Monday, March 18, 2013

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 (JP) Demo Impressions

(A.k.a.:  Who the hell are these people?)

Now, let me start with what little knowledge I have of One Piece.  Oh, and fair warning: I'm not going to look up anyone's names until after I write this, so it's all based on memory.  Sorry if you are a huge One Piece fan, you'll likely want to strangle me.  Anyway,  I read the manga back when I had a subscription to Shonen Jump, which was many years ago.  I remember reading past when he got the cook (Sanji, I think) and was in the middle of getting the shapeshifting reindeer (whose name escaped me).

I'm going to guess that this game takes place waaaaaaay beyond what little I know.  I see Usopp (or who I assume is Usopp), and he went all Carrot Top on me.  He has a 'fro ponytail and guns (I don't mean rifles).  I remember him being a scaredy-cat and now he can apparently bench the rest of the crew.  Zolo (I still remember when they called him Zoro in the manga) is all "17th century samurai" now?  I guess the do-rag wasn't cutting it.  And Nami...well, she must have saved all that money to buy implants, jeez.

Now...who the heck are the rest of these people?  There was a woman (named Robin, I think) that summons arms and legs out of the ground.  I don't know what devil fruit she ate, but it is creepy.  Then there's the guy with the long katana and can create bubbles...he says "room" a lot.  Rounding out what I assume is Luffy's crew is some guy with robot arms and Jack Skelington.  Yeah...I'm going to have to look into who these people are, since I'm not sure there will be a story mode like the Bleach musou-wannabe or Ken's Rage 2 that explains the rag-tag band of pirates.

Well, enough ignorance, so let's get to the gameplay.  It was really fun.  You can play as both Luffy and..."Room" guy (I'll look up his name later).  They play a bit different from each other, but you can really see the Dynasty Warriors roots here.  Most of the attacks they had hit lots of guys and were satisfying to pull off.  There were also lots of enemies on screen at once, something I really miss from the older DW games.  When you fill up the Style meter (I think), you will temporarily switch to your partner and can play as them for a few seconds.  It was pretty fun to do so, since it allows you to try Usopp and Zolo, who you cannot select in the demo.  Also the "musou" attack (circle button) can be charge to do more damage and take multiple bars.  It was a strong attack and they were cool animations, to boot.  I had to experiment a bit to figure how both of these functions worked, but they were fun to use.

I've heard the game is supposed to come out in the summer here, so I'm betting it will be subbed and download only.  So far it seems like it will be one I want to check out.  I'll have to see if I should try the first one, or if this one is just a huge improvement over it.  Oh, and find out who all these people are...

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