Bandai Namco has been giving us lots of One Piece love recently and although it has only been a few years, there's already a third Pirate Warriors game. Developed by Omega Force, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 is another entry in the Warriors series of games with more characters, more story arcs and more mobs to destroy!

In Pirate Warriors 3, you spend much of your time beating up thousands upon thousands of nameless mooks along with the occasional One Piece character making their cameos as support or as the enemy bosses. Storywise, PW 3 starts at the beginning of the manga and goes up to the middle of the Dressrosa arc. This is done through the Legend Log, where you get to re-enact a truncated version of the One Piece canon. Though the progression is strict in terms of narrative, the battles that take place are not exactly accurate. I understand that liberties are taken when it comes to video game adaptation but it's kinda funny seeing Luffy singlehandedly fighting through thousands of baddies in East Blue per campaign. Well, maybe except Don Krieg. Dude had an armada of men, so that made sense. Still, I digress.

Free Log, on the other hand, lets you replay those story chapters with whichever characters you choose. And believe me, there's a lot of characters to choose from. Each Straw Hat pirate is playable along with many allies and villains, each with their own array of crazy moves designed to lay waste to entire armies. Leveling all of these characters normally would take up a lot of time and effort but the “Beli Growth” feature is there if you just want to beef your characters up to your strongest character's level by spending your in-game money. You can also up your characters' abilities with coins collected as spoils from your campaigns.

The Dream Log is a nice addition to Pirate Warriors 3. The layout is branched out like a board game, except with islands on the sea. Each island contains a scenario with the recommended level listed to clear it. Each of these scenarios are original and you'll be paired up with some unlikely allies. The challenges may be tough but the rewards are great: there are characters that can be unlocked if you clear their island. There's also an Online mode for multiplayer outings if you wish to tackle missions cooperatively with a friend.

Gameplay in Pirate Warriors 3 is pretty similar to all the other Warriors games: beat up a bunch of dudes, reclaim territories, fight the boss, repeat until the game ends. The Kizuna Rush is pretty cool to use though. It powers you and your allies up for a short while, although it can end when you unleash a screen-clearing special move. There are variables in these campaigns, like treasure events, where you fulfill a certain task during the campaign to score some swag and end of level points. When you finish a campaign, your score will be tallied by the amount of time spent and enemies beaten, with higher ranks netting you more Beli and coins to spend on character growth later. In the Vita edition of PW 3, the hardware can't render as many foes as the console versions so the scoring criteria is actually revised to reflect this shortcoming. With that said, however, this doesn't take away from the game if you're a portable player. It runs just as well as the console port with barely any slowdown. It's not a lazy port by any means.

If Omega Force had a motto, it'd be “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 is ultimately more of the same and then some, but that's not a bad thing in this case. 

Hint: Use Buggy. He's the best character ever and will kick the most butt in the game.

by Ray n.