One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 VS One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3

In honour of the fifth anniversary of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 on 27th March, I felt now would be as good a time as any to do a little comparison piece. After all, one of my favourite games in the One Piece franchise is its predecessor: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. My friend and I have played over 100 hours on the third Pirate Warriors game, so when Pirate Warriors 4 was released five years ago, we were excited to play it.

Now, I’ll be honest. I’m not going to say One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is a bad game, but when we first played it? The disappointment was palpable. After five years, I’ve started playing it again, just to see if we’ve treated it unfairly. But, when comparing it to 3? Yeah, it doesn’t feel nearly as loved.

See, while Pirate Warriors 3 goes through the story from the beginning up to a mish-mash of the Dressrosa Arc, which was still ongoing at the time, the same can’t be said for 4. 4 begins with a brief tutorial in the Wano Arc and then takes you back to Alabasta. Want to experience East Blue? Yeah, sorry guys, we’re going straight to beating up the Baroque Works, and then it moves on to Enies Lobby in the Dramatic Log. Now, I know we went through a lot of story in Pirate Warriors 3, but that’s to be expected. After all, One Piece has over 1000 chapters of manga and episodes of anime. But, we only catch a glimpse of it in Pirate Warriors 4. There’s more focus on the New World portion of the series, but at the time, there wasn’t as much to the story yet.

The New World has a few major arcs: Fishman Island, Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island, and Wano. Most of these arcs are massive. So, by focusing on these, it means that there aren’t as many islands to explore. Hell, we get a brief mention of Skypiea before Enies Lobby, and I never thought I’d say I miss Eneru, but I did. The Skypiea Arc isn’t one of the most popular, and it did feel like Pirate Warriors 4 focused on the more recent and popular arcs.

Then, of course, let’s not forget the Treasure Log. The Treasure Log allows you to play through some unique stories, often chasing after Bounties, and just causing mayhem as whichever character you want to play as. They’re meant to have a degree of freedom, and Pirate Warriors 3 made it more amusing by having an island board, allowing you to pick and choose which one you wanted to try and battle next. Compared to Pirate Warriors 4 which has… lists. You need to unlock each one, and it’s just nowhere near as fun in terms of design.

Even battling feels less fun. Sure, it’s a little easier to arrange your special attacks by using R1, but it’s not like its predecessor, and we don’t even have Kizuna Rushes. These are special attacks where you team up with your ally to perform a move, and if you complete the level using that move, you can fully complete the whole level. It meant you had to be careful to save your special attack until you were certain that you could beat the level boss that way. Unfortunately, that meant that some elements from 3 felt unnecessary. Before, a piece of meat was essential to ensure that you didn’t waste it so you could have a backup for your Kizuna Rush. Now, when there’s meat when you’re fighting a boss, it doesn’t seem to serve as much purpose.

Even completing the levels was a lot more difficult, as there were Treasure Events that you would need to unlock that were timed during the level. If you didn’t get this Treasure Event, you’d most likely have to play it again, and there would be a short cutscene to elaborate on what’s going on. Compared to Pirate Warriors 3, the level design is almost too easy. Even the skill tree will require money and coins, but they’re so easy to get, especially as you can get the Bounty Hunter skill so quickly, meaning that there’s no real challenge.

Sure, Pirate Warriors 4 does have slightly better level design and utilises the destruction of property, but that’s about it. In all, it feels sparse as a successor, and while it does kill a fair bit of time, it’s still hard not to want to go back and play Pirate Warriors 3.