Zen Davis
Banned
IGN:
The One Piece franchise has found some pretty strong success thus far across both PS2 and GameCube, and it returns again to Nintendo's platform with One Piece: Unlimited Adventure. As with most anime titles, One Piece is entirely Japanese-developed, and with each iteration the series gets a straight US translation for worldwide release. It's no surprise, then, that the version we saw at Wii's unveiling, as well as our more recent hands-on update six months ago, are nearly identical to what we're now ripping through here in the IGN LA office.
One Piece has seen a mix of both quality and throwaway titles so far on consoles, but throughout all of last generation it stuck to a singular style and gameplay engine. The characters were small, the effects were huge, and the animation - while somewhat simple - was pretty high-frame and elaborate. In general, the games were great at delivering fan service, but didn't go much farther to really open up the world and draw curious gamers in. Still, the mix of anime look and feel blended well with the Power Stone style of 3D fighting, and the games were fun.
This time around, Unlimited Adventure paves the way for a new era of One Piece gaming. It's a new engine, an all-new look, and a far more epic attempt at One Piece game design. With Unlimited Adventure, players are getting a more up-close and detailed design, still embracing the cel-shaded look, but now focusing on larger characters, and a more ambitious visual effort.
The controls are simple, though the game's overall depth is certainly larger. Players move with the analog stick on the nunchuk controller, jump with B, attack with moth A and waggle motion, sprint with a double-tap of the C button, and can lock-on or re-center the camera with the Z button. Also available is the minus button's quick-switch function, which lets you swap in and out characters via a small circle menu and analog stick. Each fighter in your group has their own HP and SP, as well as character-specific moves.
Rather than basing everything on fighting like the previous console games, Unlimited Adventure mixes general 3D combat with exploration and free-roaming world navigation. Aside from a central hub and some loading times, you're basically free to run around as you please within a given area, finding items, battling groups of enemies that spawn by ghosting in outside your depth of field, powering up your characters all along the way. Each fighter begins with a simple A attack, but learn more moves in a dynamic, menu-less power-up system. Use Monkey D. Luffy too much, and he'll be the only character on your roster worth attacking with, so you'll need to mix it up as much as possible.
The speed in which you upgrade is pretty quick though, so in general you'll be learning new moves every few fighting sessions. It's annoying to sit there mashing the A button over and over for the first few bouts with a character, but a skill always seems to come right when you were about to switch back over to your go-to fighters, encouraging you to push on a bit further with your new-found abilities.
As another interesting aspect of combat, the game uses a very peculiar super attack system, which works off a combat list on the right side of the screen. Once you fill the order by performing each attack on the list, you'll earn one boost attack. This design is helpful in two ways, as it not only gives younger players an on-screen display of all their moves, but also adds a type of battle achievement feeling, as you'll constantly be switching up your style to get the next boost attack on the list. It's obvious that the game didn't want players mindlessly mashing A for hours on end, and the attack list is a great way of encouraging players to use everything in their move set.
On the flipside, we're not convinced that the adventure formula is exactly working yet. The game feels very rushed overall, and it can be extremely odd with what it expects players to do between fights. You're free to roam the area, but the entire game centers around a mysterious orb that Luffy finds, which can open up new areas by unleashing power in specific sections of the map. The trick here is that the orb - like any growing entity - needs to be fed, so you're constantly attacking plants, finding chests, and knocking things out of trees to power the orb up high enough to execute its ability. Find a few dozen jars of honey, and you get one use out of the orb. The idea works if you're expecting a ton of non-linear fetching, but the game acts extremely combat-intensive, so it has a somewhat incongruous feel, as you'll leave that formula for huge chunks of time to revisit areas and scrounge for items. Team that with some oddly placed jumps and some touchy collision detection and you've got a game that is certainly pushing the series in a different direction, but isn't as fine-tuned as its predecessors as a result.
We're a few hours in though, and thus far it's still a pretty enjoyable experience - at least from a One Piece fan's point of view. Boss battles are entertaining enough, and the combat gains depth exponentially as you power up each character with an increasing amount of attacks. After some kicking and screaming we've gotten used to beating the ever-loving-heck out of any and all items in the world as well, which cuts down on the backtracking and needless item scavenging once the inevitable dead end is hit.
There are still a few instances that feel a bit off, such as the dead time between hitting the minus button and actually having the menu come up (if hit by an enemy during that time the command is negated, leaving your wounded fighter vulnerable on the field), and some camera issues and odd priority problems when in close combat. The visuals are decent, mixing a solid cel-shaded style with 480p and the same pseudo-16:9 we've been seeing on Wii (widescreen, but not entirely filling the screen's left and right edges). It's far from stunning in any respect though, as the character models and textures are pretty simplistic and very PS2/GameCube overall, as the game still suffers from a ton of dithering and a lack of strong anti-aliasing.
We've yet to check out the extra modes for the game, including team battle, survival, and vs. modes teased in our more recent video updates, but as we progress through the game and unlock everything we'll be sure to keep you updated with new info and media from our adventure. Until then, be sure to check out our new direct-feed video from the opening hours of the game, captured in 16:9 and 480p resolution. One Piece is currently slated for a Q1 2008 release.
also shes really skilled with her hands, get it? HANDS?! ahhaha.................haha.............ah................................okay i'll get out.........
ing Mihawk kicked Zoro, Franky, Nami, and Luffy's ass)
and if you actually make it all the way to the arabasta arc, you're in for a treat :lol: