I prefer watching anime in English. There, I said it. I know I’m probably about to get lynched by a bunch of purists, but they can take that rope and go hang themselves. As far as I’m concerned Troy Baker is Yamato in Naruto and Steve Blum is Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop.
This probably means fuck all to most people. That’s the problem with videogames based on anime. If you’ve never watched the series before, or kept up with it by watching it in Japanese with English subtitles – at best, you don’t know what the hell’s going on, and at worst, you’ll probably end up spoiling the show for yourself as the games are usually set several series ahead of the latest English DVD release.
If, like me, you’ve been enjoying the Straw Hat Pirates adventures on the Grand Line in English but don’t want to be hit by a cannon load of spoilers, I would avoid One Piece Unlimited World Red. Come back to it just before the PS5 drops and the English dub might be at around the same point in the story by then, maybe.
If you like your anime in its original language and are all up to date with the show, or, like me, you don’t care about spoilers, One Piece Unlimited World Red is well worth the investment.
There’s no English dub, probably because several main characters haven’t been cast yet. It’s also in many ways a greatest hits collection of some of the biggest and best fights in the long running series to date. This is all wrapped up in a clever narrative in which the Straw Hat crew find themselves trapped on a mysterious island that transforms into different places from the crew’s many adventures as well as forcing them to once again fight many of the colourful and deadly adversaries from their past.
It certainly looks the part using a combination of cel shading and a bright colour palate to recreate the weird and wonderful world of One Piece. Environments are bright and colourful and characters are, for the best part, as lively as their onscreen counter parts. My only minor gripe is that, outside of cut scenes, characters facial expressions remain entirely static. What makes characters like Luffy so compelling and entertaining is how incredibly changeable and emotive he is. So watching him sprint around every stage with a massive shit eating grin constantly plastered on his face regardless of what was happening around him was a little disconcerting.
As well as featuring a large roster of characters from the entirety of the series, Unlimited World Red also introduces two new characters created specifically for the game by One Piece’s creator Eiichiro Oda – The Red Count, a creepy old pirate with magical powers who is using the Straw Hats to track down a devil fruit and his annoying Raccoon sidekick, Pato, who ends up joining the crew after his master casts him aside.
The whole story is pretty much the classic dangers of casting aside those closest to you for the sake of ambition schtick that the series has done so many times before, but Redfield and Pato’s convenient abilities enable the narrative to take inspiration from the anime/manga series in its entirety and not suffer for it.
The main story is split into eight episodes, each taking the pirates to a different area of the island that have been transformed into notable locales from the show such as the Snowy Drum Kingdom where the crew first met Chopper, the arid island nation of Alabasta, where they battled Sir Crocodile and the sleepy town by Mt. Corvo, where Luffy and his brother Ace grew up.
Each episode follows the same basic template: create a party of three members of the crew, beat up some themed grunts, find a barrier that requires you find a powerful word to unlock it, defeat some more grunts that have the word. Go back. Open up way forward, rinse and repeat until you get to the boss fight (which usually kicks ass).
On paper it sounds a little repetitive, and to be honest, it is. However, thanks to the clever integration of some light RPG elements, running around each level becomes just as much a quest to find the parts you need for your next set of upgrades or to catch that one insect or fish for your collection as it is about smacking wave after wave of goofy looking foes in the face.
Combat itself is fairly simple and is pretty much a matter of hammering away at X and Y and timing your presses of the A button to successfully dodge and counter incoming enemy attacks until everyone is defeated. Despite this simplicity, each of the Straw Hat crew fight very differently from one another. Sanji rushes in with a flurry of kicks, Luffy wades in with a barrage of punches and catapults himself around the battlefield by his arms, meanwhile less heavy hitting crew members like Usop fires in volleys of shots with his catapult and Robin attacks from a distance with her weird hand powers.
As you do damage to enemies or get hit by them, your SP gauge slowly fills up allowing to release special attacks by holding down RT and pressing either X or Y once one bar is full. Most are high powered special attacks, with the exception of Chopper who heals the other members of the team. Thus making him pretty invaluable on the battlefield, since he basically gives you a refilling supply of healing items and only the character you are currently in control of takes damage.
Filling your SP gauge all the way also allows you to do a link attack that does heavy damage to every enemy you’re fighting. Sadly they’re not unique to the combination of crew members in your squad. Instead, each character flies towards the screen, makes an aggressive pose and then everything takes some damage. Considering all the interesting combination attacks the Straw Hats use in the series it’s a shame that it’s not a part of the combat itself and are not referenced outside of a few cut scenes.
Outside of the main story missions, players are tasked with rebuilding the game’s sleepy hub town by collecting all manner of weird and wonderful materials created during the games missions and additional quests provided at the local tavern, fabricated at various shops and facilities that you’ve previously opened around town, or caught using your trusty insect net or fishing rod. It’s almost a game all of its own and the way all of the desperate parts of the game feed into one another makes it all the more addictive and compelling.
For example, herbs you grow in your garden can then be converted into healing items in the pharmacy you opened. The trash you collected on your journey can be refashioned into useful materials at the factory, which can then be used to open up other facilities around town or improve your insect and bug nets, which allow you to catch more impressive creatures to show off at the museum, which earns you more money, so you can buy specific hard to find items to give to the poet, who boosts the power of ‘Strong Words’ which you are used to power up the crew and increase the effectiveness of your crew in battle.
It’s also rather satisfying to see the rundown hamlet slowly transform into a bustling port town, as boarded up store fronts are replaced with new business and the town comes alive as the once dead streets are filled with smiling new residents.
Another rather neat addition is the ability for another player to jump in at anytime and control another member of the party during missions. Freely roaming around the same area as you as well as helping out during combat as well as fishing and catching bugs. But for some odd reason, rather than having one layer use the TV and the other the gamepad screen, instead it resorts to using a bad splitscreen in which each player has a small framed window instead of having half the TV each.
There’s also no gamepad festures in single player either, the game’s map doesn’t appear on the gamepad screen instead you have to pause in order to look at it. This isn’t a big thing really but on the WiiU having ancillary information on the gamepad screen has become all but a standard feature. On the plus side though, the game does feature both off TV play, without the need to turn the TV on and the ability to play the game with the gamepad pro if you so desire, since there’s no gamepad specific features to speak of, I’d recommend it as it generally feels more responsive and the batteries last a hell of a lot longer.
On the plus side though,like Monster Hunter 3 U, One Piece Unlimited World Red allows you to transfer your save between the WiiU and 3DS versions so you can continue your adventure on whilst you’re out and about and then transfer it back to your home console to play on a big screen when you get home.
Outside of the games main story mode, you can also try your hand at the separate Battle Coliseum mode. This could easily have been a game all of it’s own as it pretty much doubles the length of the game if you want to completel every mission and unlock every extra in it.
In this mode the Straw Hats travel to a floating Coliseum to take part in a fighting tournament hosted by Del Flamingo in order to face him in the final and, hopefully, take him out..
To do this they must rise through the ranks by collecting points whilst fighting in four different types of matches including straight one vs one duals, skirmishes in which you fight waves of grunts, boss rush mode in which you fight several boss characters from the main campaign, and a few fan favourites like Buggy the Clown that aren’t, and special matches that have specific rival characters taking on each other for bonus points.
In a rather nice twist you’re also not stuck fighting as Straw Hats and can take control of other characters from the series like Luffy’s brother Firebrand Ace, the ridiculously powerful Whitebeard and Luffy’s mentor Shanks.
Aside from the fights you can also complete a series of missions that’ll unlock useful items for use in the main game by completing various criteria like countering a set number of times with a certain character, or fighting a particular character for the first time in dual mode or using a particular team.
If you’re a fan of One Piece, at some point you should certainly check out Unlimited World Red as it’s a faithful and incredibly fun new adventure featuring all your favourite characters from one of the best shonen series of the last decade. However, how soon all depends on how far you’re into the anime/manga, and if you give a toss about spoilers.
If you have no interest in the series and just want a decent action role playing game, Unlimited World Red isn’t a bad one at all, combining bold graphics, over the top action and surprisingly addictive crafting with a gleeful sense of adventure to create a fun packed pirate romp that is more than the sum of its parts. Just be aware that the game assumes that you have prior knowledge of the series and so sometimes won’t make an awful lot of sense without further reading or viewing.
