Here we are with the first round of the new character DLC packs for Pirate Warriors 4, as heavily promised before.
The 4th Character Pack is titled “Battle Of Onigashima”, and it features 2 “Onigashima variants/versions” of characters already available in the base game, with Battle Of Onigashima Luffy, Battle of Onigashima Kaido, and more interestingly, Yamato, the offspring of Kaido that has proclaimed to carry on the will of the late Oden in a very direct manner.
As for why now, well, it’s not real surprise that the Pirate Warriors games’ storyline are also made in a way to avoid accidental spoilers for the One Piece anime audience, so yeah, it makes sense they had to wait until the Gear 5 episode to introduce this powered up version of Luffy, after all that’s the reason Pirate Warriors 4 has an original story for the Land Of Wa arc, and Pirate Warriors 3 invented a new scenario for the Dressarosa stages as well.
That explained, and even considering that the DLC characters aren’t even overpriced, all things considered… i do believe that Battle Of Onigashima’s Luffy should have been given out as a free DLC character, as a sign of good faith to fans that had been left with no new PW 4 content or support for 2 years by now, and to better tempt people into buying the new Character Pass outright.
As to why it’s because it’s definitely the laziest DLC character so far, as it’s simply an hybridation of both pre and post-time skip movesets for Luffy (even in terms of special attacks), with the various Gear abilities already baked in the combos, with some new special moves but no access to the Gear 4 transformations, but instead only the Gear 5 one, which turns Luffy into a Sky type character, gives him new combos, new special moves, and honestly the more incredible and absurd speed in terms of airborne movement/flight.
The Gear 5 stuff it’s fun to use, i’m not denying that, you might argue that it would have been hard to come up with an enterily new moveset for this Luffy specifically, but the odd limitations on the transformations available to this version of Luffy feel weird, since, you know, Luffy also uses Gear 4 forms/transformations during the Onigashima assault, and the revelatively new little moves.. i would have preferred to get this version as a separate freebie, and instead we got one of the Flying Six, like Queen or King, heck, even Orochi or Kanjuros’ would have been interesting picks.
If you feel i’m ragging a lot about a gimmicky version of Luffy, it’s because Kaido’s Onigashima version is much better.
This is Kaido in his hybrid man-dragon form, which is now a Speed character, and he gets a mostly new moveset to go along with this newfound nimbleness, with new special moves and some actual aerial combos, which are admittely half lifted from his full-on Dragon transformation state/form, but do help in making this version of Kaido feel different than the basic Power type one.
He’s still a frigging beast and sometimes he can still barely pass through the enviroments (i got stuck behind a base for once, dunno why it happened or what made eventually break out of it), but the downside here is that he’s the only character of the pack to lack any transformation ability… which isn’t surprising, given he IS already transformed to begin with.
So it’s still reeling of compromise, but even so it’s still better than Onigashima Luffy, in my opinion.
What i feel it’s real star of the pack is Yamato, as it’s the only brand new character, like, properly new, unlike Drake which existed in-game only in its transformed dinosaur form before the DLC.
And “best boy” is quite fun to use as expected, it’s a Power type character but it’s also not quite, since it’s more nimble and less “truck in the face” powerful, and while Yamato fittingly takes on the usage of electrically charged kanabo from Kaido, its moveset it’s different and made more interesting thanks to many attacks involving tornadoes and especially freezing properties, taken to the max thanks to Yamato’s transformation in its Mythical Zoan ice fox humanoid form, which fittingly changes the character into a Speed type.
Great character and a good addition to the roster, as i said i would have been more interested in seeing the dino-dowed subordinates of Kaido, Ulti would have been a popular choice, or a Tecnique type styled Queen, complete with his “Zoom dance” taunt, i would love to see a new technical playable character in PW 4.
Possibly not another swordsman, if i may kindly ask, but it’s not clearly here, maybe in one of the next 2 packs.
Overall, despite some grievances with how they did “Onigashima Luffy” (which really should have been free DLC), i’m quite satisfied with this character pack, worth it overall, though maybe wait for a discount on the pack or the Character Pass 2, but that aside, quite decent, definitely not a bad pack to (re)start with. So to speak.
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