Review: One Piece Unlimited Cruise SP

Most anime games never turn out the way they should. Most would expect a nice open world in which you can explore the lands that your favourite character explores and lives around. Also, if they include fighting in the anime then you would most definitely want fighting sequences to happen. Most games do not deliver these things and it is a bit of a drawback to wanting to play the game when you find these things aren’t within the game. However, we can see that there are a few exceptions; one being the new One Piece game for the 3DS; Unlimited Cruise SP. This is a special port of both episodes released for the Wii, put into a single cartridge for 3DS only.

This game starts off where Luffy and co land amidst an area full of pirates, awaiting the scene of Ace’s execution. Not all the people here however are pirates. You have the marines who are holding the execution and then Whitebeard, the most powerful pirate, is there to rescue Ace. Luffy also states he is there to rescue Ace. This then leads onto an army load of fights as you take control of each team to progress through the story. The controls are ok for this; the camera angles however do let the game down slightly. At times you could be looking for your enemy, only to be knocked about and have half of your health left before launching your first attack. In other times, if you are clever enough, you can target you enemy quickly so you do not loose sight of him/her, a very clever thing to do! You get to play as many different characters, who have different abilities and skills, which may interest some, but other characters seem a little ‘pointless’ to play as and seem to just ‘fill’ the game in areas where needed.

Another mode you can play on is a special mode where Luffy is told to go to four different islands, with his crew, and find the treasure amongst the islands, whiles battling past enemies. The great thing about this mode is you get to free roam on not just the island, but also your ship, giving you a great experience. The down side to this is finding items to progress to the next step. It is not clear where the items are and you can be looking for hours on end and come up with nothing. This does not help in keeping you occupied and playing the game further on! The controls for this is pretty much the same as when you fight in the episodes in which you try and save ace, with the exception of carrying on after beating your enemies. The downside to this mode is that to save it you need to be on your ship, which can take a while if you went exploring on the different islands.

The last mode you get to play on is the survival mode. You have to beat 200 different bands of enemies before you lose all of your health. Sounds simple, perhaps not though. It would seem you need to be clever of your surroundings and make sure to roll out of your enemy’s way before you get hit. You can however choose through a variety of character, which you unlock as you go through both parts of the game previously stated. You also have a gallery in which you can view a 3D model of the character see what they look from different angles and different costume (which only changes slightly.)

The 3D effect for this game is a nice effect, with some of the stuff seeming to come out rather nice. It also makes the graphics look nicer and smoother but a little bit chunky with the hands, but there’s no real problem with that. Some cut scenes can be watched in 3D, which gives another great effect to the game, as it really makes use of the 3DS system. The voices of the game are also in Japanese with English subtitles. There is however no option to change the language into English Dubbed, which may annoy those who try and read the words, which can be small!

In comparison to other anime games, this is ok, but not as great as what is out there. Fair enough this is on the 3DS system, but with games such as Naruto, Bleach and Dragon Ball Z raging around on our consoles and hand held systems, they need to up the game with One Piece. In other words, it would be nice if they had a story and layout like Naruto had, where you can collect items and progress through the story or just have the plain fighting of Dragon Ball Z, but work to a nice fighting system that uses One Piece to it’s advantage!

Overall 6/10

This is a great game to play every once in a while, it however does not captivate for more than a few hours, which seems a little disappointing. You can choose a great selection of characters and the 3D sequences do their job right! All in all this is a nice little game to play if you’re new to One Piece, hardcore fans will obviously love this more than I have, however I did give this a try considering I am not up to date with the anime itself!