After almost a decade of absence, One Piece's Grand Battle sub-series returns with a new game for the Nintendo 3DS.
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The good: Beautiful character models and layered stages; a massive roster with some truly goofy deep cuts; decently fun, faux-Jump Stars combat. The bad: Tedious story/mission modes require endless grinding to unlock every character. Would love a sequel, though.
This game came out at a pretty awkward time in Japan. Not too long before the release of Smash 4 this game got announced and released a little after the 3ds version first launched in Japan. Despite Smash being all the craze both on my mind and in general, I also started watching One Piece not too long ago as well so this game caught my interest. Time passes and during that time they even did a crossover promotion with Smash in the form of amiibo costumes for some of the roster, but this game's localization never came. Naturally, I was pretty disappointed even though the US never got the 2 Gigant Battle games on the DS. I did casually try this game out a couple of years ago, but I didn't extensively play or finish it until now.
Gameplay-wise, it is similar to Smash Bros and even copies its score-based and coin collection modes. However, it looks pretty much identical to the Gigant Battle games and Jump Ultimate Stars which also take a lot of influence from Smash. This time though they went with the more chibi-looking art style of the older Grand Battle games that were released on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Each of the characters have a different feel to them and a moveset that showcase their powers and abilities. The game also adds a sizable cast of assist characters that allows for some popular, iconic characters that didn't make the cut into the roster to have a chance to shine. Speaking of the roster, there are a handful of unique roster choices such as Shiki, Zephyr, Kin'emon & Momonosuke, Trebol, and Diamante. All of whom with Kin'emon being the exception, I am certain will never be playable characters in a One Piece game again. Some of those oddball choices like Trebol may not have been the best choices especially when fan favorites like Eneru or Lucci could have been picked instead, but I see them as something that makes the game stand out a little and worth visiting. My biggest flaws though are that the story mode gets repetitive rather quickly and I did not appreciate that there are branching pathes that require you to play through some of the chapters twice if you want to unlock everyone. Overall, the core gameplay is very fun, and the uniqueness of almost every character makes them all worth trying at least once. If you're a One Piece fan and either have a modded 3ds or Citra then I highly suggest playing this.
Gameplay-wise, it is similar to Smash Bros and even copies its score-based and coin collection modes. However, it looks pretty much identical to the Gigant Battle games and Jump Ultimate Stars which also take a lot of influence from Smash. This time though they went with the more chibi-looking art style of the older Grand Battle games that were released on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Each of the characters have a different feel to them and a moveset that showcase their powers and abilities. The game also adds a sizable cast of assist characters that allows for some popular, iconic characters that didn't make the cut into the roster to have a chance to shine. Speaking of the roster, there are a handful of unique roster choices such as Shiki, Zephyr, Kin'emon & Momonosuke, Trebol, and Diamante. All of whom with Kin'emon being the exception, I am certain will never be playable characters in a One Piece game again. Some of those oddball choices like Trebol may not have been the best choices especially when fan favorites like Eneru or Lucci could have been picked instead, but I see them as something that makes the game stand out a little and worth visiting. My biggest flaws though are that the story mode gets repetitive rather quickly and I did not appreciate that there are branching pathes that require you to play through some of the chapters twice if you want to unlock everyone. Overall, the core gameplay is very fun, and the uniqueness of almost every character makes them all worth trying at least once. If you're a One Piece fan and either have a modded 3ds or Citra then I highly suggest playing this.