One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Review

One Piece: Pirate Warriors brings the popular anime series to video game consoles in the west. Is the voyage worth taking? Or should you skip this pirate adventure altogether? Check out this honest game review of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 and make your choice!

One Piece follows the story of Luffy on his quest to become the Pirate King. Along the way you will be recruiting crew members to join you on you quest. Each one of them will also have their own quests they want to do, including (but not limited to) becoming the best swordsman in the world or becoming the best chef. Each of the characters that join you will be playable throughout the story as well. As the story progresses, you run into new allies and enemies. The story is actually quiet long and you will easily get more than 12 hours out of it.

Luffy, and a lot of other characters in the game, have all eaten what is known as a Devil Fruit. The people who have eaten the Devil Fruit have special abilities compared to normal humans. Luffy, for instance, can stretch himself out like rubber and Crocodile can use sand attacks. There are a ton of different abilities from Devil Fruit in the game.

The combat in the game is very similar to Dynasty Warriors, being made by Tecmo Koei that isn’t a surprise. It does change it up a bit by letting you unlock new combos as you level up. You start off with the basic “square square square square” attack, and upgrade into triangle attacks and square and triangle combo attacks. There is also a special attack you can use when you charge up the your special meter. If you play the right characters on certain levels you can unlock new, stronger specials.

How you upgrade characters is pretty interesting. You get medals for beating a level depending on which characters are in it. Any charters you have on your team will net you medals for them and any enemies you beat will also net you medals. You can get more medals by killing them in Rush mode with your allies. With these medals you can upgrade your health, defense, attack, special slots and skill slots. So instead of just leveling up and gaining new abilities, you will get to choose what you want to upgrade. This is also useful for when you switch characters.

There is an interesting online co-op feature in the game. If you are struggling with a level you can request help from someone else to come in and help you. When you go to a mission you can start and SOS and look for people to join in. Sometimes when you select a level you will get an SOS request from another player and you can go in and help them. This is a good way to get more Medals and more levels.

From a technical standpoint, the game isn’t breaking any boundaries graphics-wise. It looks good, but not great. It does have a ton of enemies on screen at once without any frame drops or game lag. The audio in the game is fine but it is in Japanese audio for those of you who care about that. There is actually a lot of level variety for this type of game which surprised me.

Overall if you like this type of game and you are a One Piece fan I think you will enjoy it. I have never seen One Piece before and I still ended up enjoying the game!