Summary
WhenOne Piece Odysseyarrived on Nintendo Switch last month, as a longtime anime fan trying to branch out and engage withmore of the medium’s iconic series, I grabbed the game out of curiosity. Boats are my biggest fear, so seafaring sounds like a nightmare to me, but I had a lengthy travel day of flying across the US to getfrom San Diego Comic Conback to my house in upstate New York, so why not play a game about traversing the ocean when I’m 35,000 feet above sea level all day?
I enjoyed myself for the most part. My best friend is a big One Piece fan and the characters were as delightfully quirky as she told me they’d be, their powers and moves all felt intuitive, and the journey itself was fun. What I didn’t love, though, was its uber-strict commitment to linearity. I just don’t think a game that limits your opportunities to stray from the beaten path this much is for me anymore.
I’ve grown to love being able to do whatever, whenever, but I didn’t know just how hard I’d adhered to that principle. Of the other games I’ve been busy with this year, Animal Well is going on my Game of the Year list without a doubt, I always do Persona dungeons early so I can spend more time running around with my pals, and I’m not willing to share how many hours I have logged in The Sims, but I promise, it’s a lot.
My first adventure game ever, though, was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and given how its comparative open-endedness went on to inspire titans from the past 25 years like Grand Theft Auto and Dark Souls, you could say I’ve always valued freedom in my video games.
Zelda will always be the franchise that has my heart, but even as a lifelong fan, I can admit Nintendo hasn’t always nailed that open-ended gameplay I love. Skyward Sword is a game so painfully on-rails whose sky setting is one of the most boring things I’ve ever been made to traverse, and I’ve heard similar comments about the ocean in Wind Waker, too.
The most recent adventure game I finished was Tears of the Kingdom,taking a break for a few months after playing it to deathat launch before going back and polishing it off. After that, I played Monster Hunter Stories, a by-the-numbers remaster of an okay Nintendo 3DS game from a series for which I have no nostalgia. After a brief dip back into The Sims 4 for the Lovestruck expansion last month, I then played through all of One Piece Odyssey. And while The Sims 4 takes its share of flak for not being a real open-world, it was a lot less stifling than what was meant to be a large, epic journey with the Straw Hat Pirates.
One Piece Odyssey isn’tfullylinear, of course, but I struggled the most during its introductory levels with having my leash yanked back when I dared stray a step too far. When the group had to work together to save Yumi, I’d see a piece of treasure slightly off to the side and try to grab it on the way to her. Anytime I did, one of my teammates would chide me for getting distracted, the screen would fade to black, and I’d be back facing where the game actually wanted me to go.
In real life, my decision paralysis can sometimes be overwhelming, but in games, I almost feel worse off without those options. I’ve heard it said that games like this keep you on track with your leveling to ensure a fair fight throughout, but I’d argue there’s something intrinsic and fun about learning the hard way that you’re not ready for a challenge. For example,I got to play the demo of Visions of Mana at PAX East earlier this year, where I stumbled into an area populated by enemies dozens of levels higher than me. I was feeling ambitious, having just gotten a firm grasp of how to play the game, only to get swiftly and savagely knocked on my ass – and I loved it.
Discovery is so critical to curious minds like mine, and I think I’m finding that that’s a bigger sticking point for me than I realized. Will I end up watching One Piece after having finished the game? Maybe, especially because televised anime is a medium where linearity in a story makes sense. But I’ll probably give the other games in the series a miss in favor of getting lost in a bigger, more open world someplace else.
