ONE PIECE: PIRATE WARRIORS 4 Character Pass 2

I'll be upfront: I came to Pirate Warriors 4 from the shooter side of things, and musou games are about as far from my comfort zone as a 30ms ttk. But I respect a game that knows exactly what it is, and this one has always been honest - you are here to mash thousands of grunts into the dirt while anime cutscenes fire off around you. Character Pass 2 adds nine characters across three packs, and the headline act is Onigashima Battle Luffy from Pack 4, who can trigger Gear Five through special techniques. That is not a cosmetic difference. Gear Five changes Luffy's combat tempo noticeably, leaning into rubbery, chaotic movement that actually feels distinct from his base kit. Kaidou and Yamato round out Pack 4, which is the strongest of the three from a pure "I want to hit things differently" standpoint. Pack 5, the Film: Red content, brings in Uta alongside Film: Red variants of Shanks and Koby. Variant characters in this game are a mixed bag - sometimes the alternate moveset justifies the slot, sometimes it feels like a reskin with a different button order. Shanks Film: Red lands closer to the former; Koby's inclusion surprised me, since he reads as an underdog pick that plays more technically than his profile suggests. Pack 6 is the Legend Dawn set, which I won't spoil for lore-first players, but it leans into nostalgia in a way that will either hit hard or leave you cold depending on how deep your One Piece investment runs. The base game has four fighter subtypes - Power, Speed, Technique, and Sky - and the nine new characters spread across them reasonably well. The Technique types in this pass demand more setup than a standard musou button-holder, which is a genuine ask in a game where the camera still has a reputation for misbehaving on lock-on. That camera complaint has followed this game since 2020 and it did not get fixed for the DLC. Play on a wide monitor with your sensitivity tuned and you'll mitigate it, but it remains the most consistent friction point in the whole package. The co-op remains functional and reasonably smooth online, which matters because this is the mode where the character variety actually gets tested. Steam user reception sits at roughly 79% positive across 156 reviews, which tracks with what the content delivers - it's not revelatory, but it's solid fan service that respects the source material. If you're already hundreds of hours in and want a reason to replay Soul Maps with a different moveset in the rotation, this pass gives you nine of them. If you're on the fence about the base game, sorting that out first is the smarter move - no amount of DLC characters fixes a genre that doesn't click for you.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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