One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 (Wii)

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.

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds (PC)

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a sprite-based 2D Beat ‘Em Up for the PC (and PS Vita, PS3 and XBLA) that relies on cute, super-deformed magical girls as the main characters. The game is a spin-off of the Phantom Breaker fighting game, but it was a Japan-only title so it’s most likely unfamiliar to many readers of this blog.

The combat in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a mix of button mashing and strategic combo play consisting of light attacks, hard attacks, blocks, parries, and supers. This means the game is accessible to beginners yet still appealing to hardcore players who wish to explore every nook and cranny of the combat mechanics. The stages are strictly sidescrolling 2D, but have 2 planes that you can switch between with a simple press of a button. In a way, the game is more like a side-scrolling Fatal Fury than a Double Dragon successor, but it could go either way as far as genre conventions are concerned.

Far from being a simple beat em up, the game lets you pick between 4 different characters/classes (5 if you have the DLC) each with its own strengths and weaknesses. There’s also a light RPG system under the hood that allow players to level up and upgrade their characters’ abilities and stats.

The visuals in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds are cute and fun to look at, even though they are low definition by choice. The graphics are pixilated, but still extremely detailed and complex. The stages are a little bit constricted, but they provide ample space to run around and beat stuff up. The setting is varied, with locations based on iconic Japanese locales such as Akihabara.

Replayability is what you’d expect from any beat em up – it’s fun to go through once, but after that you’d make do with short bursts. Ideally, you should have a friend over (or online) so you can enjoy the game as a co-op brawler. In this context, the game is a must have especially if you’re a fan of retro-inspired games and the magical girl genre.

Brave Story New Traveler (PSP)

Brave Story New Traveler is easily one of the most beautiful games to come out for the Sony Playstation Portable, featuring gorgeous 3D visuals and a quirky art style that straddles the line between anime and those cute little hallmark figurines. But don’t let the visuals fool you into thinking that it’s a complex and ultra modern take on the fantasy RPG genre. The game is a throwback to the simple yet engrossing turn based RPGs that were so popular during the 16 bit and 32 bit era,

The story behind Brave Story New Traveler is not something that you haven’t encountered before: you are given control of a boy named Tatsuya, whose best friend Miki has mysteriously contracted an unknown illness. A voice asks Tatsuya if he wants to save his friend, and upon agreeing, our little hero is magically transported to a medieval fantasy land and tasked with gathering 5 different gems for the Traveler’s Sword.

If you’ve played old school 2D RPGs like the Final Fantasies or Chrono Trigger, Brave Story New Traveler will be familiar and would require no tutorial – you run around over a large map screen in order to get to various towns full of NPCs to talk to and dungeons and overworld areas full of random enemies to fight, which could be anything from spiky snails to walking trees that throw fruit at you.

The game starts out a little bit slow and leveling can be a little bit grindy especially considering that this is a handheld RPG, but if you manage to stick for a couple of hours or so of game time, the game – both the story and the mechanics – will start to open up and you’ll find an RPG that is fun to play in short bursts while you wait for enough time to complete the main quests.