I felt like writing, so I shall write. Sue me.
Y'know what one of my favorite genres is?
Metroidvanias/Castleroids. They are built upon the
premise of "backtracking", which
should be a
huge no-no. A good Metroidvania makes the backtracking enjoyable. D'you know what kind of games usually suck? Licensed games. Here we have One Piece Unlimited Adventure, a Metroidvania based on an anime, and it's
really good. For the most part.
It's no secret that English is the
best thing to happen to linguistics, however, dubs tend to get a bad rep, for some reason(I can only speak for Latin American dubs, and they were
really good.), but I digress. Unlimited Adventure
doesn't have dual audio, so you are stuck with the English dub. I really don't like the English dub, I mean, it's not awful, but... I really can't stand Luffy's voice. Now that that's out of the way, I can go on.
Someone, for
whatever reason, thought that it would be a good idea to make a Metroidvania out of One Piece. Incredibly enough, the idea was approved and Unlimited Adventure was made. The game works... mostly. Y'see, Metroidvanias, the
good ones anyways, lock areas behind obstacles that require a certain ability. Maybe a far off platform that requires a double jump, maybe an obstacle that can only be broken with a special skill or weapon. One Piece offers these
obstacles in the form of barriers that require... ingredients. Almost everything in the game drops ingredients, enemies, rocks, hitting trees to have their fruit fall, fishing(You can fish) and even bugs that need to be
caught with a net... or having to mine minerals with a pick. These same ingredients can also be used to craft items, some for offensive purposes, healing items or just to enhance a character's HP or SP. This should spell
doom for the game, it should be a bore having to grind and farm all these ingredients and elements, but... the core game gets so much right that it's easy to
forgive. Plus, it ain't as bad as it sounds, I promise.
Speaking of characters, on the Story Mode you get to play as all the 8 Mugiwaras at the time(Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin and Franky) and you can switch characters at any time, which will probably be a
necessity as bosses can get rather tough. Sadly, having so many characters has a noticeable
drawback, y'see the more you use a move the stronger it gets, so you'll probably have some really strong characters, the ones you play the most as, while others will wind up
underpowered. You might be willing to switch characters as you play, but there's EIGHT characters, and the game is rather long, so you eventually you'll just give up on keeping them at similar levels. I found it easier to use train all characters until they get their full basic combos and then only train their special moves, while focusing on
rotating between three characters(Unsurprisingly I chose the big three, Zoro, Sanji and Luffy(In that order)). These three were also the only ones I spent my ingredients in enhancing their HP and SP.
Unlimited Adventure is gorgeous, and I do mean
gorgeous, but it comes at a cost... the framerate tends to suffer when it gets crowded. After you are done with the Story Mode, you unlock the Colosseum(It
might not be the correct name, sorry) in which you have to survive against a army of marines as any of the characters you have unlocked. To the game's merit, there's a
ton of unlockable characters, including Pauly, Shanks, Whitebeard and Arlong.... but most of these characters have very limited movesets, in particular when compared to the Mugiwaras, which is really, really
disappointing. What's the fun of using a character that has three or
less measly attacks? There's also a Versus Mode, but it suffers from the same issue, characters besides the Mugiwaras have very limited movesets. For example, Crocodile has but three moves(A, AA and Waggle) while Eneru has four(A, AA, Air+A and Waggle)... then Calgara, a character with way less creen time than either has a moveset comparable to a Mugiwara
Not cool!
Did I mention waggling? I did. This is one of those
rare Wii games that actually have a good control scheme. Yes,
really! Waggling is only used for some special attacks, which makes it fairly
unintrusive. The rest of the controls feel really good, A is your basic attack, B is jump, pressing both at the same time(A very easy task when holding a Wiimote) performs a dodge. Holding C and pressing an attack button performs an special attack, while double tapping C performs a dash. The directional pad is relegated to items(Picks, Nets, Healing or explosives) while the Minus button allows you to swap characters. Easy, simple,
comfortable.
So, if it's so good, why didn't it took off? I can only
guess, which means I'm gonna speculate. Number 1, it was a Wii game and we know that the Wii didn't appeal to "hardcore" gamers(I hate the term, but in this case it saves time) while Metroidvanias are a rather obscure sub-genre of adventure games. Number 2, you think Metroidvanias are obscure? The West
hates One Piece. While in Japan it's one of its most
celebrated Shonens, it hasn't taken off in the West, for some reason. Number 3, Namco. The game had little promotion coupled with a small quantity of copies produced(Seriously, the price has
skyrocketed on Amazon). You couple all of these together and you get, well, a rather obscure game. It's very worth it though(Although maybe not at the price Amazon is
demanding),
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