The game is purely for fans of the franchise and even then it has a lot of small cons that make the overall package tedious, I only recommend it to those who enjoy One Piece & Turn Based RPG's but even then it may be too much.

One Piece Odyssey is a turn based RPG that has you revisit the pre-timeskip locations & stories of the source material in alternate history retellings. It's a great way for fans to re-experience Alabasta & Water 7, especially when it provides insight into the reactions of absent characters in major events (although limited). In my experience, the main selling point is the aforementioned because the exploration is restrictive & lacking; combat is severely repetitive, unchallenging and simple, and other mechanics fall absent as a result of the former.

disclaimer I played & finished One Piece Odyssey in 68 hours to 100% completion on another platform & my review reflects that experience.[/b]

Simply put, the combat is repetitive & basic; you can use the same move repeatedly with no need or incentive to use other moves or abilities and the rock-paper-scissors mechanic called character types is pretty pointless outside of a select number of encounters. Basically the combat comes down to a one hit super powerful attack followed by an attack cutscene, repeat ad nauseam. The game even has an auto battle setting that goes through the motions of combat for you and even it uses the same moves with no variation.

In the rare instances where it takes more than one hit, you can eat some food to buff the characters attacks or pop a super team move (once earned) to wipe the field. There isn’t much reason to swap characters beyond selecting your favourites due to the strength of those you start with, even moreso once they get remotely upgraded. In my experience and as someone new to Turn Based games outside of Pokémon, challenging encounters only occurred during the DLC which is the only place the developers accounted for the strength players can gain.

Player upgrades come in the form of cubes you need to collect in the world and equipment that you’ll need to slot into an inventory cube. The more frequent the character’s appearance the more cubes and thus the faster they accrue power. The equipment can be used to balance yourself by only equipping that which isn’t powerful otherwise you’ll quickly end up using Area of Effect attacks and zone wipes for each character to clear combat encounters. If you get the Deluxe Edition you’ll have access to incredibly power equipment from the get-go and thus combat is near instantly tedious. These items are [EX] Extreme (Stat) Up. I do not recommend their usage if you choose to play and if you do, only use them once you wish to speed things up BUT at that point you may already have better equipment.

You can use four members of the straw hats in combat at a time with the option to swap any of them out for other members (pre-wano). The amount of available characters depends on the state of the story with some characters being unavailable during their respected arcs or at random times.

The game much like the source material suffers from the main four’s ever-presence (Luffy, Zoro, Nami & Sanjii) and thus if you’re a fan of the other five characters (Franky, Nico Robin, Chopper & Brook) you’re left with crumbs. They also suffer regarding combat as their presence in the story is limited and thus their power and appearance lacks that which is felt & seen in the main four.

Each characters depiction felt accurate and their visuals much like the locations are perfect, the only downside is that the only cosmetic skins are locked behind DLC and even then it’s limited to the pre-timeskip versions of the characters despite the source material’s change of attire with each new location.

The new characters are decent, Lim is perfect for what she’s intended to be & I personally enjoyed Adio’s character in his entirety with his personality, interactions with Luffy and the trickling of his story.

The open world traversal can be fun in that you're exploring the locations of One Piece beyond the page/screen but you are restricted to a linear path during story moments e.g. turn back prompts, and despite the visual population, the areas feel rather lifeless. Exploration is near required in order to upgrade each character to their pre-existing strength and sadly while the locations & characters are depicted perfectly, they lack meaningful interactions & unique combat encounters outside of specific moments that revisit emotional events, which makes the gameplay loop tedious; not to mention fast travel is frustrating due to the game's world map menu & late game unlock of the feature.

The new location Waford is a stunning island with a fascinating history but it suffers from a poor first impression due to linear story traversal, blocked off paths and simply a lot of the cool stuff happening in the mid to late game.

Alabasta is desert and towns, it’s more of what we’ve seen in the source material but too much time is spent here (even returning in the DLC) and it felt like it got all the content & love compared to other locations. Water 7 is the other main location and is probably the best with its missions and few emotional quests but still suffers from the aforementioned issues. The other two locations while great to revisit in a different form , significantly lack content & exploration zones in comparison to the Alabasta & Water 7

The UI upgrade screens are convoluted with the latter boiling down to small puzzle game of fitting acquired equipment into a chequered square & crafting is tedious with an overabundance of items for recipes & too many items that don’t need to be used.

The campsites while fun to see the crew gather round are kind of pointless, as the mechanics each character offers during the stay become insignificant thanks to the easy combat encounters & lack of cosmetics outside of the DLC.

Traversing each of the locations after a while became a slog due to the slow out of combat movement speed (even when sprinting) and repeated actions have minor animation stops that ruin momentum; these actions are Luffy jumping across gaps or grabbing long distance items & Zoro cutting items.

There’s also the case of character’s having unique bonuses when used out of combat (Sanjii finding ingredients, Usopp knocking high items down with his slingshot, Nami finding treasure & Robin finding lore) that have no agency due to the easy combat removing the need to craft food buffs and gather items. If you do wish to use them while exploring, you'll have to enter a menu every time that you swap characters.

Conversations & pop ups are slow to skip and in the case of cutscenes it requires multiple instances of holding down a button to do so. When pop ups and interruptions occur frequently (which they often do given the speed that combat ends) it makes for a gruelling experience.

As I said at the top, One Piece Odyssey is for one piece fans who are also into turn based gameplay but even for those players, the content package and design decisions may be too limited or frustrating to keep you playing. To the people that the aforementioned applies to I only recommend acquiring the title at a discounted price.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag's basic gameplay suffers from the same issues as its predecessors however due to the addition and focus on the pirate adventure and naval combat, those issues aren’t as impactful to the experience and may determine if you will enjoy the title or not.

Black Flag utilises the same parkour system introduced in AC3 where everything you do regarding parkour is linked to a single button (sprint) and as a result there are difficulties in Edwards’s responsiveness. Thankfully Black Flag seems to have fixed a few of the issues seen in the last title, most notably jumping onto every small object, janky tree parkour and linear tree paths with no variety. That being said they can occur just not as frequently.

Edward felt more responsive to my input than Connor (AC3) outside latching issues & difficulties traversing the rigging & masts of a ship which is unique to this title. The naval nature of the game limits the available parkour opportunities within the smaller cities and those available aboard your ship aren’t practical or functional as climbing the rigging can have you spotted or shot off of it and rope swinging will have you falling short of your target, resulting in the same action that you used the swing to avoid or simply failing to air assassinate targets within its range due to the games broken spotting.

Combat remains the same as AC3 although timing, counters & dodges feel harsher with shorter windows of opportunity. Overall the one man army power fantasy seen in prior titles is harder to achieve in Black Flag as being within combat will no longer produce an endless amount of enemies within cities, as traditional gameplay no longer features a notoriety system, as a result once the enemies have been dispatched combat will end.

Regarding Gear, unlike AC3 and prior titles you’re restricted to dual swords, hidden blades & fists as your main weapons but for secondaries you’ll have the usual arsenal of smoke bombs, pistols, a singular throwing knife & either a sleep, berserk or rope dart which will be made available as you progress in the story. You can choose for the duel blades to be rapiers, cutlasses, scimitars or swords when unlocked or bought but they will always be duel wield.

Naval gameplay is simple with each direction of view offering a different weapon & level of impact.

• Forwards = chain shot that can stun ships & deals minor damage.
  
• Left & right = Broadside cannons when aiming & Heavy shot when firing from the “hip” both doing significant damage.
  
• Backwards = fire barrels to stop ships from ramming.
  
• The mortar deals damage to ships at a distance.
  
• Swivels can be used when available to deal extra damage or when boarding.

All of these attacks can be used to damage other ships (schooners, brigs, frigates & man of wars) and open them up to the boarding procedure where you will exit naval gameplay and board the ship entering the basic combat model. Whilst on the ship you’ll have a few objectives: kill crew, destroy ammunition, kill the captain, destroy the flag or kill scouts. Once complete you will have the option to scuttle the ship to repair the Jackdaw, lower your wanted level or send the ship to the Kenway’s Fleet Minigame which is currently offline without a mod.

Assaulting & boarding ships is required to upgrade & improve your jackdaws weapons & durability in order for you to tackle harder targets and a few later stage missions. It can come natural, however some upgrades will require you to complete side content in the form of underwater dive sites.

While mentioned previously that traditional gameplay doesn’t feature a notoriety system, the naval combat does in the form of Pirate Hunters. Pirate hunters will start to appear once you’ve caused enough mayhem and will start off with a small ship & then escalate over 4 levels until they send a Man of War. Pirate Hunters much like the rest of the games Naval Combat & Side content (forts & convoys) are a great challenge for most of your playtime although upgrading the Jackdaw (ship) will reduce this challenge significantly. Once this occurs your only challenge will come from the 4 legendary ships.

Forts are a great refresher activity during naval gameplay, they act as another outpost on top of the many available and a synchronisation point for their section of the ocean. Upon raiding the Fort it will reveal all points of interest and minor loot to the player. Each fort is a great action sequence during naval gameplay although the linear nature of the traditional gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

Convoys will appear randomly across the ocean providing a small challenge with increased rewards (money & resources). Legendary ships act the same however they have predetermined positions on the map and are the endgame challenge once you've upgraded the Jackdaw.

On that note, where destroying ships will get you resources needed to upgrade the Jackdaw, Hunting gets you resources to upgrade Edwards gear, allowing for more pistols, health and an increase for secondary weapon ammunition. Hunting takes place across multiple islands with a small variety of animals being spread across them and a few hunting instances take place on the ocean with a whaling Minigame. While it offers something to do outside of collectables within these areas, the amount required to upgrade will keep you at the locations for a very short amount of time.

Lastly regarding the story, Edward is a great flawed protagonist who experiences the Templar/Assassin conflict as a third party instead of the initial firsthand experience seen in prior titles. As a result we see him develop as a person and become more than just a pirate looking for riches and coin although similar to Assassin’s Creed 3, the handling of the pacing and the showcase of this development is hindered by excessive time skips. Whilst Edward cares for the characters and locations, we the player don’t experience the moments or connections during gameplay or cutscenes that would make us care to the same level. We care about the characters through the performances and writing available but its clear we're missing loads of context about events of greater importance than those shown when characters reflect and mention said off screen events during moments of impact. It's confusing and jarring as a player amplified when we're pulled out of the animus for a modern day segment just before a time skip.

Separate form that, Black Flag's memory corridors similar to AC3 provide great moments of reflection and commentary about Edward and the Templar/assassin conflict that make them an absolute treat.

All that being said, the entire final sequence of the game is one of the best and emotional scenes I've had the luxury of experiencing and it would be made better with improvements to the aforementioned story issues.

To conclude, Black Flag is a great game although similar to past titles in the franchise it has issues with parkour, variety and the handling of pacing in the story not showing players significant moments that connect characters & locations together. I personally found that Black Flag was more restrictive with the franchises gameplay mechanics and player expression compared to past titles in favour of the pirate fantasy but the story remains in line with the franchise just with a different view of the overall conflict. I don't recommend it to those who want a "traditional" AC experience but to those who want a hybrid gameplay model &/or a great pirate game, Black Flag is the game for you..