One Piece is the manga that has spawned such a beautiful anime, and also One Piece Pirate Warriors 3! So popular in fact that it’s known overseas (obviously outside of Japan), or why else would I be writing about it? The hero, Monkey D. Luffy, is constantly getting into all sorts of trouble because of his kind nature. His aim is to be King of the Pirates and find the treasured “One Piece”. Now the series has been going on for a while and shows very little in terms of slowing down. But I am not talking about the show here…I’m going to be talking about One Piece Pirate Warriors 3.
The game follows the exploits from the series Luffy’s Adventures, starting all the way at the beginning to where he is now. Where Zoro, Sanji, Nami, and the rest joined his crew and headed for the Grand Line. The game is setup as a strategic battle, much like Dynasty Warriors. After all, it came from the same company so that explains that.
My problem is that the AI for the enemies is incredibly stupid and it feels like it hasn’t been upgraded since the PlayStation 2 era. I grew up playing Dynasty Warriors with my friends and it gave us endless amounts of laughs because the AI would just stand around as we ran through killing them all. I always anticipated it was because of the PlayStation 2’s processing power, and with so many enemies it just couldn’t keep up with the demand.
However here I am on a first-generation i7 and the enemies just stand around pointing guns at their heads and firing shots in random directions. Occasionally they try attacking the air; always fun to watch. Although if you are a fan of One Piece you would probably be playing this more for the story, and honestly that’s why I’ve been dying to review it. I haven’t got a hard drive big enough to store the entire series and I don’t have the time or bandwidth to catch up viewing it all.
I cannot criticize the story, though. They’ve stuck very close to the series for the most part, and that means a lot to me as a fan. The company is willing to stick it out and not change anything, the way a lot of companies might. The controls for the game are pretty straightforward, and clock amazing response rates as well.
In some games, I always have the issue of the speed between my attacks slowing me down. But they have now set it up in a way where no move is wasted, which takes a genuine effort in coding. The music for the game is spot-on and really gives me the feeling like I am in the anime, battling alongside all the other pirates! At times I feel the sudden urge to shout “Gum Gum Gatling!” as I mow down hundreds of enemies at a time.
The only problem I had besides the game’s AI is the fact that leveling up is so convoluted; it makes little or no sense. You beat enemies and get coins. Those coins then allow you to upgrade your stats equal to the level you are. The coins you get are limited to the enemies you fight so you must replay certain stages to get all sorts of different coins to fully upgrade your entire crew. It’s extremely time-consuming and irritating.
If you’re running the PC version of the game, Mr.AntiFun probably has a nice trainer that will fix all those issues for you. But that’s if you want to cheat…just throwing that out there. Overall though, the game really delivers on the One Piece experience and is great for helping people get into the series as a whole. I do honestly recommend it despite the AI sucking and the irritating coin bit, mainly because I have gotten far into the game without the need for the coins…and the AI is really, and I mean really stupid.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!