rival bosses in their sturdiness and the flying androids will ask for you to consider your attack style and potentially use long range strikes more than you would for regular foes who can just be beaten through the basic attack combos. Bosses definitely carry more of the experience, many recognizable faces from the franchise cropping up here to battle Luffy. You’ll encounter character like Smoker who is, fittingly, a man who can turn into smoke clouds and can use clouds of it to distract you as he drifts around the battle, and the blind marine admiral Fujitora uses his gravity powers to limit your mobility and drag meteors down onto the battlefield. A lot of these boss attacks are cooler in concept than execution since you’ll be focusing a lot on executing your special attacks and then dodging to build up energy, but there are still some fairly interesting battle designs saved for these highlight fights and, oddly enough, some relegated to the game’s side quests.

Prison Island is packed with optional tasks to pick up, and while the main story is a complete narrative without them, there is a fair bit of the game’s better content here. Here is the only place you’ll really get the chance to run into characters like a former Warlord of the Sea called Crocodile who can turn into sand and fills his battlefield with dangerous whirlwinds and sand geysers for a fight where you need to keep on your toes, and in a similar vein the equally optional Kuzan fights you with his ice powers that control a lot of arena space and threaten to push you off. These side missions are where we also get to see a bit more of how the conflict between Pro-Marine and Anti-Marine factions have influenced the regular lives of the island’s people as well, and the Straw Hat Crew get to be more than background support in these little quests. While they are mostly portrayed in broad strokes like the crew’s chef Sanji almost always fawning over any lady he sees and Zoro takes the phrase “wandering swordsman” to a new level as he’s constantly getting lost, there are some side quests that grant others highlight moments. Usopp, a cowardly character who often can’t face foes directly, helps a group of island children find a future outside of getting roped up in the battles between the two factions, and the crew’s doctor, an adorable reindeer named Chopper, has to try and connect the excellent medical care of the Pro-Marine faction with the belligerent Anti-Marines who distrust anything the opposition has made. The Karma system also adds some extra tasks, the player able to unlock side quests and battles with certain allies and enemies both based on what side quests they’ve already done around the island and specific actions they can take such as hitting certain foes with diverse attacks. These aren’t incredibly deep sidequests despite the Karma system encouraging you to shift up your play from time to time, but having more time with certain characters, unique scenarios, and even exclusive bosses means it can be worth checking these out… or they might just be very basic fetch quests.

One unfortunate truth about One Piece: World Seeker is it is an open world environment that isn’t all that interesting to explore. Luffy can slingshot himself around the island by grabbing things and launching himself, and areas like the big central city of the island or a well forested area you can find a satisfying rhythm to this process, but much of the island feels like a lot of open green space. There’s a cramped mine you can enter, some civilized places like a small port or the pirate town, and two of the prisons are accessible most of the time, but reasons to go to special locations are far outweighed by the quests that call for heading out into the less exciting natural areas. The game world is littered with little items to pick up as you travel, and while these can be collected without much trouble, they are also sometimes the only gameplay portion of a side quest or might serve as a roadblock in that sidequest to getting to something meatier like a boss fight. The game encourages you to use these for accessory crafting as well but the system feels superfluous with how little influence it seems to hold on your actual stats. Since the fighting system can be handled without big defense boosts or the like, the items are mostly just there for the less interesting side quest requirements. Treasure chests exist as well and one of the major criticisms of the game has been that it takes a fair bit of time to open them by standing beside it and holding a button, but this is a clumsy way of preventing you from slamming down in an area and nicking a treasure without fighting the foes guarding it so its existence makes sense even though it would have been smarter to just have it locked until you get a key off the enemies or something similar. S lot of the open world elements can feel rather bland or not worth interacting with, but the sidequests with unique setups means it can still be enjoyable to go off the beaten path often.

THE VERDICT: While the bland open world, unambitious fetch quests, and the basic attack combos used for most fights means One Piece: World Seeker certainly has its tedious moments, there is enough to the action and story that it barely salvages the experience. Unique boss fights in both the main plot and side activities engage more with the dodge-and-respond tactics that make tougher foes more engaging fights, and the stories added to the little activities around the island get you more invested in the game’s true main character Jeanne as Luffy learns more about Prison Island and interacts with his crew and other familiar characters a bit more. It might not be too appealing to people outside of the One Piece fandom, but the better moments of action and plot can make pushing through some of the repetitiveness worth the effort.

And so, I give One Piece: World Seeker for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. Trim the open world design and much of the fat that bogs down One Piece: World Seeker would go away with it. A linear adventure with some splinter points to embrace the unique side quests concepts would do a lot to help this game keep up its momentum and maintain its focus on the action and characters. Even with just the better moments of optional content you’d still have time to get attached to Jeanne and invested in her difficult situation, but picking up items around the island or traveling through generic grassy areas doesn’t contribute to the adventure at all. Little open hubs could still give you the sensation of exploring a place as well, but the designers wanted an open world and lost a lot of the game’s appeal as it stretched itself to find things for its rubber protagonist to do in it. However, I am reminded of the game Maneater which also had a rather open world with little activities to get wrapped up in where the main appeal was just being a shark and tearing things up, and in a similar style it can be fun to just take Luffy places. Getting lost in the side quests despite some repetitive ones is still entertaining enough and the main story does a better job throwing diverse challenges in your path, but like Maneater, the simplistic combat can’t quite carry the whole adventure on its back even as it starts finding its footing with a few elements.

One Piece: World Seeker is definitely not the best way to take the One Piece world and adapt it as an action-adventure, but it definitely could have been worse. The license does make this mediocre action game a bit more appealing and the way the game adapts certain characters into special boss fights or unique side quests does a lot to prevent it from being a slog, but you can’t ignore the weaker concepts like the barebones stealth that almost isn’t even worth mentioning for how little there is to it and the issues with its open world. One Piece: World Seeker might scratch an itch if you’re just looking for a One Piece game that looks nice, has a decent story, and provides some special power-focused fights, but do not come to it if you’re seeking a robust open world game as that is definitely the weakest aspect of this uneven experience.