One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 does not try to be a role-playing game, and it does not try to summarize twenty years of manga in a cutscene reel. It picks a fight, puts forty-three characters on the field, and lets you swing. That focus is the game’s best quality and the reason its score sits where it does.
The game was developed by Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It launched March 27, 2020, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. Ports for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S followed on November 21, 2025. It is the fourth entry in the Pirate Warriors sub-series, which builds on the One Piece franchise and Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors framework.
Trailer, via Bandai Namco Entertainment America.
Luffy, the Straw Hats, and the Road to the One Piece
The premise is the one the title promises. Players follow Luffy and the Straw Hats from the beginning as they move through different islands in search of the One Piece. The game advertises a more explosive story, more environments, and crazier attacks than its predecessors, and the structure backs that claim: you are not watching the journey, you are clearing it.
The story adapts numerous arcs from the original One Piece manga. It also takes one significant liberty. The “Wano Country” arc was modified heavily because the arc was incomplete when the game shipped. That is a practical decision, and it is also the source of the game’s strangest narrative material.
Wano Country, Kaido, and a Battle That Goes Off Script
In this version of Wano, Cavendish, Bartolomeo, Sabo, Smoker, Tashigi, and Kuzan appear to help the Straw Hat Pirates free Luffy from his cell. As the battle between Big Mom and Kaido intensifies, Blackbeard and his crew arrive. Players fight the crews of Blackbeard, Big Mom, and Kaido before a final battle against Kaido, who transforms into a dragon after Big Mom, Blackbeard, and Kaido’s underlings are defeated. Luffy defeats Kaido, who flees the country while everyone celebrates.
That sequence is not the manga. It is a game’s answer to a story it could not wait for, and it works better than it should. The arc has a beginning, a pileup, and a finish, and it puts six characters into a fight the source material never staged that way. The cost is coherence. Wano in Pirate Warriors 4 is a set of excuses to put Luffy in a room with Kaido, and the game knows it.
Four Multiplayer Modes and a Dynasty Warriors Spine
The core gameplay follows the previous installments. You take a third-person perspective, move through environments, and cut down crowds in a hack-and-slash and beat-’em-up loop with adventure structure around it. Modes cover single player, multiplayer, co-operative play, and split screen.
The game adds four multiplayer modes:
- “Giant Boss Battle”
- “Total Bounty Battle”
- “Timed Defense Battle”
- “Territory Battle”
Those four names describe their own rules well enough, and together they give the package a reason to exist beyond the campaign. Giant Boss Battle leans on scale. Total Bounty Battle turns the roster into a scoring exercise. Timed Defense Battle adds a clock. Territory Battle asks you to hold ground. None of them reinvents the genre, but each one changes what you do with the same combat system, which is more than most licensed games bother to attempt.
Forty-Three Fighters, Then Twenty-Four More
The roster is the headline number. Pirate Warriors 4 features 43 playable characters, with an additional 24 available as downloadable content, for a total of 67. Nearly every character from the previous entries returns. Five do not:
- Bartholomew Kuma
- Caesar Clown
- Gecko Moria
- Magellan
- Perona
That is a real loss for anyone who mained one of them, and it is the kind of cut that a roster this size can absorb without collapsing. Sixty-seven fighters is a crowd, and the newcomers matter more than the absentees for most players.
The trade is straightforward. You get a broader cast and a Wano arc built for combat, and you give up five familiar faces and any claim to a faithful retelling. Pirate Warriors 4 chooses the fight over the archive every time.
Where the Game Actually Stands
This is where the verdict belongs. Pirate Warriors 4 is a good licensed brawler with a clear identity and one obvious flaw, and the flaw is not the roster or the altered arc. It is that the game’s best material is its combat, and everything around the combat is thinner than the combat deserves.
The Dynasty Warriors spine is reliable. Omega Force has built this loop for years, and the fundamentals hold: crowds to clear, attacks that escalate, a third-person camera that keeps the action legible. The four new multiplayer modes give that loop four different shapes, and the co-operative and split-screen options mean the game can be played with someone else in the room rather than only against a scoreboard. For a series that lives on repetition, that variety is the difference between a weekend and a month.
The Wano rewrite is the more interesting question. Modifying an incomplete arc is not a failure of nerve; it is the only honest option when the manga has not finished the story you are adapting. The result is a version of Wano that puts Cavendish, Bartolomeo, Sabo, Smoker, Tashigi, and Kuzan into a prison break and then stacks Blackbeard on top of Big Mom and Kaido. That is not canon. It is also the most memorable stretch in the game, because it commits to a fight instead of hedging toward a summary.
The story mode’s weakness is the opposite of its strength. Adapting numerous arcs means the campaign moves through a lot of ground, and the ground is mostly there to justify the next battle. Players who want the One Piece story told properly should read it. Players who want to hit Kaido as a dragon should stay.
The absent five characters are a smaller problem than they look. A roster of 67 absorbs losses, and the downloadable additions mean the cast keeps growing after launch. The bigger issue is that the game’s structure never surprises you. You know what a Pirate Warriors mission is by the second hour, and the four multiplayer modes rearrange the furniture without changing the house.
That is not a reason to skip it. It is a reason to know what you are buying.
The Score
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 earns a 7.6 out of 10. It is a competent, generous, occasionally inventive brawler that understands its own appeal and does not pretend to be more than it is. The combat holds up across platforms, the Wano arc takes a swing that the manga could not, and the multiplayer modes give the package a longer life than the campaign alone would.
The case against it is real. Five characters from previous entries are gone. The story mode treats the source material as scaffolding. The loop, however well built, is the same loop Omega Force has been running for years, and the four new modes change the terms without changing the engine.
What matters most is that Pirate Warriors 4 knows its audience and serves it without apology. It is not the definitive One Piece game, and it is not trying to be. It is a game about Luffy and the Straw Hats fighting their way across islands toward a treasure, and on that promise it delivers. A 7.6 is the right number for a game that is very good at exactly one thing and honest about the rest.
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