One Piece: Unlimited Adventure

"RyuD Review - One Piece: Unlimited Adventure"

Design: The game features a plethora of things to do, from insane battles with over forty playable characters in the multiplayer mode, to fishing in numerous possible locations and catching creatures with a net and turning them into dinner in the one player mode. There are, however, a few flaws in the design. In the one player mode, the obstacles that are supposed to block you from certain paths do a fairly good job, but some can be avoided or bypassed. Also in the one player mode, the fishing system is ok, but is usually worthless until a much later point in the game, and the maps could've been made easier to read or understand.

Story: The story's speed of the one player mode goes at the same speed as your progression through the game. So if you advance slowly to collect items to boost your stats, you may have a hard time keeping up with the slowly twisting storyline. The flashbacks in the story usually require knowledge of One Piece's history of old anime episodes and ones that have yet to be released outside of Japan, which might leave most players in a bit of confusion.

Gameplay: Barely any glitches or problems, if there were any, which allowed for a better gameplay experience. At first, the fighting is a little stale as you are only allowed a few moves at most per character, but it later becomes an addictive struggle to unlock more moves to create incredible combinations of attacks. After a while, the tedious task of traveling back and forth to collect and obtain certain items becomes dull real quick. You will find yourself trying to catch bugs or other creatures for various purposes, and you will also discover that the rarer creatures are extremely harder to obtain than the more common ones.

Overall: The difficulty is rather low at the beginning of the game, which allows for quick progression up to a certain point, but later requires a certain level of skill and patience for the player to continue. The Boss battles are usually the only thing that will cause a character to fall, but it is a small matter with the six other characters still available to fight. Another thing that most people might find annoying is that the Final Boss isn't as strong as he looks, especially when compared to the secret unlockable characters.

Presentation: The game presents itself very well as a Fighting game, but not so well as an Adventure game. The Voice Acting is a huge step forward from the previous One Piece games, which had featured the 4Kids cast of voice actors, although the new cast still seems to miss some of the emotions from the original Japanese version.


Final Notes: If you can tolerate the fairly slow speed of progression and withstand the frustration from the numerous headaches the games throws at you, then you'll find that One Piece: Unlimited Adventure could be a top favorite of your Video Game collection.

**Scores**
Story: 7.0/10
Design: 8.0/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Presentation: 8.0/10
Graphics: 9.0/10
Controls: 8.5/10
Music & Sound Effects: 8.0/10

Overall Score: 8.0/10
(Not an Average)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/08

Game Release: One Piece: Unlimited Adventure (US, 01/22/08)