Bandai Namco Entertainment announced that One Piece World Seeker will no longer launch in later 2018, but has instead been pushed back to some point in 2019.
Blues picked up the news from a statement made by Bandai where they announced that the new release date for One Piece World Seeker would be set in 2019 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
In the statement, Bandai noted that the development team felt as if they needed more time to develop a product that met the expectations of fans…
“The action-adventure gameplay of ONE PIECE WORLD SEEKER introduces a new way to experience the world of ONE PIECE. The development team feels as though a bit more time is needed to reach fan expectations for this ambitious title.”
The game debuted late last year with a couple of trailers and a few developer discussions about the gameplay.
Just a few weeks ago at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, Bandai rolled out a new gameplay demonstration for One Piece World Seeker, allowing gamers to get some hands-on time with the title. You can see what the latest build looks like in action courtesy of DualShockers.
The game plays out very much like a sandbox beat-’em-up. This includes using the face button to perform melee attacks, guard and dodge, or interact with the environment and NPCs. You can also use the bumpers to extend Luffy’s arms, enter a sharpshooter mode with the left trigger, and use the left bumper as a special modifier when used in combination with the face buttons.
As you can see the game attempts to play out a little bit like a Japanese version of the Batman: Arkham series or Marvel’s Spider-Man.
You can use Luffy’s arms to swing around the environment, as well as hide in barrels, and utilize Luffy’s abilities to dish out damage against various frangible foes.
Luffy has pretty good movement animations. He can run, jump, glide, and swing around the environment in a a mostly fluid fashion. The only drawback is that there appears to be invisible boundaries in various various that makes traversal somewhat awkward. This is also a drawback considering that the developers had mentioned in the past that they didn’t want the game to have invisible boundaries inhibiting players from exploring the game world.
Maybe the delay is to fix the current invisible boundaries so that it plays out a lot smoother and allows players to navigate without being fettered by those pesky invisible barriers, and that the only blockades that will be in the way are the obstructions setup within the environment itself.
