When it comes to licensed anime games Namco Bandai follows a pretty clear pattern. Get popular Shonen Anime license. Make an okay, mechanically shallow but flashy arena fighter. Release, rise and repeat with other Shonen series. They did it with Dragon Ball, Naruto and even stuff like Saint Seiya. One Piece for the longest time was treated a bit differently with things like One Piece Musou. This time however, for the first time, we get a One Piece arena fighter that goes under the subtitle Burning blood. Does Burning Blood break the mold of flashy but shallow arena fighters Namco has been pumping out?
Experience the Paramount war arc and only that arc!
The story mode of One Piece Burning Blood follows one specific arc named the Paramount War arc. Players will be able to choose an episode which sees them playing through the arc from their perspective. Once an episode is taken, players will be thrown on a map where they can either select a main story battle or side battle for some extras. It’s not well done at all. Immediately from the start, it’s unclear to newcomers what’s going on. Character motivations and arcs are unclear, there is no real idea who is doing what and why. The flow of the story is confusing for those who don’t know One Piece and will probably disappoint those who do due to the messy way the story is told. Most missions require the player to either beat the enemy or survive their onslaught. Never does it seem to throw a special objective at the player. Before a battle, a narrator explains what is happening and then the player is shown a pre-rendered cut scene which builds up to the battle. The cut scenes look nice. There are some nice camera pans and angles showing off what’s going on. At the end of a battle players get to see yet another cut scene that usually sets up the next scene before ending abruptly. During the story mode characters will level up but it doesn’t seem like anything at all happens when they do. Their stats don’t increase nor do you get items or gear. It’s a shallow tacked on feature only there to create an illusion of progress. The story mode of Burning Blood is a confusing mess that even fans of the series won’t get much out of.
The story is done sloppily and messy.
Slow and a drag.
Burning Blood follows Namco’s tradition of making licensed anime arena fighting games with a shallow skill level and low depth. This time however, it’s by far the worst it has ever been. Other arena fighters like the Ninja Storm series or J-Stars offer some mechanics and have a bit of depth even if it’s almost nothing noteworthy. One Piece, however, offers nothing of value in these regards. Two characters are put in an arena and have to deplete each other’s life bar. There is a light and heavy attack, guard and three special attacks. There are a few more mechanics but they are useless. The main game revolves around these mechanics and not much else. You can grab block-happy opponents who in turn can sidestep the attacks. You can counter that by doing a heavy guard-breaking attack which can’t be dodged but takes a bit of time so the enemy can attack to cancel it out. This all sounds fairly decent but the problem is that just mashing away at the light attack button seems to be the best answer. Players can play with up to nine characters on each team. That is eighteen characters in one match. Aside from the main characters, players can each choose up to three assists which instead of jumping on the battlefield and doing an attack will just give the player a buff if certain conditions are met. The battles themselves could be described as glacial. Once an opponent gets knocked down it takes a long time for them to get back up. And that’s kind of the main problem with the game. While other such games tend to have flashy moves and keep the action to a relatively high Burning Blood does not.
Combat is dull and doesn’t feel exciting at all.
A nice and unique visual style.
While Burning Blood might not have the shallow but enjoyable gameplay or even a good summary of the story it does have a nice visual design. To differentiate itself from the other Namco Anime games, which all use cell-shading, One Piece’s art style incorporates a heavy line filter. This makes the game look like characters are sketched like in certain manga and differentiates the game’s cell-shaded style from the rest. The cut scenes follow the same style and look great with some nice camera pans and angles but things tend to get confusing when characters appear out of thin air. The weird and abstract designs of the characters, while making a smooth transition from paper to 3d models still tend to look fairly disturbing. While for some characters that means there is a certain unconformability to it that’s a hard pill to swallow. The entire game is in Japanese with English subtitles and they do their job well. the menus look nice and use the traditional art style. One Piece Burning Blood at the least manages to look really pretty with its art style and the cut scenes are done very well for the most part. It’s too bad this doesn’t save the rest of the game.
The line shaders give the game a nice visual identity.
Closing note:
Burning Blood is not just another one of Namco’s anime fighters that’re all flash and no depth, it’s worse. Other games like Burning Blood manage to at least convey some sense of fun and engagement. One Piece’s mechanics, however, are all useless since most of the game revolves around hitting the light attack button. The game is slow and dull and never manages to excite players. Its moves aren’t even that flashy or exciting to see. The story mode is done so messy it’s almost incomprehensible to newcomers and fans of the manga or anime can’t appreciate the retelling of the story. The cut scenes are done fairly well. There are some characters that pop out of nowhere but other than that it manages to show some of the cooler scenes of the Paragon War arc. The hard-line filter applied to the cell shaded models make the game stand out from the rest visually and looks nice. Burning Blood doesn’t excite and after a couple of matches players will put the game down and never pick it back up.
4/10
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