Pre-orders for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Steam Version is Now Open

Bandai Namco Games' PC port of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 won't be released until August 25, but pre-orders are now open on Steam.  There's no pre-order discount and the bonuses are a little bit on the thin side (four costumes and a pack of additional costumes.) but if you really want a truck-ton of content, you can get the gold edition for a few bucks more in order to get 8 more mission packs and 20 more bonus costumes.

I have preordered the base package, so you can expect a review to appear on this site, but given that it's just a port and the game's console versions were already reviewed by countless others, I'll be focusing on the quality of the PC port - whether it takes advantage of the extra hardware power afforded by the platform or if it's going to be a basic port.

Hopefully, it's not going to be a Batman: Arkham Knight thing. Bandai Namco is known for decent, if not solid, ports when it comes to popular and lucrative properties (like One Piece is), and the developers Koei Tecmo also does fine with their ports - they get panned for crippled content and ridiculous DLC schemes, but in terms of code optimization they're pretty good at their job - in some cases releasing games that can run well even on hardware that doesn't meet their specified minimum requirements.

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.

Shonen Jump’s One Piece (Gameboy Advance)

Shonen Jump’s One Piece is a sidescrolling beat ‘em up for the Gameboy Advance, based on Eiichiro Oda’s long-running pirate themed manga/anime series. The game is exclusive to the North American market, which is kind of odd considering that most anime-based games are released in Japan first and localized later (if at all.)

Shonen Jump’s One Piece is basically One Piece’s answer to Dragon Ball’s Advanced Adventure. Both games are from Dimps Corporation and it shows in the amount of work that went into the games. Shonen Jump’s One Piece didn’t have as much content nor depth as Advanced Adventure, but you can see the same amount of polish in both visuals and gameplay.

One Piece Grand Adventure (Gamecube)

One Piece Grand Adventure, which is based on Eiichiro Oda’s long-running pirate-themed shonen manga/anime franchise, is a multiplayer fighting/party game for the Nintendo Gamecube in the same vein as Super Smash Bros., with the key difference being that the action is shown from an isometric third person view, whereas SSB shows the action from a 2D perspective.

The characters in One Piece Grand Adventure are rendered in a slightly cute-sy form, with heads that are slightly bigger than their bodies, but not disproportioned enough to be considered as comical in nature. The level of detail is exceptional, and you do get a good representation of the characters from the series – there are 24 in total playable characters, but you’ll have to unlock them through some special conditions (more on that later) – and the settings encountered throughout the story.

As implied above, Grand Adventure is not your straightforward fighting game. You can jump, attack, grab items for use or for throwing, and perform special attacks, but you also need to navigate the arena/stages, which are littered with environment hazards, traps, and support items. Add the fact that there can be as many as 4 characters and a couple of interactive NPCs on the stage at once and you have yourself a very chaotic game. As I said, it’s more Super Smash Bros. than Tekken.

New J-Stars Victory VS. Video Features Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro

Namco Bandai has just posted a new promotional video for their upcoming 3D brawler, J-Stars Victory Vs. This time around, it focuses on a bunch of its playable characters facing off against their respective adversaries. One of the more interesting parts here is the sequence featuring the characters Kenshiro and Raoh, the protagonist and main antagonist from Fist of the North Star.

You can check out the video below:

Battle Stadium D.O.N. (PS2)

Battle Stadium D.O.N. is basically Super Smash Bros. with anime characters. What makes it special is the franchises that were included in this crossover fighting game – D.O.N. stands for Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto.

Don’t expect accurate representations of power levels, as the game is balanced so that no single character will be overwhelmingly stronger than the rest (which is what would happen if they stayed true to the power levels in their respective franchises – characters from Dragon Ball will destroy everyone else). But the visuals do look like they came out of the series (though they are modeled more after the manga than the anime), as the characters use their trademark screen-filling attacks and all have transformations. The stages may be constrained but they do capture the look and feel of their respective franchises.