Capsule Review: One Piece: World Seeker
A mediocre open world game, but a solid One Piece game.
An open world game set in the One Piece universe. Play as Luffy and explore the beautiful and mysterious Prison Island in an original story. (There are also three shorter DLC campaigns in which you play as Zoro, Sabo, and Law respectively through side stories that overlap with the main one.)
The game is gorgeous (and, thankfully, includes a photo mode) but the world can feel empty, even for its small size. There are large unpopulated areas and even the city is not especially crowded. Side quests help a lot by introducing you to various minor characters and involving you in their lives, making the island feel more like a place with people worth caring about - you don’t get much of this from the main story.
There also isn’t much variety in what you actually do - while the island is lovely and has a number of different environments, there’s not much you can interact with and there’s little fodder for emergent gameplay. Most of the time, you’re going from place to place looking for collectibles or fighting enemies. Navigation does become a bit more interesting due to Luffy’s “gum-gum” abilities that give him essentially a grappling hook and a hover (so you should purchase these abilities in the skill tree immediately) but it can be bizarrely difficult to land precisely on small areas, making some of the collectibles frustrating to fetch. Combat is solid with a number of abilities, stances, and builds available, though it takes some time for the skill tree to open up enough for this to become clear. The game opens slowly in general, starting out very linear with few mechanics - I was bored at first, but once I’d reunited the Straw Hats and had access to most of the systems and the side quests started showing up, I had a much better time.
In short, the game is mechanically a rather mediocre open world game with not much to do. But for One Piece fans, there’s more to enjoy. The writing, characterization, and voice acting are on point and the open world structure provides an opportunity to occupy the world of One Piece in a way unmatched by other One Piece games. Once the world opens up and you can just run around being Luffy, hanging out with the Straw Hats, and befriending and helping the villagers, that can be surprisingly satisfying.
I Stopped Playing When: I finished the game including all DLC and optional objectives (except for getting the top rank on Sabo’s “Thrillseeker” challenge mission because that mission is terrible).
Three Stars: Good. I liked the game enough to finish it (or just play it a bunch, for games that don't end). I recommend it to most genre fans.