One Piece: Burning Blood Game

A review copy of One Piece: Burning Blood for the PS4 was furnished by Bandai-Namco Entertainment.

One Piece: Burning Blood is the latest One Piece video game to hit the market. It’s also the first straight fighting game based on the series in a little over a decade, which is quite an impressive moratorium for a shonen series. Obviously, the nearest comparison will be theOne Piece: Grand Battle series. Fans of those games will certainly find something to like here, but it’s clearly not cut from the same cloth. Overall, that’s to its benefit, but some of the quirks of Grand Battle will be missed.

ONE PIECE BURNING BLOOD LAUNCH TRAILER

To start with, this is more of a serious fighter than any of the previous One Piece games. There’s less of an emphasis on the goofier aspects of the series, and a much harder focus on the fighting mechanics than before. While Grand Battle could probably draw some comparisons with Smash Bros., Burning Blood is more akin to SoulCalibur or Tekken. Sure,Grand Battle, in its later iterations, also had 3D fighting arenas, but there were items, gimmicky maps, and minigames. Burning Blood has none of that. The focus here is entirely on the combat system. And like Soulcalibur, you are more or less free to wander the arena, but the game will pit you and your opponent against each other. You never have to worry about aiming as long as you’re pointing in the general direction of the enemy, and the camera will always focus on the other character.

So, how is the combat? Satisfying. The learning curve is fairly gentle, even for those with minimal fighting game experience. There aren’t a lot of moves to learn per character, with special moves all attached to the left bumper (using default controls) and mapped to the same keys as your regular attacks. It’s not hard to retain control of your character at all times. The responsiveness and immediacy of each command allows the combat to flow. Animations are very clear, and with the exception of some explosive attacks, it’s easy to tell what’s happening at any given time. My only complaint about the default controls is that some moves, particularly guard breaks, require tapping two keys at the same time. Timing this reliably can prove difficult.

The game does not pull punches when it comes to power attacks.

Additionally, the camera is dynamic, often sitting behind one character at a time in an attempt to frame the scene as a traditional shonen action scene. It’s a neat idea, but it can make movement awkward at times, and the camera has to move a lot to compensate in Versus matches. There’s no field of view slider, but there is an option to change how close the camera is to the action, and I’d recommend pulling it out some, especially if you sit close to the screen.

Besides the basic moves, every character has a charge meter that builds as you deal damage, broken into several chunks. When you hit the cap, you can unleash it by clicking the right stick to go on a rampage, and you also have access to your strongest move. Click the stick again and land a hit to launch a massive combo, or miss and waste your entire meter. You also have a stamina meter, which is tied to Devil Fruit usage, especially for Logia users, and is a general “power up” meter for other characters. You reduce it by holding down the right bumper and attacking to deal extra damage or gain access to alternate movesets, but you’ll run out of stamina quickly and will need to lay off to recharge. Logia users particularly benefit from this system, as they get new moves, deal more damage, and can often avoid damage entirely while utilizing this meter. Some characters also have their own unique meters, such as Franky’s Cola Power, which are tied to specific moves. Primarily, this is how the game keeps so many characters in a (relative) state of balance with each other. Spamming power moves is costly, and not always effective, especially when they can be easily countered by simple combos.

Using a Unity Link

One other aspect the game makes heavy use of is having a team of characters. Like all the other features, this is hardly new or unique. You can have up to three characters in a party at a time, and swap between them at-will. The system is very Marvel vs. Capcom-esque, but with one little twist: you can swap between characters in the middle of certain combos to either deal extra damage or to avoid taking damage. It will cost you points from your power gauge, but it can be worth if if you really need to punish your opponent. They can also counter with their own swap though, turning it around on you. It makes for an interesting gamble.

What makes Burning Blood fun isn’t the novelty, because its mechanics aren’t new to the genre. It’s not the characters or the arenas, both of which take themselves more seriously than most One Piece games do. It’s the combination of mechanics with the quick pace and the competency of it all, which ends up making for a fun fighting game. It focuses on being a fighting game, and it succeeds. Even non-fans should find a lot to enjoy here.

So what about the die-hards? For once, you might actually be a bit disappointed. The game’s attention to detail is lacking for a One Piece game. Sure, the coat of paint is there, but some details seem phoned-in. Character immunities aren’t as respected as you’d hope. Luffy can be damaged by lightning, for example. The game sacrifices correctness to the series for getting the gameplay to be right. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just something you don’t see often in a One Piece game. On one hand, this is the breath of fresh air that One Piece’s games needs. On the other hand, I think it’s to the game’s detriment that it couldn’t find a way to tie in more of the world of One Piece’s quirks while still making for a solid fighter. There are some nice touches, like the shading lines that try to imitate Oda’s — and it does a better job than any previous One Piece game — or how finishing off an opponent with a power move will send them flying off into the background, often demolishing a building with an explosion of dust. Still, this is something of an experiment. It’s an attempt to make a One Piece fighter that works as a fighter, and by that measure, it’s a success.

Will we be seeing Burning Blood tournaments any time soon? I doubt it. Most of the skill lies in strategizing. The controls themselves are simplistic and learning the basic combo trees is a matter of time, and not much of it. It makes the game accessible. Additionally, the game’s Versus element is somewhat odd, asking you to pick three teams of three each, plus three support characters, and after one set is defeated, the player acquires the next while the other keeps what they have. It’s fun, and keeps up the variety, but I’m not sure if it’s an attempt to balance out the characters or just to make sure almost every character gets some time in the ring. While the focus on combat over absurdity somewhat weakens its position as a party game, I think it will find a lot of success here. It’s got enough depth to keep it interesting for many, many hours of gameplay, and enough content to keep coming back to. Nothing feels cheap or incomplete.

The game contains 40 characters, plus some pre- and post- timeskip versions. It also features costumes and an additional set of 65 support characters. All of the main characters are fully voice-acted by the Japanese cast (even in the English release), and there’s even some unique dialogue for when two characters are fighting each other, on top of the usual generic lines. You need to play the campaign for several tutorial levels to unlock most of the game modes, including 2P Versus, and you begin with no support characters but quite a few fighters. This somewhat hinders your ability to use it as a party game, since you must take it to your friend’s house and then spend some time playing by yourself before you can start fighting each other. But the campaign is long, focusing on the Marineford Arc from multiple perspectives, which is a perfect setting for a game like this. You unlock more characters by playing through it, and there’s also special challenges which help you level characters up and unlock more stuff. Even if you just want to play this alone, there’s quite a lot of content to conquer. My only complaint is the lack of arenas, of which there are only twelve, most of them large circles with destructible material in the middle. This is one area where I miss Grand Battle’s approach; a few more gimmicky levels for variety would be quite welcome.

It’s quite a looker, too. The character models are fantastic. The menus are gorgeous. The 2D sprites are clean and detailed. The only flaw is the arena textures themselves, which are muddy. The music isn’t anything too spectacular, but it’s great as background music for a game, even if it’s missing some of that One Piece charm, veering too close to generic muzak. It does its job.

I suppose this phrase is a good summary of the game, “It does its job.” And it does it competently. It’s not breaking barriers. But it doesn’t have to. It’s a solid arena fighter, and it belongs in any One Piece fan’s collection. It’s a fun fighter, it’s easily accessible for new players, even those who aren’t experienced with fighting games, and you can get by by just following the tutorials as they come. Content is introduced at a good rate, and it feels like there’s always something more to do, no matter how much you accomplish. It feels like playing an old-school fighting game, and that’s worth the price of admission. I’d heartily recommend One Piece: Burning Blood.

One Piece: Burning Blood launches in North America on May 31, 2016, and in Europe on June 3, 2016.