At its core, One Piece Grand Adventure is a fighting game that contains heavy adventure elements. Players step into the shows of the flexible Captain Luffy and travel by sea from one location to another in order to challenge opponents, to bring newcomers into the pirate crew, and to find that ever-elusive treasure that was hidden long ago. The game's main quest closely follows the One Piece anime storyline from the beginning, complete with cut scenes, dialog, and authentic voiceovers. Even though Grand Adventure was built specifically for the US market, the story goes beyond where the American localization of the anime has reached in order to give One Piece fans a taste of what's to come.
I wonder what he's cookin'
The overworld map takes on the form of a vast sea with predetermined paths on which to sail. Once you complete stages along the quest, backtracking becomes important to reveal side quests and to gain experience points. That's right, the cooks behind Grand Adventure put in a healthy serving of RPG elements that let you customize your character's attributes, once you level up, to best suit your fighting style. Gaining experience is as simple as winning battles; the more difficult the battle, the more points go towards increasing your level. Once Luffy's quest is complete, the game unlocks four other quests from the perspective of other One Piece pirate captains, including Buggy the Clown. These other main quests fill in holes in the main storyline and invite fans of the series to explore what One Piece life may be like from other perspectives.
Grand Adventure uses free-roaming 3D battle arenas, which are complete with interactive elements. Many arenas have characters on the side that interfere with the battle by throwing bombs or calling forth lightning strikes. Fighters can even call forth a number support characters to attack or assist in some way. For example, Princess Vivi can call Karoo, a spot-billed duck who can be used to not only ride across the stage, but to attack her opponent. Most of the game's arenas are inspired by the anime, but a few were created specifically for the Grand Adventure, including one stage that makes a return from the first console game in the series, One Piece Grand Battle.
Princess Vivi knows how to ride 'em
As far as fighting games go, Grand Adventure uses an intuitive control scheme to pull off your basic and combo attacks. There is also a skill gauge system that allows you perform special attacks. As you level up, your character can get up to three special attack slots to use. For example, excel heat is a move that, when used with one slot, takes your character out of the opponent's offensive attack and turn the tables. Using excel heat with two slots prevents your opponent from blocking your attacks, and using all three slots increases your speed so that you can charge your opponent and lay on stronger combo attacks.
While Grand Adventure does use simple controls and has uses a colorful cel-shaded presentation, there's no reason for the leet gamer to simply dismiss it. The game promises to be challenging, as the difficulty increases not only throughout each quest, but also between each of the game's five main quests. Part of this difficulty comes from the AI getting smarter and using different fighting styles and techniques. On top of this, the game promises to take good deal of time. Luffy's quest lasts between six to eight hours, but the entire adventure mode will take in excess of 40 hours to complete. For the completists out there, the game has a number of unlockable items, ranging from playable characters and new costumes (different costumes give the fighter different secret attacks), to a character gallery, cards, and illustrations.
What makes Grand Battle a game to come back to is its multiplayer. The standard one-on-one matches are made interesting because you can import your leveled-up character from the adventure mode to the ring. Using the GameCube's second memory card slot allows for a friend to also import their customized character. You ask, "what if my friend has a PS2 and I have a GameCube?" I say, "no problem!" Grand Adventure implements a password system so that you can import characters across the two platforms. This feature can also be used to import a character through the internet, which then can be controlled by a CPU. There's also a mode that allows for 8 or 16 people to play in an alternating fashion. Any good party game must have minigames, and Grand Adventure is no exception! The minigames, which also appear in the main quests, include spot-duck races, rumble battles, and the box crushing minigame that first appeared in Grand Battle.
What's a game without minigames?
One Piece Grand Adventure looks like it's stepping everything up from its predecessor, what with improved graphical detail and effects, an all-new adventure mode, brand new move sets, eight new playable characters, new support characters, RPG elements, customized characters, and a slew of unlockables. A meaty single player experience with loads of multiplayer options, along with an additional story arc, is bound to grab the attention of any One Piece fan. And if you don't know the difference between Captain Kuro and Captain Chaser, don't worry! One Piece Grand Adventure gives a newbie everything that he or she needs to not only play the game, but also to enjoy the One Piece experience.
Check back with N-Philes after the game launches for a full review.
