We’ve had plenty One Piece games before, but never an expansive and lengthy JRPG like we’ve gotten with One Piece Odyssey. Fans of the anime and manga, or even the prior games based on the massively popular pirate adventures of Luffy and company, will find quite a unique experience when booting up this title. It isn’t the most difficult game, but there are some things worth knowing before you set sail in these uncharted lands. Here are some essential tips and tricks for One Piece Odyssey to make sure you aren’t stretched to your limits.
Further Reading
- One Piece Odyssey isn’t just targeting anime and JRPG fans
- The best anime video games
- The 10 best JRPGs of all-time developed by Japanese studios
Focus on the main story (at least until chapter 3)
One Piece Odyssey is a mix of more linear areas and some open zones where you’re free to go off, fight, level up, do sidequests, and just explore. While it may seem fitting to indulge your adventurous side right away, you will want to hold back that enthusiasm at least until you hit chapter 4. At this point, you will have all the tools and characters needed to fully explore, as well as hit the main point where exploration will start to reap real rewards.
Learn the power triangle
The combat system in One Piece Odyssey is a mix of normal turn-based JRPG fights and a power triangle similar to one you would find in a Fire Emblem game. This time, the triangle features Power, Technique, and Speed. Power is more effective against Speed, Speed trumps Technique, and Technique bests power. Each character (and enemy) fits into one of these three roles, so target enemies that your character can deal the most damage to in order to be the most effective.
Listen to your crew
As you’re exploring the map, other members of the Straw Hats will pipe up now and then to have little conversations. Don’t ignore this as simple flavor text. More often than not they will give little hints or clues to finding hidden items, paths, or areas to explore. Sanji usually points out spots to gather cooking ingredients, Nami is skilled at finding money to loot, and Nico will help uncover archeology pieces.
Do all the Dramatic Scenes for XP
A new wrinkle on battles is Dramatic Scenes that you can choose to do or not do as optional bonus objectives. These can be different depending on the fight, but always give a massive XP boost you should certainly go for whenever possible. These can include winning a fight in a single turn, using a specific character to beat an enemy, or even just making the fight harder by buffing the enemy.
Speed up and use auto battle
Finally, once you’ve gotten into the swing of things, normal battles will become trivial. To avoid burning out, you can do two things. First, switch up the battle speed to the fast setting to fly through the cool, but sometimes long attack animations. Second, you can turn on an auto-battle mode by selecting it from your Tactics Menu. Once on, it will stay on until you manually turn it off, even if you start a boss battle, and will not pay attention to Dramatic Scenes. You should still pay attention while using auto-battle just in case, but it is fairly safe to throw on if you’re backtracking through an earlier area full of weak enemies.
