Another season, another DLC Pack for Pirate Warriors 4, the game that keeps in making you wish there was more of it, not only for what concerns the roster of characters.
But i did that mini-essay for the review of the first Character Pack, and then a full-on editorial about the state of the musou sub-genre as a whole.
So i’m gonna keep this and the next one shorter.
This time the theme is “Worst Generation”, referring to 12 characters belonging to the so called “worst generation” of pirates (and Blackbeard), 11 of which come from nine top pirates crew, and firstly referred to as the Eleven Supernovas, the notable rising pirates from that generation that caught the attention of the World Nobles, and one of them is speculated will become the next Pirate King.
Compared to the first pack, this one was far easier to guess once the theme became clear, because most of the “Worst Generation” pirates were already playable in the base PW 4, some had been since Pirate Warriors 2, even.
And admittely, while it’s nice to finally have X Drake as playable, indeniably one of the characters that fans really wanted to use… yeah, it’s kinda bullshit it had to be paid DLC, as he was already in the game…. only in his T-Rex form, i’d wager they just didn’t manage to make a moveset for him so they just threwn him in the base game as one of the giant enemy officers (like Jack The Drought who also appears in the map already transformed in his Mammoth form).
He really should have been in the game from the start, he really should.
But there really are few things as satisfying and majestic as laying waste to thousands of peons as a giant allosaurus with a Hulk-style cape & hat that stretch and never rip. Yes, it’s not just like Carrot that goes in Sulong form just for a specific musou attack, Drake has a full flegded form change as you would expect, and also a Full Burst that enhances the wave effects of his mace and sword fighting style.
The second addition is one that’s kinda unexpected, as Killer (the right hand man to Eustass Kidd and his pirate crew) isn’t one of the more prominent One Piece characters, but he’s masked and uses two rotating hand scythes to fight, he’s one of the Eleven Supernovas, and he makes for quite the fit into the roster. Another Speed type character, not much to add or elaborate on, but fun, and his Full Burst giving him more range is perfect for his playstyle.
As Dr. Z would put “a spinning murdertop”.
The last character of the pack i thought was gonna be interesting because it was gonna be one of the 3 Supernovas left to make playable, none of them major characters or seen just in specific story sections, and 2 of them could make for an interesting Technique character, as Bonney or Apoo have particular powers.
But evidently Omega Force can’t be arsed to make Technique style characters and think of their gimmicks and stuff, so we got Urouge, the mad monk from the Sky Island, a Power type character and one that comes with an odd combination of form change AND gimmick baked as one, as in, it should be easier to understand, as his Devil Fruit ability – basically – makes him able to convert some of the damage taken into strenght.
In practice this ability activates when he does a Form Change into a giant, more muscular version of himself, the bar for this transformation ability charges quicker when hit, and if he takes damage during the transformation he gets a brief window of attack boost…. but the way the game itself explains it in the “special moves” description is more convoluted. And yes, this means we have the the tankiest character of them all, and while this has the potential of becoming “broken” (as they say) with the combination of this gimmick and the right load out of passive skills (he does have a skill for recovering life, of course), the attack buffs don’t stack, and the game has some balance in place to make the harder maps not piss easy even when using powered-up OP beasts like Kaido and Big Mom.
Given Urouge didn’t really appear much in the series, it’s not surprising that the moveset reflects what we saw him doing, as in, using his Devil Fruit and using a pillar as a fighting weapons, alongside his fists. Again, not a bad pick, but it’s the safest choice they could go with.
Problem is by the time this pack arrived i already completed at 100 % the game (took me 70 hours or something), and aside from another confirmation PW4 it’s a sequel with a lot less content (i still haven’t 100 % PW 3), i really wonder what the hell was the plan here (besides making a Season Pass for playable characters, one of the biggest point of interest for musou games, and for Koei to exploit it), since they must have known a good percentage of returning players would already have done everything and left starving for new content in regards of maps or challenges, or something.
So fuckin odd to have new playable characters you paid for and not having anything new to play them on. Given all i said before, i don’t have any reason to expect Omega Force waking up and patching the skipped arcs of the story as a free update months after, but at least the characters should have come with some “side-story” maps or something, it would have been inelegant to add them as part of the “Non-Season Pass”, but at least they could have made some non-canon battles using the maps already designed, and re-used some of the gimmicks used in Story Mode but not in Treasure Log.
SOMETHING.
Whatever, we’ll talk about this later this winter when the final Character Pack arrives.
I’d like Kaku, please. And Bellamy. And Arlong.
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