If you just watch a demo of One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 on a shop or while a friend is playing it, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that it’s a really great One Piece game. After all, unlike its predecessors, it captures the look of the anime and manga (as opposed to the ones that use super deformed art style), and features an updated (at the time) roster with impressive-looking super attacks.
However, if you do manage to get a hand on a copy and start playing it, you’ll see that the game looks incomplete. And we’re not talking about missing some features or characeters – we’re talking about a game that probably wasn’t play tested by anyone who knows what a playable game should be.
First things first, the game is a 3rd person 3D fighting game that picks up exactly where the previous one left off. There’s a cutscene that will keep you up to date, and then you’re free to go and visit the desert island that serves as the main hub for the various boss fights interspersed by random encounter battles.
The desert island is one of the first annoying parts of the game – even if you have a map handy, navigation is confusing, tedious, and boring as there’s not a lot of variety in the featureless scenery. The second part is the random encounters. You’re going to fight random monsters, navy, and pirates that all feel the same save for minor variations in look.
The game could have been saved by the VS mode, as there’s a really playable fighting game in there somewhere that will let you stage visually-impressive fights between notable characters in the series (up to Ace’s death, at least.) Unfortunately, it’s hampered by the controls.
Like many games on the Wii, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 could have benefited from gamepad support, as it uses the wiimote and nunchuck in ways that mimic a dual shock control scheme, except for the tacked-on waggle controls. The unwieldy controls are exacerbated by the fights being too short even if you set the time limit to infinite. Just attack a couple of times, waggle, and the match is over. All that visual flair is useless if it’s over in a flash.
All in all, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 feels like a wasted opportunity to use the One Piece license on a brawler and/or fighting game. There’s a hint of a really enjoyable One Piece game in there somewhere, but somehow the devs weren’t able to execute everything well, resulting in an impressive-looking but underwhelming poor excuse for an action game. If you really need your One Piece action fix, I suggest skipping this one and going straight to the newer games released on the 3DS and PS3/4.
