Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4
Tested on: Xbox One
One Piece: Burning Blood – Review
We’ve had our fair share of One Piece games featured on the site before, but these often stuck to the same formula, namely adventure-type games with a massive amount of skull-bashing. This time however, we’re treated to an all-out brawler, which even made its way to Microsoft’s Xbox One. Of course, seeing the series has a ridiculous amount of characters that is perfect for a game like this, it would be silly not to follow in the footsteps of other series, such as Naruto, to come up with a next-gen fighting title.
Story
Luffy, and many of his other pirate allies, finds himself rushing towards Ace, who is being led to his own execution. Of course, Luffy is not about to let this happen without a fight and thus he storms Ace’s captors, as well as ‘fellow’ pirates who stand in his way. Overall this is the basic plot, and a game like this doesn’t require that much more.
Story wise this game is clearly directed to fans of the anime, as all characters receive little-to-no introduction and thus initiates of the series are left standing in the cold, at least as far as introductions go. The story itself is rather clearly constructed and there is some storytelling before the battle you’re about to dive into, as well as afterwards. Things remain rather simple, but everyone can play this game, though it might help if you look into some characters beforehand.
Graphics
Graphically One Piece: Burning Blood certainly uses the quality of the current generation of consoles. Even though the cel shaded appearance might cover a few small flaws, everything ends up being amazingly detailed, all while keeping the anime vibe of the original series intact. Characters move extremely fluently and special moves look rather cool.
Certain arenas are actually filled with a hefty amount of destructible clutter, which may sometimes obstruct your overview of the battlefield, but it adds a nice interactive touch to the overall picture. The background action is rather simplistic, but the sceneries are quite nice and when you knock someone out of the ring, you’ll be able to destroy a part of the background. Also, when the battle ensues, some clothes get destroyed or characters will get a bit more grimy and dirty.
Something that came quite apparent in the offline versus mode is that player two’s view could easily be obstructed if player one chose large characters. Not only did it block the view entirely for player one, but the second player more than often could not see his location. Luckily you can change the options for the 2P versus and activate a split-screen function, putting both players on equal terms.
Sound
The soundtrack is rather cheerful and upbeat, but it’s the original Japanese voices that truly steal the show. For a fighting game there’s a lot of voiced dialogue, which will certainly be appreciated by fans of the anime series. You’ll have a decent amount of tracks that play on the background, but in the end, the soundtrack is quite subtle.
Gameplay
One Piece: Burning Blood is a 3D fighting game, where you’ll either fight one on one matches or choose a tag team to unleash all hell upon your opponent(s). Even though the previous games we’ve featured on the site were more Dynasty Warriors ‘clones’, this one provided a nice change of pace, even though the game surely has a fair amount of issues.
Even though at the beginning you’ll only be able to start with the story mode, until you’ve finished the basic tutorials, it’s clear that this game tries to cover many different bases, hoping to lure in a big amount of players. Outside of the basic story mode, you’ll also be able to earn cash by completing ‘bounties’ in the Wanted versus mode. In the end this is just a quick play mode, where the difficulty is slowly cranked up, at least if you start off with the easy bounties. There are special and limited missions, which will earn you a pretty penny, but they will also be a lot harder to beat.
Those who fancy playing online will have the choice between traditional online battles, for fun or ranked, but also the Pirate Flag Battle will become available after a few extra missions in the story mode. While the first online mode speaks for itself, the Pirate Flag Battle is pretty much an online turf wars, where players can pick a faction they want to represent and then battle other factions for domination of the map. You’ll be able to fight PC opponents as well as actual players in order to gain points for your faction, and hope to come out on top. Seasons only last around a week, thus if you’d rather pledge your allegiance to someone else, you can simply wait a week and do so. One odd design choice was made in the Pirate Flag Battle menu, namely the big ‘leave power’ button, is easily mistaken as the button which places you back in the menu. This button makes you leave your faction, making you unaligned, lose your points and forces you to stay like this until the end of the current ‘season’. After accidently pressing it as well, it’s clear that the second largest group were the unaligned players, making it painfully clear that placing the button as one of the five menu choices was quite silly.
Even though there are missions in which you can only pick one character, the game is pretty much like the Marvel vs. CAPCOM series, in which you pick three characters (or two), add support characters which give you passive bonuses, and prepare for battle. During the battles you can switch freely, or use your special meter to counter attacks with one of your other characters, that was benched. The controls feel rather ok, but for some reason some things simply didn’t trigger like they were supposed to, which created a bit of frustration during bigger battles. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that even the PC is a rather difficult opponent to beat. Nonetheless, some of the characters can simply keep on spamming one move, making it seemingly impossible for the PC opponent to beat you.
No matter what mode you decide to spend most time in, you’ll earn money, which you can use to unlock both new characters, as well as support characters. The cast is rather expansive and even the alternate version of certain characters, has slightly different move sets. As mentioned above, the support characters can also become a key component of your setup, as they will grant you a passive bonus, when you decide to activate them. You can take up to three support characters with you, depending on the total pirate points of your party. Sometimes, depending on how strong some characters are, you’ll either have to settle for a full fighting team of three, with a cutback in support, or vice versa.
Conclusion
Spike Chunsoft succeeds quite nicely in its offset of creating a decent fighting game that situates itself in the One Piece universe. Even though there are a few hiccups in the mechanics, difficulty and controls, the overall base is quite solid. It suits both the needs of online and offline players and adds a hefty amount of content to the equation, even though everything simply revolves around beating the living hell out of your opponents. Set sail, the pirate wars are long but over.
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