One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory

One Piece might not be a franchise that you would immediatly associate with RPGs, but like Dragon Ball its surprising how the genre is represented in their many videogame iterations, especially if we’re talking about older systems, and even more so if we’re talking about Japan-only releases, as the first One Piece videogame was a RPG on the old black-n-white WonderSwan, and more came out for both the Wonderswan family of consoles as wells as for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and even on the original Playstation.

But sadly most western fans are not familiar with some of these quirky GBC One Piece RPGs where (among other things) the Straw Hats are turned into animals, no, most likely you’ve yearned for years for a localized One Piece RPG, only to find out that it exists, One Piece: Romance Dawn, and that it’s sadly a very shit game, even worse as it’s a port from PSP to 3DS, and a cheap one too, because knowing this it makes all sense for the game to look that much like old ass.

I reviewed that one as well, but today we’re here holding hope to finally retire this status and have a big budget mainstream RPG that can make the series some justice instead of wishing they wouldn’t have bothered to begin with, with the long anticipated One Piece Odissey, developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai (who else?) in January 2023 to celebrate the series’ 25^th anniversary.

Available pretty much on all the platforms, old gen and new…. but not the Nintendo Switch.

For the record, this review is based on the PS4 version played on a PS4 Pro.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #9: Episode Of Chopper: Bloom Into Winter, Miracle Sakura (2008)

The year after Episode Of Alabasta, Toei decided to do it again… but also not quite go full recap/abridged retelling of a canonical One Piece story arc.

I guess some complaints about the previous movie eventually made their way up to the committee, but as usual, the wrong lessons were learned.

As in, nothing was learned, but they decided to both innovate and compromise at the same time with Episode Of Chopper Plus.

Chopper was already the focus of the third movie, so i think i somehow understand why chose him again, but this time we have an even weirder gaggle of creative choices.

With Episode Of Alabasta the team was tasked to do the impossible due to the lenght of that arc, so i guess they figured it would make for a better movie if they decided to set a more realistic target to adapt in the standard feature film lenght, and the Drum Island arc was certainly a bit easier in terms of “digest recap”. Arguably, a bit too much, which i speculate led to the choice of changing a lot of stuff and adding new original material specifically for this movie.

It’s an odd pastiche of new and old that also kinda baffles and bamboozles, but for different reasons from Episode Of Alabasta, honestly kinda the opposite.

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One Piece: Film Gold (Episode 0) (2016) [REVIEW]

One Piece Film Gold Episode 0 OVA 2016.png

Director: unknown
Writer: unknown

Going back to the case of a One Piece movie having more than one prologue or preamble, since Film Gold also had a TV special that tie into it, Heart Of Gold, but – as a memory jog – we’re just covering featurettes and OVA this time.

And this actually takes place after that special but before the events of Film Gold itself, like Film Z’s Glorious Island OVA it was also released on smarthphones, and it really doesn’t tie into the movie it’s supposed to, it’s just so happens that the Straw Hats are on their way to the Gran Tesoro ship-city. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Film Gold (Episode 0) (2016) [REVIEW]”

One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]

One Piece Romance Dawn Story 2008 OVA.png

Director: Katsumi Tokoro
Writer: Tsuyoshi Sakurai

Here’s another quite nostalgic OVA, as in 2008, for its 40th Anniversary Shonen Jump held the Super Anime Tour, and Toei was commissioned a recreation not of One Piece, but of Romance Dawn, the one-shot story (the first version, in this specific case) Eiichiro Oda created and that eventually served as a base for One Piece, not only in premise but also character designs, and became a naming convention, so much that the first One Piece chapter is titled “Romance Dawn” as well. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Romance Dawn Story OVA (2008) [REVIEW]”