The reason I am calling this a partial review is I looked into it and figured I should stop playing for now. The problem was the game will eventually get into Wano Arc spoilers, and I haven't even made it through Fishman Island yet. And, quite frankly, I want nothing spoiled for me when I continue to watch more One Piece. That said, I do have some thoughts so far I think are worth sharing, but know that this game is pretty much only there for fans of the series due to the nature of how it's going to spoil a bunch of stuff for you.
That said, I'll get the problems out of the way first. I like the idea that various One Piece characters have unique abilities to advance through the overworld, the problem is switching between characters. Luffy can reach distances using his arm like a kind of Hookshot, and Ussop can clear bird's nests to get them to drop an item and a variety of other things. The problem comes in that you always have every character and yet to use their abilities you will need to stop, open a menu, select the character, let the screen turn to black, and then turn back so you are in control of the said character. But remember, you have to be controlling Luffy to use the Observation Haki to find hidden items, so you will be switching right back to Luffy. Items that only Sanji or Nami can find you don't need to worry about because they will speak up if something is nearby. With the constant switching between characters with the switch being as long as it is, you will be spending a lot of time just swapping between characters in a way that feels like you are just wasting time. Normally something like this would rank pretty low on the list of complaints, but it's prominent enough here when you take into account complaint number two.
You will be doing a lot of back-and-forths fetch quests that add nothing to the story, don't have any interesting game-play behind them, and just don't feel necessary even though you have to do it. The game feels like it's just trying to pad out its length when there isn't any need to. They needed to focus on tightening up the gameplay in the over-world.
That said, this is a turn-based RPG, and when judging the combat I have to say it's really fun. I'll avoid talking about the normal aspects of the genre and focus on the thing this game does that separates it. The big one is fighting in zones. At the start of combat, based on your tactics and a bit of chance, every character starts in a zone either on their own, with other enemies, or with other characters. Attacks have ranges that can target single enemies in your zone, entire zones, or even ranged attacks to hit enemies in other zones. The same, of course, applies to buffs. You can move into another zone, assuming no enemies are blocking you, by attacking with a close-range attack of some sort as well. You have a lot of planning you need to do when swapping characters in and out, deciding what zones to shift to once you can move, and a lot of other things that keep the combat fun and interesting.
The actual story is fine from what I played, though nothing special. There are plenty of bits of fan service for anyone whose been watching One Piece for a while, and you will get a kick out of seeing a lot of old faces during the Memoria world sections. There was a cold barren part of my heart that was warmed when I saw the Going Merry again.
It's a good game held back a bit by some unnecessary downtime between the character switching and constant back-and-forth fetch quests. It may get better as the game goes on, but even with the issues I was enjoying it for the combat and writing. So long as you go in as a One Piece fan, you'll get a kick out of it. That said, if you aren't a fan, a lot of the game's writing will probably leave you scratching your head, and you should probably skip it.
