A child sport, for infants

One Piece Odyssey is an easy sport. There’s an excellent cause for that – regardless of its continuously considerate writing and near-constant horniness, One Piece is in the end a collection aimed toward kids. It is sensible {that a} One Piece online game would strive its finest to stay accessible to its youthful viewers.

It additionally is sensible for older followers to listen to “comically simple turn-based sport” and instantly attain for the auto-battle button. Fortunately, One Piece Odyssey has an ideal auto-battle system. So long as you’re not actively avoiding fight, the pc will in all probability be capable to get you thru most fights (bosses included) with out challenge.

However I’m right here to ask you to rethink. Sure, auto-battle will get you thru most of Odyssey‘s skirmishes, however in case you have any love for turn-based RPGs, you owe it to your self to take a look at this fight system.

Unusual (and pointless) depth

I’m saying this with full sincerity: One Piece Odyssey has the perfect turn-based fight since Shin Megami Tensei V. At first blush, it’s acquired a reasonably primary rock-paper-scissors type-matching system. Energy fighters are sturdy in opposition to Velocity opponents, Velocity fighters are sturdy in opposition to Approach opponents, and Approach fighters are sturdy in opposition to Energy opponents. There are additionally elemental assaults with their very own rudimentary sort chart, and a intelligent (if played-out) system the place regular assaults construct sources to execute particular assaults. However Odyssey‘s nice power lies in its positioning mechanics.

One Piece Odyssey contains a pretty easy positioning system. There are a couple of completely different areas, and every get together member and enemy is assigned to certainly one of them. If there are not any enemies in an space, then get together members in that space can transfer to another space with out challenge. If there are enemies in an space, then get together members can solely swap locations with different get together members who haven’t acted but. Which means when you’ve used one character, they’ll’t transfer till the flip ends.

This leaves the door open for all types of attention-grabbing challenges. Say there are two areas stuffed with Energy enemies – for an excellent chunk of the sport, you’ll solely have two Approach fighters, Zoro and Nico Robin. Zoro is stronger, so it’s simple to wipe out all of the enemies in a single space, however Nico Robin’s space of assault strikes are fairly terrible. You may ship Luffy, a Energy fighter, to her space to assist out, however you is perhaps leaving one other space undefended, and one other get together member open to assault.

Mind teasing

Normally, the answer to those issues is fairly apparent. Luffy, as an example, can in all probability go away Robin to fend for herself – if she will be able to’t pull issues off this flip, the widely low well being bars on these enemies will likely be whittled down on the subsequent flip, and most enemies deal fairly negligible injury. It’s enjoyable to attempt to min-max these turns, however it’s by no means actually rewarded. In any case, the sport actually is a cake stroll. In case you needed to disregard most of its techniques and simply press the “Assault” button, you’ll in all probability win 70% of the fights, and should you’re interested by type-matching in any respect, you’ll virtually by no means face an actual roadblock.

Generally, although, Odyssey will throw a particular problem your method. It’s often not too troublesome by itself; “Beat [x] enemy with Chopper,” “Clear the world earlier than Usopp is knocked out,” one thing to that impact. However it turns the sport on its head, significantly should you’ve been taking part in usually for a short while.

Right here’s an instance – throughout one minor boss struggle, I used to be requested to beat a boss with Luffy. This threw a wrench into my plans. Luffy is a Energy fighter, and the boss was a Approach fighter, so I had the kind drawback. That meant it was actually powerful to place a dent in its well being bar with Luffy alone, so I whittled it down with a pair different get together members whereas Sanji single-handedly defended one other space. Finally, I had it in a really irritating spot. One assault from Luffy in all probability wouldn’t have killed it, however an assault from anybody else completely would have. That is after I remembered Trick Balls, the craftable consumables that serve virtually no goal in common play. Utilizing Trick Balls on the enemy lowered its protection, permitting me to deal the ending blow as Luffy.

That is an instance of Odyssey encouraging me to play with its techniques, to search out the synergies that I’d in any other case ignore. It’s a standard sport design tactic, however a playful and efficient one. Extra importantly, it might have had completely no influence if I had simply been auto-battling as much as that time.

The case for auto-battle

Let me make clear one thing: these challenges I used to be speaking about are elective. If I needed to, I might have left Luffy out of that struggle totally. There’s no punishment for failing these mini-tasks, and the rewards are fairly meaningless after the primary couple of hours. I take pleasure in taking part in with these techniques as a result of I already like Odyssey‘s fight. And I’m not everyone.

There are these for whom all of this may sound very tedious. In case you can simply muscle by with out taking note of all of the interlocking techniques, with out interested by character positions or sort benefits, why would you expend the additional brainpower simply to beat an ostensibly pointless problem? I perceive this philosophy totally, and I’m glad that auto-battle is there for individuals who really feel this fashion. One Piece Odyssey has quite a lot of nice stuff to supply for each long-time One Piece followers and whole newcomers, and it might be an enormous bummer if folks had been locked out of that stuff by a fight system that they discover boring.

However should you assume you’re the type of one who will bounce off of Odyssey‘s fight, I implore you to not less than give it a strive. There’s extra to it than you might need guessed, and whereas it doesn’t demand quite a lot of consideration, it does profit from it.