Following the example of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom and Digimon World: Next Order, which after their initial debut on other platforms subsequently planted their flag on Nintendo Switch (stop by DigiWorld and catch up on the Digimon World: Next Order review), the Japanese partnership formed by Bandai Namco Entertainment and developer ILCA has recently also brought the Straw Hat Pirates to the Kyoto-based company’s hybrid machine.
A little over a year after its original launch, ONE PIECE ODYSSEY is back on the market in its “Deluxe Edition”, a rich package that includes all the DLC costumes released on other platforms and above all the paid expansion titled Reunion of Memories (we talked about it in our review of ONE PIECE ODYSSEY: Reunion of Memories). In order to test the conversion carried out by ILCA, we therefore weighed anchor and returned to the legendary island of Waford.
Pirates in Search of Lost Memories
It’s quite unlikely that you’ve never heard of ONE PIECE ODYSSEY, but even if you have, you should first know that, rather than completely retracing the narrative arcs of Eiichiro Oda’s manga, the turn-based role-playing game tells a largely original story that only in some phases recycles the developments of the pirate epic experienced by Monkey D. Luffy and his companions.
During their journey in the ever-crazy New World, the Straw Hat Pirates find themselves trapped in a terrible storm that forces the brilliant Franky to carry out a somewhat risky maneuver: using the Thousand Sunny’s Coup de Burst, our heroes literally take flight and crash near a mysterious island, where they unfortunately remain stranded due to the extensive damage suffered by their vessel. While the ship’s carpenter remains on the coast to collect the raw materials essential to repair the partially sunken brigantine, the captain and the rest of the crew venture inland, in order to find their companions missing following the crash and discover exactly where they ended up. The answers are not long in coming and, once the gang is reunited, not only do our heroes realize that they have ended up on the legendary island of Waford, which according to legend is protected by a powerful and curious barrier capable of facing any vessel in its vicinity, but they are inexplicably stripped of all their powers by a very young islander who hates pirates.
Unaware that Luffy and the other buccaneers following him have no bad intentions, Lim uses his special ability and, after hiding their memories in luminous cubes, causes them to disperse throughout the island, rendering the new arrivals completely helpless.
Once the misunderstanding is cleared up, the Straw Hat Pirates are forced to collaborate with the girl to find the cubes with the memories of their past adventures, which is why Lim herself leads our heroes to the “Strange Place”: a place where Luffy & Co. will be able to explore the so-called “Memory Worlds” undisturbed, that is, a handful of realities reconstructed on the basis of their memories, but not entirely identical to their original counterparts.
It’s a bizarre and at the same time fun expedient, the one devised by the guys at ILCA, which among other things opens the doors to tasty what ifs and tries to imagine how the Marineford war would have unfolded if Zoro, Sanji and all the other Straw Hat Pirates had also participated.
Starting with the characterization of the main antagonist, which is at times lacking, not everything works perfectly; however, in the 50 hours needed to discover Waford’s dark secret (and maybe dive head first into the not too long and a little repetitive DLC set immediately before the final movie), ONE PIECE ODYSSEY still knows how to make the player laugh out loud, also thanks to the omnipresent quotations and a good dose of fanservice, keeping him glued to the screen until the end credits roll.
A difficult and questionable landing
Having already analyzed the gameplay of the product in our previous review of ONE PIECE ODYSSEY, which you should consult to dispel any doubts about the gameplay of the tie-in, here we will focus directly on the analysis of the porting packaged by ILCA and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
While the gameplay component of the RPG has remained unchanged, the same cannot be said for the technical framework, which had to make more than a few sacrifices to adapt to the now dated Nintendo Switch hardware. If the frame rate lowered to 30 FPS in all circumstances (with notable cases recorded only in the Waford areas) and a resolution decidedly lower than PS4/PS5 are more than acceptable compromises to be able to enjoy ONE PIECE ODYSSEY even in portability, it must still be recognized that the visual impact has taken a lot of hits during the conversion work.
Due to an anti-aliasing filter that is unable to perform its function properly, the polygonal models appear much more angular and jagged, the animations are less fluid and harmonious, the videos are excessively blurry, and in general the rendering of the environments is less than convincing, as the level of detail is considerably reduced, both in portability and in dock mode.
The limitations of the Nintendo machine, which after seven years of honorable service is rightly preparing for retirement, have had a particular impact on loading times, which were already anything but instantaneous on consoles from the PlayStation and Xbox families.
The transitions between one battle and another take several seconds, and since ONE PIECE ODYSSEY is a turn-based RPG and by nature lends itself to a considerable slowness, you will necessarily have to arm yourself with a lot of patience if you decide to play this particular version of the product. On the other hand, the original Japanese dubbing and the musical accompaniment have delighted us once again with top-level acting performances and songs that are always in keeping with the tone assumed by the narration.
