This thumbs up is for a sale of $20 or less with Pirate Warriors 3 and 4 together on sale being ideal for the combined roster. The series is a love letter to fans who want to run around as wacky pirates while fighting those bombastic arc villains in the chaos of a OP finale. It becomes mindlessly repetitive eventually and the story is a fascinating afterthought but it's fun, at least for awhile.

PW games are very direct with spoilers so fair warning. PW4 hits Alabasta, Water 7, Summit War, Dressrosa, Whole Cake and then a teaser for Zou and Wano. It follows the manga story faithfully to the point of recreating a few standout moments in-engine, that being Gol D. Roger double-daring the entire world to brawl their way across the most dangerous seas to his final treasure. The game does a fine job of telling you what Luffy's about and who you're going to punch but as it is very abridged there won't be any good highlights from anybody outside of Luffy, Zoro and Sanji, no flashback or story building, only 2-3 antagonists per arc. Better pacing for some of them at least, hah, but still a shame with setups like a Brook level on Whole Cake but without the Big Mom duel. I get that OP will do things like introduce 30+ characters in a *scene* so the devs can't work forever but it still hurts when you notice where the lines were drawn.

OK, that's enough true fan whinging, onto gameplay. It's a musou game, aka Dynasty/Samurai Warriors, a nice base for a one man army annihilating hundreds of chumps en route to finding somebody strong enough to have a name and beating them up until you win the stage. Nice roster of 30+ish characters with tons of loving detail, everybody works off the same basis of light attacks, heavy attacks, then chaining light attacks(i.e. x+x+x, etc up to 6-10 times) and interrupting with heavies(so y is a move, x+y is a new move, x+x+y is also a new move, etc), as well as the new split between Power/Speed/Tech/Sky that inform strengths and passives. One Piece is an outlandish setting and a lot of effort has gone to putting characters and moves in no matter how wild, it's a delight, including the addition of giant characters like Big Mom or Kaido so you can fight as one of the naturally-occurring 40 foot tall people. They're overtuned but musou games aren't ones for balance so it's more fun spectacle, good victory lap characters!

The rhythm of the game is to clear out crowds, push to objectives, defeat officers and relieve pressure from your own army lane by lane so you can push to the big boss. There'll be ambushes and reinforcements, the occasional event and twist, but PW4 goes light on the strategic depth. 99% of the game can be blazed through by running between officer nodes and smashing them, mooks only existing to boost your super meter and pad score. I'm not asking for the days of older Dynasty Warriors where every individual crossbow squad was a serious problem but in PW4 enemies attack so slowly that they're truly fodder. There's even different squads like bombers, snipers, armored, shielded that don't do anything unless you force yourself to stop for 5+ seconds. I applaud PW4 for the improved gameplay feel and boss fights but since the stages themselves are very simple and light on events there's just not much going on. No secrets per level, no weapon unlocks, no tricky situations where you wish you could be in 2-3 places on the map at once.

PW4 looks gorgeous and slick, the stages are wonderful for the feeling of running around these high fantasy places, the stories are charming enough as a highlight reel, the soundtrack is pretty decent for the traditional Koei-Tecmo musou buttrock, it's fun for a good while. It just can't last forever and once you're tired of trying out characters and maxed your favorite there's not much to do but beat the story mode once, maybe buy a DLC pack if it has your Favorite Character Ever, pop the mandatory fights in treasure log then put it down until the mood to go Gomu Gomu No Baka and punch crowds returns. They're great systems but everybody does the same thing once you're 30 stages in and good at the game, the difficulty scaling isn't real and most of treasure log is pure filler.

Hence it's a really solid $10-20 purchase for fans, especially if your favorites got in. Carrot stans, let us raise our voices. There are painful absences from PW3 like the loss of Thriller Bark/Impel Down stages and characters and I think it's a shame that Dressrosa got proper story yet is a bit lacking in new characters, with Diamente and Pica unplayable and greats like Senor Pink and a Trebol/Sugar duo character feeling like missed opportunities. The Whole Cake roster is good for what's there but seems to have lost some steam to DLC tax unless you loooove the Vinsmoke rangers, I guess! You'll have to wait for PW5 to get a real Wano arc... oops, there I go again.

Good game, you should torrent it though. Bandai Namco is Satan and even if you get the ultimate version your just validating Bandais monetization practices.

Do not play One Piece Bounty Rush, romance dawn Helmeppo beat my ass and I was Aokiji.