Finally actually finished the game. Ultimately, it kinda fell flat for me. The fact that PW4 went all the way to the Oden Flashback, and this game stopped at Dressrosa (despite some WCI references) really made it feel outdated. Coupled with the incredibly slow overworld exploration, lengthy cutscenes for every action, and tons of backtracking and forced fetch quests; really hurt the pacing. The re-imagined old arcs were interesting, but mostly felt like nostalgia bait, which after seeing Alabasta for the millionth time in a video game again, I always just feel like "oh the manga and anime and movie did this scene better"... Enemy variety was lacking in the named character department. Plenty of cool monsters, but how do you include Marineford, but no sign of Whitebeard or Blackbeard? No Emperors in the game at all, and only 1-2 sidekicks of the main arc villains. Costumes were a scam, not being used in cutscenes, even the non-pre-renedered ones.
There were things I liked though. The combat system was really fun (its what kept me playing the game). I really liked having different team members with different damage types, areas of effect, and having mostly all the iconic moves from the series. Surprisingly, the original story content was some of the best I've seen in a One Piece game in awhile. It kinda fell apart for me at the finale, but overall I really liked Adio and Lim and their story. Gear customization and cooking were cool, though I never used the Usopp items. My favorite encounters were ones that separated your team. I didn't like that I had to unlock Franky and Brook (who basically are sidelined the entire game wtf). BUT when you are forced to fight with only like 3 pre-determined members, it felt like a real challenge when you can't swap out party members.
In the end, this was like a B+ One Piece game (only really knocking it because it felt old content-wise, and was lacking in variety of arcs and enemies). But a C- JRPG, just not up to current quality of life improvements (everything should have been faster, no fetch quests, more auto save and fast travel).