
The main thing you'll be doing in One Piece Odyssey is getting into turn-based JRPG fights, and fortunately, filler or no, battles are cleverer than I expected. Quests could be shortened, the grind reduced and backtracking excised to leave a leaner, faster game. But almost every part of Odyssey could use some trimming. There's some great encounters in the optional side-content too, including chasing the bounties on rival pirates who have their own comical gimmicks, like a crew that like to leap dramatically off cliff-tops, but haven't figured out the "landing safely" part yet. The distractions often lean into One Piece's sillier side, and even these weird story digressions lead to some spectacular boss fights and fun new monsters. It was hard for me to stay annoyed at Odyssey-or the giant crab for that matter.

In one particularly egregious case, a chase across the desert to save a friend gets delayed by bandits stealing the crew's food, a monkey stealing Nami's wallet, a river of quicksand, a spelunking adventure to bypass the quicksand (which fails), and then a big cartoon crab turns up to just take everyone to their destination anyway. It's not just sidequests, grinding and scouring maps for treasure-the main story often forgets where it's going.

Odyssey is stuffed to bursting with padding, filler within the filler.
