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Review: One Piece: Burning Blood

One Piece: Burning Blood is latest from Bandai Namco and Spike Chunsoft, offering up another fighting game that recaps a great anime.

This time around, One Piece’s Paramount War is the subject of the game’s single-player campaign, offering a gameplay experience quite similar to Spike Chunsoft’s recent J-Stars Victory VS. Things are more simple though; you’re going to be taking part in one-on-one fights, this time around. A couple attack buttons are easy to understand and pick up, and eventually those buttons are powered up with a trigger press. As in J-Stars, several support characters exist purely to boost your abilities and provide healing.

You’ll be able to unlock teams of three and the ability to swap out characters, mid-match, as you progress. It’s that variation that makes the title quite refreshing, allowing for multi-character combos and hectic fights. You’ll need to take advantage of those combos, as gameplay gets quite difficult in later stages.

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In single-player, chapters are broken up by in-engine cutscenes and all of those retain their original Japanese voiceover work. While the scenes are beautiful to behold — and you’re quite able to understand the emotion the voiceover actors are conveying – Burning Blood’s story is still one that will make sense exclusively to One Piece fans.

My biggest takeaways? You have a pirate friend that looks like he belongs in Rocky Horror Picture Show. And Luffy, the game’s main protagonist — though, you’ll play as others in the campaign — is a Mr. Fantastic wannabe that wants to be King of the Pirates. Mmmkay? Mmmkay.

While online offerings are plentiful, Pirate Flag Battle being the best of the lot. Similar to Mortal Kombat X’s factions, you’re able to choose a Force and complete alongside it against other gamers. Weekly ladderboards are formed as you participate in battles against the CPU or other players, with the victorious faction claiming victory over the rest at the end of an engagement period. The rest is standard battle fare.

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As with most Bandai Namco releases, you’re going to fan to be a fan of the anime to really appreciate the craziness unfolding around you. What’s on offer in a solid fighting game, very much like myriad Bandai Namco releases before it. Compared to J-Stars, there’s far more variety and much less repetition, so it looks like Spike Chunsoft’s really starting to understand the formula. In the end, Burning Blood is perfect if anime is what you’re into… but otherwise, it’s not worth your time.

Review: One Piece: Burning Blood was reviewed using a promotional code on PS4, as provided by the publisher.

 

Review: One Piece: Burning Blood
6 out of 10

The good

  • Gorgeous and perfect for One Piece fans.
  • Less repetitious than J-Stars.
  • Pirate Flag Battle mode.

The bad

  • Pretty inaccessible to non-fans.

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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.