Welcome to my review of One Piece Pirate Warriors 3, the Deluxe Edition released on Switch and contains all available DLC previously released on other consoles.
Re-live the original ONE PIECE story from Fushia village, where everything started, to the kingdom of Dressrosa, a mysterious island dominated by the evil “Heavenly Demon” himself, Donquixote Doflamingo. Gather members of the Straw Hat Crew and sail to the most elusive places and enter epic battles: Marineford, Fishman Island, Punk Hazard and Dressrosa! The deluxe edition includes many of the previously released DLC and provides players with all of the fun and excitement right from the anime.
One Piece is one of the longest-running series in Japan, both the manga and anime have hit record-worthy levels of sales. The author Eiichiro Oda owns a very neat world record, he sold the most volumes of a “comic” series of a sole author, making him an official Guinness World Record holder. Aside from the famous manga and anime, there are numerous other items of the show out there. At least 1000+ different figurines have been made over the past years, there are 10+ movies, several OAVs (original animation made for video/dvd), …. They have a freaking theme park, located in Tokyo Tower that should be visited if you ever do go to Japan, I loved it very much and already visited it three times!
I am a very big fan of the series, owning all the manga and a little over 400 figures. I consider One piece my “primary” hobby. Even before my gaming addiction. I have gone out of my way and went to Osaka to join my otaku friends and went to the One Piece Summer at Universal Studios Japan. I have been to Tokyo several times just to go to One piece events. I am crazy about this series.
So what happens when one of my favorite series ever hits a game genre I absolutely love?
I get all giddy inside and start smiling.
One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 is a Musou game. Under normal circumstances, you hack and slash your way through hundreds of enemies, usually at the same time. But Luffy, our main hero, does not use any weapons, he is a rubber man (gomu gomu no ningen, if you know the show), he once at a devil fruit giving him supernatural powers and his body has the power of rubber. His arms extend, he can give a headbutt to anyone around him, extend his leg to kick you even if you are across the town square. Combine that into a Musou game and you get some hilarious mayhem.
I won’t bore you with the details of the main storyline, you should be going outside and buy this game already. At least if you live in Europe. Sadly enough our American friends did not get a physical release for this game, but we’ve said it before, Nintendo Switch is 100% region free and this game can just be imported. Mind you that the Japanese import would come without English support. something you will definitely miss if you are not fluent in Japanese.
This game, while it can be called pretty straight forward, it does provide with a serious challenge as the missions are not just “defeat all”. You are faced with defending missions, capture missions, invasion mission where even more enemies come at you, but from 2 fronts and they too will fight each other. One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 is more than just an expansion to the series, it really allows you to be part of the show.
So how does it play on Switch?
It is smooth, possibly more smooth than how I recall playing it on the Vita. As I almost only play handheld mode, I did break my habit and purposely played it in TV mode as well, just to see how it played out. It was a great experience as well.
Any downsides to the game?
In case you download, you may be a little annoyed with the 14gb of microsd card real estate that needs to be given to this game. While we have seen some bigger games, the tendency is that above 10 is still considerably bigger than average. But for a 20 hour game, I don’t think it is that bad after all.
In conclusion, this game is currently my favourite game. It gets the most playtime between this, South Park, DKC, Kirby, Shantae, … So that says a lot. This is actually the third time I am playing through this game, my very first time was on Vita in Japanese, which was a real pain in the ass. But now, a few years later, I am once again loving this game. It is a great twist on the Musou genre and could be my favourite Musou game so far.
Now, I realise my rating will be heavily influenced by my love of One Piece and regretfully I can not give it a 110% rating. But I do think I am fair at 85%. The genre is not for everyone but it is one of the best out there because of its’ tie-in to the One piece series.
My rating is 85%!
