One of the things I got back into was anime, and finally started to read up some manga at the time, and one I've been meaning to get to for so long was One Piece. Thanks to a friend's book club server on Discord I started continuing my journey with it, and it's been such a blast so far, as the time of writing this I finished up Little Garden Arc and became fully enamored with the world and the characters inhabiting it. While doing this I decided to go through some of the movies, specials, and of course, video games, cause why not, right?
Grand Battle 1 goes up to Whiskey Peak, although the only character that really shows up from it is Miss Wednesday (or as most people now know her as, Nefertari Vivi), and the game does a decent enough job delivering fanservice from those. I mean, all the characters from those arcs are playable (with secret ones being Mihawk, Shanks, Pandaman, and the aforementioned Miss Wednesday/Vivi), stages are colorful and have the aesthetics of the locations from those arcs, and even some character quirks like Sanji having his voice lines changed based on whether he's fighting a male or female character as an example are all present and delightful. The soundtrack's a bop too, especially the character select theme which is just energetic as hell. Really it'd probably be fine as an OK get-together for One Piece fans... but one thing just brings it down: The controls, or more specifically, the weight of it.
Now, every other aspect of the controls are fine, if a bit jank. You can at least get used to those (although pro tip: just use the grab for items only, the range in grabbing opponents is pretty much "get right up to where they can hit you territory"), Supers, while a little weird to pull off, are at least doable once you know the combos for them, and directional input for attacks or jumps are fine and dandy. The stiffness of movement though, is persistent throughout the game, no matter the character, and it makes the whole thing feel very, VERY sluggish. Even characters that have fast speed, like Zoro or (surprisingly) Pandaman, it feels like you're being anchored down by something, not even the item that speeds up your movement for 5 seconds can do much to fix it.
It's a shame too, I actually wouldn't mind this game so much to unlock everything, but I had to give up during Tashigi's session because of it.
Grand Battle 1 goes up to Whiskey Peak, although the only character that really shows up from it is Miss Wednesday (or as most people now know her as, Nefertari Vivi), and the game does a decent enough job delivering fanservice from those. I mean, all the characters from those arcs are playable (with secret ones being Mihawk, Shanks, Pandaman, and the aforementioned Miss Wednesday/Vivi), stages are colorful and have the aesthetics of the locations from those arcs, and even some character quirks like Sanji having his voice lines changed based on whether he's fighting a male or female character as an example are all present and delightful. The soundtrack's a bop too, especially the character select theme which is just energetic as hell. Really it'd probably be fine as an OK get-together for One Piece fans... but one thing just brings it down: The controls, or more specifically, the weight of it.
Now, every other aspect of the controls are fine, if a bit jank. You can at least get used to those (although pro tip: just use the grab for items only, the range in grabbing opponents is pretty much "get right up to where they can hit you territory"), Supers, while a little weird to pull off, are at least doable once you know the combos for them, and directional input for attacks or jumps are fine and dandy. The stiffness of movement though, is persistent throughout the game, no matter the character, and it makes the whole thing feel very, VERY sluggish. Even characters that have fast speed, like Zoro or (surprisingly) Pandaman, it feels like you're being anchored down by something, not even the item that speeds up your movement for 5 seconds can do much to fix it.
It's a shame too, I actually wouldn't mind this game so much to unlock everything, but I had to give up during Tashigi's session because of it.