One Piece is an adventure story set in a fantasy world populated by heroic (and not-so-heroic) pirates. A legendary pirate named Gol D. Roger hid some treasure in a place called One Piece, and it is the goal of pirates around the world to find and claim that treasure to crown themselves king of the pirates. One Piece follows Luffy D. Monkey, a rambunctious young hero who ate a magical fruit that gave him a rubber body. Along with an increasingly wacky cast of crew members, Luffy and his pirates seek to find One Piece and prove themselves as the greatest pirates on the seas.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 follows the same design philosophy as the recent spin-off Warriors games, like Dynasty Warriors Gundam and Hyrule Warriors. Combat involves traveling to territories, capturing them, and defeating foes within the area. You battle in large, open maps, and if you win, the territory becomes yours; if you lose, the area vanishes. Pirate Warriors 3 has much better level design than its fellow anime-inspired Gundam titles. The levels are more distinctive and recognizably inspired by the anime, and there are interesting gimmicks, such as special walls that only certain characters can break through.

Characters have access to two different attacks: fast and heavy. Combos can be started with either attack button, leading to a wider variety of combos than most Dynasty Warriors titles. Similar to Orochi Warriors, every character has a special R1 button. Some are regular attacks, like Luffy's long-range Gum Gum punch, but others completely modify how the character plays. Nami is a low-damage character, but she applies a special cloud debuff to her enemies, causing a lightning bolt to hit every enemy who has the cloud attached. Sanji can use his R1 attack to cancel most attacks and charge an enemy, allowing him to perform long combo strings.

The biggest new mechanic in Pirate Warriors 3 is Kizuna, which roughly means bonds. In essence, you can call in any allied character to support your current attack. Each ally on the field has a Kizuna meter, and he/she gains Kizuna bars in combat. Once the bar is filled, he/she can assist you with a Kizuna attack, which can be initiated at the end of a combo string. As you continue to fight, they gain more Kizuna levels and the attacks increase in strength.

At the maximum Kizuna level, you can activate Kizuna Rush, which causes your player-character's moves to be significantly powered up and triggers extreme Kizuna attacks from your allies. It can even draw in additional characters to allow two or more characters to support your attacks. The only downside is that once it is done, any character who contributed is returned to Level 1 Kizuna, and you'll temporarily lose access to their special attacks.

The Kizuna offers flexibility in your character move sets. By adding different Kizuna partners, you can create lengthy combos that utilize your characters the best. Nami can create a tornado to suck in enemies, so using her at the end of a combo is great for characters who leave enemies bunched together since you can create larger stacks of foes and tear through them like butter. Zoro can shoot a large wave-clearing burst of air, which is fantastic for characters who are great at gathering foes but poor at taking them out. There's also a fun balance element in deciding if it's worth using your Kizuna Rush and temporarily losing access to bonus attacks. Another balancing factor is that you're graded on how often you use the attacks. One of the requirements for S ranks is earning "!" points, which are only earned by using Kizuna attacks on enemies.

Pirate Warriors 3 is fun. The variety of characters is dynamic and interesting, and most of the characters feel distinctive. However, there is some serious imbalance in the cast. Smoker can become basically invincible with a few button presses while Nami has to struggle to keep up with some of the lesser characters due to her more complex setup. Most characters are viable, but there are a few stinkers, so that can be disappointing for fans who hope to use their favorites.

The Story mode is a simplified version of the entire One Piece plot. It's a straightforward playthrough where you begin with access to Luffy and eventually gain more allies. You can pick from a handful in each stage, depending on who is available in the plot. Most have special treasure objectives for that stage, and completing them unlocks special scenes, alters the course of the level, and earns you bonus loot at the end of the stage.

The issue with Story mode is that you're stuck playing as a constantly rotating crew of Straw Hats, and Luffy is the only constant. If you like any of the other cast members, you have to deal with them popping in and out of plot. There are also some weird stage choices. One entire plot arc is crammed into one stage while another is used for a fight, even though in the original manga, Luffy beats a guy in one punch.

There are other ways to play as characters. Free mode allows you to use any character in any stage on a replay. The lengthier Dream mode is made up of semi-randomly generated stages that are set on a variety of maps. They all have simple objectives, ranging from guarding locations to defeating foes, but they get progressively more difficult. By the end, you'll need to have extremely strong characters to survive. This causes the game's poorer balance to shine through, as some characters are effectively invincible while others have to struggle to survive. This mode features some cool hidden dialogue between characters you normally wouldn't expect.

Unfortunately, Pirate Warriors 3 can get grindy. A good portion of this is due to how leveling up works. Each character has a set of stats they can level up with coins, and almost every character has an associated coin. Defeating or playing as these characters earns you coins, which you can spend to level up. The problem is that there's a huge variation in the characters you'll get. Common characters like Luffy leave you with hundreds of coins, but rarer characters are much slower, and some characters can be locked for a long time. You can unlock some characters coins by completing sub-missions in the levels.

More preferable is the Skill Chart system. Each character has an associated skill chart, and completing an objective on the chart unlocks a skill that can be equipped on any character. Some objectives require you to use certain characters while others can be completed by any character. It's one of the better methods of skill acquirement in a Dynasty Warriors-style game since it is straightforward and simple. Unfortunately, higher-tier skills are locked until you obtain the lower-tier skills. This means that prior to unlocking a character's skill chart, you sometimes find you can't access certain skills at all. The skill charts for Sanji and Nami have a ton of locked skills that require later-game characters to access. It would've been nice if it had been done another way.

In addition to single-player gameplay, Pirate Warriors 3 also features both local and online cooperative play. Online has the same rescue system seen in a few recent Warriors games, where players can send out an SOS asking for help on a difficult stage. It works surprisingly well. I didn't see a ton of SOSes, but I was able to jump in and help players any time one popped up. It ran smoothly, and the only complaint is that the game doesn't adjust well enough for two players. I was running out of enemies very quickly, and the stages had trouble keeping up — something that also occurred in Dynasty Warriors Gundam: Reborn. The online cooperative play adds a fair bit of extra value to the game.

Pirate Warriors 3 competes with Hyrule Warriors for being one of the best-looking games in the franchise. While the graphical difference between the PS3 and PS4 versions isn't particularly large, the game looks great. The cel-shaded animation style really pops and works well for the character designs. The One Piece cast looks appropriately bouncy and animated, and it's a delight to see their ridiculous attacks. The frame rate on the PS4 version is nice, with only minimal slowdowns during particularly busy segments. The game features only Japanese voice acting, which might be disappointing to some fans, but by and large, it works well, and everything important is subtitled or covered with an overlay, so nothing is missed.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 is a remarkably fun entry in the franchise and easily the best One Piece game on any system. It has some flaws, many of which are common to the Warriors franchise, but it's just fun to play. Fast-paced combat, fun stage design, excellent graphics and solid adaptation of the anime and manga stories mean that it also has boatloads to do. It doesn't quite attain the heights set by Hyrule Warriors, but anyone who's a One Piece fan must buy this title.

Score: 8.5/10