"Not a great game, but at least you can play as Pandaman"

One Piece: Pirates Carnival is basically a Mario Party with One Piece themed characters. Instead of a traditional board game, like in Mario Party, the board game in One Piece is more or less Othello. If you take a panel and it just so happens several opposing colors are between the newly taken panel and a panel of your own color, then you get all of them in between. Personally, I like this better because when I played Mario Party, too many random things popped out which made too big of an impact on who was winning. At least this way, there is a little bit of consistently, although leads still can change in a hurry.

The object is to pick a Straw Hat Pirate to play as and add as many "crew members" as possible to increase your Berry score. Every time you pick a panel, a corresponding character portrait comes up, which can initiate a standard mini game, a captain battle, or an event, all of which will be covered later. The player who ultimately wins that panel adds the character to his or her "crew" and gets the corresponding number of Berries the panel is worth. Naturally, the player who finishes with the most berries wins the game.

There are enough playable characters to choose from: Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Ussop, Sanji, Chopper, and Robin. At least having two female characters: Nami and Robin adds a little bit of balance and gives female gamers characters to identify with. However, one thing in which this game fails is it edited some items because the US manga and anime are nowhere near to the point this game covers in the Japanese version. This means no Bellamy mini game, all the CP9 games were edited, and the Franky game was edited. Now, I can forgive the first two items, but not the third, because Franky eventually becomes a crew member. What's more, they edited Franky's by adding Buggy a second time. The problem with this is when you select a panel with a major storyline character on it, it turns into what the game calls a captain battle, with the player who chose the panel playing as the "captain" and the other three players competing against him or her. Whoever wins adds the "captain" to their crew. This means it's theoretically possible to add Buggy twice. What were they thinking? They should've left this one unedited.

On the flip side of that, having the ability to play as other "captains" adds a lot of variety to the game play. So you're not stuck just playing as the character you chose for the board game. There are of course normal mini games, which are four player free-for-alls. Unfortunately, there are only twelve of these games total. Personally, I would've liked to have seen a few more, as these can get old rather quickly.

Occasionally you'll come across a Davy Back Fight panel. This means the player who happened upon this panel can challenge another player to a panel. These are more or less similar to captain mini games, with the defender of the player taking on the other three players. The nice thing about this is the mini game is unique for each of the seven Straw Hat Pirates. As a matter of fact, these seven games are some of the better mini games.

Finally, there are characters who trigger events, which can range anywhere from a free turn, extra Berries, freezing a panel to keep it from being captured during one full round, etc. Most of these are more novelty than anything else, but it does add a change of pace every now and then.

Another way this game changes pace is for each board, the players will participate in one of three halftime bonus games. These games are actually two on two battles, with the winning team winning some Berries. Unfortunately, these halftime games are the only times you get to actually work with another player, since all the regular mini games and captain games are winner takes all. Two on two battles could've been incorporated a bit more.

One area in which this game shines is the dialogue and character interaction. Every time your Straw Hat Pirate chooses a panel, there is some dialogue between your character and the character on the panel, which varies depending on who is interacting with whom. The dialogue stays consistent with the story and manages to be playful and humorous as well.

As with most modern games, there are collectibles and whatnot. Every time you find a character on a board game, you add that to your card collection permanently. The game does a great job of including major villains, minor characters, and characters who temporarily ally themselves with the Straw Hat Pirates. Anyone who is a fan of the manga and anime will appreciate the number of characters included to collect. Also, every time you play a game on the main board game, then you can play that game anytime via vs. mode. So if you and your friends have some favorite games, you can just go ahead and play them instead of trudging through an entire board game.

The graphics and music help the whole carnival atmosphere the developers were aiming for. Everything has kind of a cute and playful look, which is perfect for a game like this. All the characters have large heads and proportionally small bodies. The different backgrounds have buildings and locations that just bounce back and forth joyfully. Speaking of backgrounds, there are multiple boards for East Blue, Grand Line, and Skypiea. The music is pretty upbeat and playful. Very few turns are particularly outstanding, but they all fit the mood perfectly.

To sum it up, One Piece: Pirates Carnival isn't as bad as most players make it out to be. It's not a great game, but it's good enough. The atmosphere is playful, like a carnival. Most of the mini games are actually fun, although they should have added a few more of the normal mini games. Leaving this game unedited from the Japanese version would've made it a whole lot better, but at least they included pretty much every character up to Skypiea. One captain game even lets you play as Pandaman. How many One Piece games let you do that?

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/09

Game Release: One Piece: Pirates' Carnival (US, 09/12/06)