One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is a highly anticipated sequel of the One Piece Musou franchise and at Gamescom 2019, it was playable for the first time ever. We played the short demo and were able to finish it, giving us a taste of what is yet to come. It’s a bit too soon to really know but this might be the best one yet.
Take me to the candy shop
The first thing I noticed while playing was the new colorful map. For the sake of the demo, it wasn’t the biggest map of the game but it was complex enough to keep you entertained for a short fifteen minutes. The map was decorated with colorful candy, crazy enemies and a handful of powerful Commanders you had to take down. In order to progress, I had to defeat the Big Mom Pirates and its Commanders, if I didn’t, laughing trees were blocking my path. Yes, this still is a One Piece game pure sang, don’t be surprised to face some of the weirdest characters you ever faced in a game. It’s still inspired by the manga/anime and the visual style pays true homage to this.
The more enemies you defeated, the more of the map you could cross, eventually leading to Big Mom herself, serving you some tough boss battle realness. Everything about this first introduction with the game screamed fun. The development is still far from finished but when it comes to the environments and characters, the team really gets what the fans want to see. Sadly we only played as Luffy but with other characters already being announced, we can once more count on a rather impressive final roster when the game hits the shelves.
Defeat them all
That being said, Pirate Warriors 4 still is a true Musou game, meaning you’ll have to defeat hundreds of enemies at once. The smaller enemies serve as cannon fodder and result in some fun and impressive action. Just like before, you can attack with a variety of different attacks, including four more powerful special moves. The game really hits its momentum when Luffy combines his attacks with areal combos to lengthen the overall attack. In no time, I was performing a chain of powerful attacks, taking down everyone who dared to cross my path.
Defeating the regular soldiers and even the Commanders wasn’t that challenging, Big Mom proved to be a completely different story. Not only was she huge, but her attacks also dealt a lot of damage. Finding the right moment to counter-attack while dodging her attack time after time proved to be the winning formula but she didn’t go down easily. As you can see in the footage above, it’s a rather fierce battle but in the end, Luffy was victorious, as he should.
Early conclusion:
Although the demo was rather short and demonstrated gameplay we expected, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 still was extremely fun to play. It’s a fast-paced and fluent Musou game that combines the best of the One Piece franchise with the best of Musou style. I had fun fighting Big Mom and I’m really curious to see who I’ll face later when the final game lands in stores!
