One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is the next installment in a long line of excellent action-adventure titles. Musou, of course, is a common genre thanks to television shows like Dynasty Warriors. There are a staggering number of characters to play within it (though not many from the Straw Hat Grand Fleet). Provided a certain amount of time to master their mechanics, each of them can easily clear mobs and quests.
Some of them take more effort than others, but to better cover our bases, we’ll go through the most important tips we can think of for making the character you adore from the series capable of defeating even the New World Emperors.
Max Out The Map Immediately
The Beginning Map is first and foremost an ability “tree” that all characters share. The stats you level up in this map are carried over to a new character you unlock. This is an excellent way to avoid the issue where players can unlock characters in previous games and then pay in-game money to auto-level them or grind them up on early quests.
Using new characters was either tedious before they leveled up or required you to invest the majority of your currency to get them up to speed. Neither of these tasks is enjoyable, so now people will immediately begin playing their new character.
Pick A Strong Main Character
Unfortunately, in Musou games, the power disparity between characters can be absurdly large. Developers aim to micro-manage each new character in combat and/or competitive shooters so that they all feel similarly strong in their own ways. However, in Musou games (of which there are many), certain characters are more powerful than others.
If a favorite character is weak by nature, they can always become powerful with a lot of effort, but they’ll never be “overpowered.” Choose a few favorites from the season, and then put your money into the one that seems to be the most powerful by chance. Katakuri, Big Mom, Kaido, Shanks, Whitebeard, Oden, Smoothie, and a Reiju are some examples of characters that are innately fractured.
Level Up All Skill And Combo Island
Even if the Beginning Map is unlocked, jumping into a challenging mission with a newly acquired character is not advised. To begin, save some Beri and unlock all of their Action Growth and Skill Slot islands.
Essentially, they are their individual abilities as well as their combinations. Players can clearly identify these islands because Action Growth Islands have a purple arrow pointing up, whereas Skill Slot Islands have a tiny blue diamond. They aren’t too expensive to max out, and it greatly expands each character’s playstyle.
Grab a couple of their specials as well, but keep in mind that players don’t get a lot of expendable capital until around halfway through Dramatic Log, so your mileage can vary. Characters will sound like a superficial reflection of themselves if these aren’t maxed out, so be sure to prioritize them if at all necessary.
Grind The Necessary Coins
Keep your eyes out for specific Gold Coins. Since each quest awards a Gold Coin of a certain kind upon completion, the Treasure Log is where several lesser-known characters can unlock their later Growth Map Skills. Knowing the source material is potentially beneficial in this case since Islands with just a question mark typically need Gold Coins that have yet to be found but are important to the character.
Many of his late Growth Map islands, including Bartolomeo’s, need Gold Coins related to Luffy, so grinding the maps that offer Straw Hat Gold Coins early really prepares you for the future.
Know Every Character’s Specialty
Any of the Specials are shockingly decent or deceptively poor. Take, for example, Bartolomeo’s ball-throwing Special. Unfortunately, Bartolomeo is one of the worst characters in the game, but if this ball hits an Elite NPC, it will always wipe away a significant portion of their health, if not all of it. However, if he throws it into a crowd, it would be a waste, common in these sports.
Take, for example, Kidd’s Pillar Special, which seems to be nothing more than a strange metal tower that blocks the enemy line of sight. However, if you use his “Repel” Special near it, it throws metal in both directions and increases the harm done by his repelled metal fists significantly. Testing all of a character’s Special Moves will easily tell you whether or not they’re worth your time.
Look For Character Exploits
Although OPPW4 has the most complicated machine dynamics of any game in the series, that doesn’t mean it’s the most polished. There are also many exploits and other ways for players to abuse the game and make their favorite character OP. Many characters, for example, have unique combos or specials that can be dash canceled before the animation completes, but the impact of the move is still triggered.
Stun-lock combinations move that clear crowds across walls, and ways to get around the map ridiculously quickly are all available to players. All of this is mean that players should experiment with a favorite character. Alternatively, do some analysis to see what other players have discovered.
S-Ranks Don’t Depend On HP
Unlike previous Pirate Warriors titles, OPPW4 does not use the player’s remaining health to decide Clear Rank. To get S-Ranks, players had to avoid being hit as much as possible, particularly because many characters’ recovery animations wasted precious seconds. However, in Pirate Warriors 4, the number of enemies killed and the time it takes to clear the screen are the only things that count.
How does this aid in the creation of an overpowered character? But, how do players play a game when they’re concerned about being hit and when they’re going all out differ? Knowing that being hit isn’t a big deal means they’ll play in a less depressed frame of mind, which would make their character even more powerful than ever. Plus, particularly with large characters, constantly attempting to block or dodge attacks wasted a lot of time.
Prioritize Defense Then Damage
Equip all skills that improve total defense and attack power. Skills like Herculean Strength, Cheat Death, and Full Force Enhancement, in particular, are incredible. Cheat Death increases the amount of damage done based on the player’s remaining HP, which is already a positive thing, but the stat boost is ridiculous.
When used correctly, this Skill will allow players to nearly one-shot Elite opponents, making it twice as easy to clear maps quickly. After all, this is a One Piece game, so making a “going all-out” mindset suits the feel of the IP.
Research Your Character
The Sky Type is a brand-new character type in One Piece Pirate Warriors 4. Characters of this kind have a lot of air combos and can zip across the map. There are also Power, Speed, and Technical style characters for those who haven’t played any other Pirate Warriors games.
Knowing what kind of a player’s main character is and how their basic mechanics work is the same as giving them so much control. Reiju, for example, is a Sky-type character, but her Poison-eating mechanic looks more like it belongs to a Technical character.
Players that haven’t read up on her Poison Mechanic in her Character Summary might think she’s a fairly weak character. There are plenty of opportunities both in-game and outside of the game to read about how different characters behave, so put in the effort and memorize all you can.
Grind Crew Levels
Apart from the Beginning One, all of the other islands unlocked in the Growth Maps are exclusive to that one character. It’s what makes Beris more valuable in this game than in PW3, where he was merely level-up fuel.
Another attribute that they all have in common is their abilities. Specials are exclusive moves that each character can do, while Skills are equippable bonuses that favor all characters. For example, these are the islands on their charts that have a “sun” symbol. Fortunately, most of the characters only have one, which is still shown on their Level 1 Map.
Players must rank up the particular character’s Crew Level to access all of their other Growth Maps. To do so, players must use them as an ally in quests and defeat many opponents, which can be tedious.
Since the allies it offers are random on most maps, players may find themselves restarting a lot. Allies, on the other hand, are guaranteed on certain missions. Be sure to equip Crew Level buffing Skills like Brothers’ Sake Cups and do some testing to see if there are any missions where a favorite actor is a guaranteed ally.
Adapt A Character’s Specialization
A specialization or “class” structure has always existed in Pirate Warriors. Characters can be divided into archetypes depending on how they acted or behaved in the original One Piece source material, much as in a fighting game.
Usopp is a Technical character who battles from afar and sets traps. Carrot is a rabbit Mink with a reputation for agility, so she’s clearly a Speed sort. Doflamingo is a sky style that normally flies about with his strings.
Finally, like a Power Form, Luffy brute-forces his way through. Adjusting the playstyle of the “class” is the trick to getting any character overpowered. Each Kind has a distinct playstyle, so don’t want to play Usopp the same way you play Luffy. It’s not going to work.
Always Utilize Ultra Specials and Transformations
One disadvantage of Pirate Warriors 4 is its excessive reliance on Ultra Specials. These are the Special Moves that do a large amount of damage over a vast area and normally come with a cinematic. They were formerly known as Ultimate Attacks, and each character had a Level 1 and Level 2 variant. Plays will now equip up to four guns. It’s just one of the many new elements of this sequel’s recipe.
What makes you think this isn’t a good thing? Ok, it offers players far too many options for hitting others when invincible. On the other hand, overusing these Ultra Specials is precisely how to make a character overpowered so that players can welcome it. Form Changes are now available for Soul-Possessed Big Mom, Giant Smoothie, Boundman Luffy, and others.
Check For Counter Specials
Counter-based Specials aren’t to be overlooked. They appear in a lot of characters, and the majority of them are ridiculously strong. Without Bartolomeo’s counter, the man will be much lower on the tier list than he is now. Tank of Fire Captain Capone Bege’s does a surprising amount of harm, Jiimbe compensates for his sluggish attack time, and Basil Hawkins’ can also recover from his.
Any of these aren’t enabled until a certain amount of damage is dealt with in a single jump. Riff-raff mobs rarely set them off. When facing Captains or Elite Enemies, using them is a simple way to turn the tide quickly.
Learn Juggles And Infinite Combos
In PW4, Dash Canceling is extremely important. Players could dash in the center of a combo string in previous games, then finish it with an ender after the dash. This allowed players to re-adust their enders so they wouldn’t miss a pass from an Elite NPC.
This is no longer possible in PW4, but Power Dashes now count as “hitting” the enemy and are quick enough to keep a combo going. Plus, these Power Dashes have no cooldown, making endless combos much easier to pull off. With the current Guard meter that Bosses and Elites have, players must be able to hold them in the air for as long as possible if they want to crack their Guard before counterattacking.
Play The Dramatic Log As Much As Possible
This may sound strange, but completing the majority of the Dramatic Log, which is the Story Mode, is critical for a number of reasons. It grants a large number of Gold Coins, which are used for powerful Special Attacks and abilities, for starters.
It also unlocks the majority of the cast. Finally, it rakes in the Beri! To access the Skill slots and Combo Additions for all of the cast, players will need hundreds of bags of Beris, and the only way to do so is to complete the Dramatic Log.
Since finishing the main plot, there’s already plenty to do with the Free Log and Treasure Log. It’s unusual for a Musou game’s story mode to be so lavishly funded, but Persona 5 Strikers are expected to follow suit.
