One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 Review

One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 is the brand new action title developed by Tecmo Koei and published by Namco Bandai. Following on from the success of the original title and the Pirate Warriors franchise, the game follows Luffy a member of the Straw Hats pirate crew. This time around, the game is based on an original story but will it be pirate treasure or will it give gamers a sinking feeling?

Let’s find out and kick off the HOTs and NOTs.

HOTs

Stylish Presentation
One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 has a beautiful artwork style that captures the heart and soul of the anime, whilst lending itself to the 3D gaming scene. It has a classic over-the-top anime style with emotions on characters’ faces instantly changing from shock to extreme happiness and almost smugness at times. The levels are all distinctive, bright and colorful lending themselves to the exaggerated nature of the game. The entire roster of characters plainly wouldn’t fit in any other style with such ease. The fast paced music help the combat raise the tempo of the whole game to great effect. This means battling waves of hundreds of enemy troops become even more exhilarating that first thought possible.

Hints & Tips Given
If you skip a tutorial and in many other games you’d be a tad stuck. Fortunately in One Piece Pirate Warriors 2, there is an easy to navigate hint sections enabling players to simply reread all tips that are given in-game. Ranging from how to gain Style Actions to what to do against enemies with giant bombs, the hints section is full of pretty much all the information you or a new player will need to get up to speed. As with some similar titles, all the loading screens tell the player useful hints. It’s much better than just an unsupportive blank screen.

Roster
Players will start out with only the main Straw Hat member Monkey D. Luffy playable with Nami as the Crew member that is summon-able during Crew Strikes. As you progress through the title, more characters and their logs will become available to play as. Each and every character has their own style and combat moves. This allows players to choose someone that suits them. Personally my favorite is the half-man half-robot nicknamed ‘Iron Man’ Franky. With the strength and distance of his strikes, he almost walks through enemies and when used in conjunction with almost any other character in a Crew Strike the devastation to the enemy ranks is nothing short of amazing.

Combat Gameplay
The gameplay can be played in two ways almost like homed fighting titles such as Tekken or Street Fighter. Players can either button mash their way through the waves of troops or they can link together moves and call on explosive combos to rid the levels of numerous enemies simultaneously. One feature helps the game massively and that is a lock-on feature. Simply press R3 when instructed by an on-screen prompt and the camera will lock onto a nearby heavy unit such as a boss character. It helps the give the combat direct and stops the camera spoiling the entertaining combat.

There are a number of features available to players to remove the oncoming waves of enemies from the map. Initiate Style Action mode is great for devastating attacks to swiftly dispatch an entire wave of enemies in one go: alas some enemies can counter with their own style that can see attacks miss. By defeating regular enemy units during a Style Action you can gain Crew strikes by filling up the meter. These work in one of two ways without a full meter your character pulls off a colossal move. However, with a full meter another member of your crew jumps in and uses another super powerful move after you. To top it off, you can then control them as they batter the enemy units that are nearby. It doesn’t matter which way you play both button mashing and chaining combos is thoroughly enjoyable and fun to do.