Before the final reveal in december, i honestly hoped this would have been a One Piece “Film Villains “DLC packs, but nope, the “reveal” (the silhouette gave it away since we knew of the this second Season Pass existing in trailer announcement form) of Uta was simply to indicate this was gonna be a One Piece Film Red DLC characters pack.
Which makes sense, since Film Red was beyond successful at the box office, it was arguably the goddamn best One Piece film since Film Z, and it also big a vehicle for j-pop singer Ado helped it making it the 6th grossing anime (and japanese) film of ALL TIME so far, so yeah, you bet your ass the production committees and suits were gonna push it into related One Piece products.
Still, it’s a shame because i do think a One Piece film villains DLC characters pack would have also sold really well if it picked some fan favourites like Zephyr or Shiki, but alas, this is not the case. Maybe in Pirate Warriors 5, whenever will that materialize.
This is a One Piece Film Red themed pack (which also comes out with a music pack of Ado songs featured in the movies, for 10 bucks) and at least it’s already an improvement right off the bat, compared to the Onigashima Battle one.
As in this time we only get 1 variant of an already existing character from the base roster, Shanks, depicting him as seen in the movie showing off some Haki imbued moves, now a Speed type character instead of a Power type, like Kaido in his humanoid dragon form, but honestly i feel even “half-dragon Kaido” felt a little more distinct from its normal incarnation.
This Film Red inspired variant of Shanks instead doesn’t feel that much different, even though he has a new moveset, due to him being a Speed character you also have more options for aerial combat and juggles, and with his new combos that unleash even more Haki/Ambition imbued cross slashes and tornandos, he’s even more OP.
Which is what you’d want from such an already OP character like Shanks, i get that, but he doesn’t even get many new special moves or a transformation/form change… but then i honestly think this moveset is better than the one for base Shanks, and even his “taunt walk” can knock enemies unconscious, so….
Uta is a Technique character as most player could have guessed (and i welcome more Technique type characters, tend to be the more interesting ones), and she’s the best of the bunch. She has the usual Tecnique characters set up, as in the base attacks are weak but cover a lot of range, a lot of the sweets and presents summoned by the combos can be remotely exploded like bombs, and she has a pretty good set of aerial combos.
Which makes perfect sense as she also comes with a transformation in Uta Knight (the get up seen in the movie she hails from, Film Red), which changes her into a Sky type characters and also gives her new special moves, as it’s the always the case for transformations/form changes.
The biggest surprise and welcomed, always missing fan favourite is Koby, obviously not in its East Blue appearance, but in his trained, Marine-sided form, with his Film Red get up, and he’s also a Speed character.
One which i felt (from the trailer) maybe could have been a Speed character with some Tecnique type gimmicks, akin to Cracker Charlotte’s way of using many biscuit constructs, but he’s not quite that.
Sadly he’s disappointing because his moveset almost feels like it was meant for a generic CP9 or high ranking World Goverment officers (since the fighting style its the Rokushiki/Six Arts-Powers), i mean, he’s quite fun, he’s a decent character, and he does have a counter-like ability to easily break armour gauges, but the “Marine grunts support” gimmick could have been better, even without making specific bars for the abilities, which we already discussed aren’t a thing this time around, even for DLC characters like Smoothie and Urouge that can change form into giant-sized units.
The idea is that some of his combos evoke Marine units (even giants Marine units) as follow-ups/support attacks, and some of the stronger combos enhance the morale, letting you “summon” stronger versions of these support attacks, like the base strong attack that usually makes a Marine rifle unit shoot in unison becomes a bazooka unit when you glow a purple area (indicating the enhanced morale), and the Full Force Burst immediately enhancing this “unit morale” to the max for the support attacks/follow ups.
Dunno, maybe let you evoke a bodyguard unit or something that for a while actively moves with you on the map to assist or that can be evoked to help defend territories, it’s a nice idea but even a single character gimmick never meant for anything else than a single character, feels like there could have been more to it.
Overall, a step up in terms of offerings and actually new playable characters over the previous DLC Pack.
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