One Piece Pirate Warriors 4
PW3 was the game that got me interested in one piece, the streamlined, tag team nature of the musou beat em up was silky smooth to play with great rhythm. The bright visual design combined with really solid voice acting portrayed some of the emotional highlights of the series and for a complete newbie, it was captivating. Enough for me to start watching the series and appreciate it's unique depth and character. A massive surprise hit.
PW4 is a little different, it's foregone the bright and sunny look for something a bit more muddled and grey. While not an ugly game, it has lost some of the captivating disposition of 3 and it's a but gloomy to watch. Gone (at least for the first chapter) is the tag nature of combat. Previously you built up special meter for your 3 fighters and when timed right you could do incredible damage and keep boosting your special meter, it became almost guitar hero like in building rhythm and finishing levels timely. It really worked well, but now with a single fighter the combat is more subdued to a point. Perhaps it opens up later, but for the first chapter it feels a bit dry.
The story telling is bare bones and cut back to a point that it fails to achieve the spirit and emotional impact of the main story. Sure the anime series is damn near 1000 episodes, but in this context, the cull of narrative leaves the pacing to be really sparse and really nonsensicle. While PW3 was fairly lean, it still managed to work somehow.
The only real new feature is partially destructive environments, not something that really wows you in the first Alabaster chapter, but it's a cool feature. The load times are a new addition and some of the longest I've ever experienced on the switch to a point where I thought something was wrong with my machine. Curious!
If you are a musou junkie and need your fix this is passable, if you want highlights of the newer arcs this may be an ok catchup, but in contrast with PW3, it feels a bit run down, rushed and incomplete.
6/10