In a surprise trip to San Diego amid Winter, Bandai Namco invited Wccftech out to attend an exclusive media and influencer hands-on aboard the docked Star of India sailing vessel. On board, there were twenty demo stations, all running the beginning moments of One Piece Odyssey. Our hands-on session felt far more intimate, giving us the time to enjoy the experience at our own leisure rather than focusing on rushing through as quickly as possible to bounce off to the next appointment at New York Comic Con.

　　Like our first hands-on preview, One Piece Odyssey opens with Luffy and the Straw Hat Crew crash-landing on the remote island of Waford. Only half of the crew survives the landing intact, with Nami, Zoro, and others scattered around to be rescued throughout King Kong Garden. To find his lost companions, Luffy will have to squad up with three available pirates and engage in turn-based JPRG battles against a variety of native beasts and humanoids to level up and grow their stats and new abilities.

　　Leveling up comes quickly for Luffy's crew in One Piece Odyssey, with only a few battles boosting their stats to the next level and starting around level 40. Thematically, there's a good reason for Luffy's crew already having some experience and expertise under their belt. However, upon meeting one of the two new NPCs created by Eiichiro Oda specifically for One Piece Odyssey, that skill is unknowingly extracted from the pirate crew.

　　Lim, whose hatred for pirates of all varieties is openly discussed upon learning of Luffy's origins on the high seas, steals away muscle memory and knowledge from the characters with a simple tap to the chest. The physical manifestation of knowledge is presented in the form of Memory Cubes which, once extracted, are scattered to the four corners of Waford. Unfortunately, that also means the experience that Luffy has accumulated across years of sailing is lost, reducing him to level 1 just like the rest of his crew. Battling enemies and gathering Memory Cubes will be the two main methods presented to bring Luffy back to his previous potential.

　　Combat was already touched upon in the prior hands-on preview, but One Piece Odyssey is a turn-based JRPG, something the anime series hasn't seen in entries since the Romance Dawn 3DS port some eight years ago. Fighting takes place in turns, with all four Straw hats taking their turns as a group (players can choose the order) while enemies slowly fill their turn gauge before they move on their own. Across the combat field, both players and enemies occupy zones that can accommodate more than one character at a time, meaning many skills can target the entire zone at once rather than a single targetted character.

　　Dramatic Scenes break up the basic flow of combat by giving players objectives to complete for an added boon in combat. The first one that serves as the tutorial is protecting Usopp by keeping him alive with heals while defeating his assailants. Completing this objective rewards him with a temporary status boost for the remainder of combat. Rare elite monsters can also show up from time to time, and such a Dramatic Scene appeared to defeat one with Luffy to earn twice the EXP. However, this event popped up after Luffy had already taken his turn and the enemy was close to death.

　　This showcased a critical flaw in the One Piece Odyssey flow of combat: being unable to expend a turn without taking an action. In this instance, there isn't a way to defend and lessen the damage taken while letting Luffy be the next character to attack and defeat the enemy for that XP boost. Instead, players can use items or cast non-combat skills such as healing but only if the target isn't at full health. Perhaps this can be a feature implemented in a day-one patch and something that we can take credit for in the full release of One Piece Odyssey.

　　While One Piece Odyssey will be an original tale for Luffy and the Straw Hat Crew, expect to spend a lot of time exploring and revisiting past memories to help restore their prior abilities. In order to repair the Hysteria broken memories, players will revisit past adventures and locales throughout their time spent on Waford and Memoria. Water 7 and Alabasta are but two locales revealed this early on but anticipate a wide array of locations to revisit. Unfortunately, Wano seems to be off-limits for what's to come in One Piece Odyssey despite the arc both beginning and ending during the whole development cycle of this upcoming JRPG.

　　The wait to see if One Piece Odyssey is the real deal won't be much longer, as Bandai Namco has confirmed that the latest of Luffy's adventures will be released on January 12th, 2023. One Piece Odyssey will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC.