Japanese-based development studio ILCA and Bandai Namco have teamed up again and brought “One Piece Odyssey” to handhelds with the Nintendo Switch. This title first came out on the 12th of January 2023 and you can now embark on the adventures that Luffy and the Straw Hat pirates embark on from the comfort of your Nintendo Switch.

MKAU Gaming has done a full review on this title which you can find (Here) on the PlayStation 5, but we’re going to look at how it goes on the Nintendo Switch.

Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates got caught up in a big storm that wrecked their ship known as “Sunny” and left them stuck on the beautiful island of Waford. You meet some familiar faces that are distrusting of the group. This is only just where the story begins.

I’ve been playing the Switch more and more recently so getting used to the controls is a thing of the past. It’s so weird you can go from one game that is completely reliant on touch screen to one that you don’t even need to touch screen. The controls in this title in the original release and now on the Switch are super simple to get used to and if you get stuck some subtle prompts will jog your memory.

Whilst the Switch is in the dock I use the little controller which you can slide your joycons into which was not bad but for some reason, I preferred playing this game in handheld mode and with the joycons on the console. The controls were all optimised well and didn’t have issues with camera movement or general character movement which was a nice little change.

There was no change to the audio in this title which was a good thing as the developers got the entire Japanese voice-acting cast to come in and took this title to another level as it felt like you were in an episode of the anime. The incredible voice acting added to the great musical score which brought the island more to life and added another level again feeling like you were watching an episode.

I love it when developers put small attention to detail into these titles for people who watch the anime. I’m still not a fan of how the audio on the Switch sounds and always put in some earbuds or if on the TV use my soundbar but this game sounded amazing on my ROG earbuds. If you want to play it without earphones and listen from the Switch’s speaker you can, but as I said it’s not the best-sounding audio. The audio is in Japanese so make sure you are prepared to read lots of subtitles but in all honesty, it would sound bad if it was English.

I was a little worried about jumping into this title having played it before. I was concerned if they could bring the beauty from the Xbox down to the Nintendo Switch and needless to say the developers delivered. The game looked stunning and for the best word magical. We’re starting to see more and more developers putting effort into the Switch titles and using its full power. The game does not look like it would be a super resource hog, but when it comes down to the glow and lighting it can make a world of difference.

It honestly did not feel different from playing the Xbox version both handheld and docked. The one thing I did notice was whilst playing this game the little fan in my Switch was going mental which I’ve never heard it do before, not sure if it was resource-hungry and trying to keep cool, or maybe my Switch is old and dying guess I’ll find out soon if that is the case.

One Piece Odyssey is one of those titles where you can lay back in bed before heading to sleep and put some time into the title and lose track of time super quickly. It looked stunning on the Nintendo Switch and ran super smooth which was super impressive. I have played this title on the Series X before and this is the first title I can happily say I enjoyed playing it on the Switch more than I liked playing it on the Series X.

Written by: Hayden Nelson