Got this through the post earlier this morning from VG+. I've been missing my Power Stone sessions after selling my DC and this seemed like the only title on the GC worth considering (although Mystic Heroes is a guilty treat now and then).
First impressions though, its an ok little game. Really well presented (includes the US cartoons opening theme), and the menus are slick and clean.
There are 5 main game modes: Grand Battle (which is the sort of arcade mode), Story, Mini Games, Grand Tourney and Training.
I've spent most of the morning playing round on Grand Battle just to get a feel for it. You start out with 10 characters most I'm familiar with but I'm not to far into the books yet but there is of course Luffy, Nami and Zolo as well as Sanji, Usopp, Kuro, Buggy, Krieg, Arlong and Chaser. From the looks of it there are 4 others to unlock and each of them has 2 different costumes.
Controls seem to be pretty simple up to now. X and A are your main attack buttons, Y is jump, B picks objects and items up, R blocks and L is used to pull of specials (like calling up a secondary characters)
It's pretty easy to pull off moves, and the specials aren't that difficult either. I've had a few moments though where you don't really know whats happening, like the control is taken away from you for a couple of seconds but other than that it seems pretty text book. Which is probably the main problem up till now.
But it has got pretty charming graphics, the cell shaded characters look nice (a little squatter than the comic and cartoon versions though) and a few of the stages I've seen (Fusha Village and Arlong Park) are colourful and have neat touches like cattle running thru, but they feel too enclosed.
There are a few neat things as well, pressing any direction on the d-pad makes Luffy take his hat on and off (have to see what it makes other characters do), character intros at the start of battle change depending on who you are (the one with Sanji and Nami was cute)
There is also a treasure mode which has character profiles, art, music and movies... the usual stuff really.
So up till now it seems ok, very much what I expected. But where it does seem to excel at is the use of the source material, it sort of elevates it from being average. Hopefully story mode will be a pretty meaty experience and I havn't even touch on the mini games. So alot left to do and alot of oppertunities for the game to get some depth and really draw me in.
...Oh and the voice actors from the US version of the anime are all here (altho Zolo sound like he maybe different) and the game comes with collectable card (mine is 1 of 3... dont how you're ment to collect the other 2)
First impressions though, its an ok little game. Really well presented (includes the US cartoons opening theme), and the menus are slick and clean.
There are 5 main game modes: Grand Battle (which is the sort of arcade mode), Story, Mini Games, Grand Tourney and Training.
I've spent most of the morning playing round on Grand Battle just to get a feel for it. You start out with 10 characters most I'm familiar with but I'm not to far into the books yet but there is of course Luffy, Nami and Zolo as well as Sanji, Usopp, Kuro, Buggy, Krieg, Arlong and Chaser. From the looks of it there are 4 others to unlock and each of them has 2 different costumes.
Controls seem to be pretty simple up to now. X and A are your main attack buttons, Y is jump, B picks objects and items up, R blocks and L is used to pull of specials (like calling up a secondary characters)
It's pretty easy to pull off moves, and the specials aren't that difficult either. I've had a few moments though where you don't really know whats happening, like the control is taken away from you for a couple of seconds but other than that it seems pretty text book. Which is probably the main problem up till now.
But it has got pretty charming graphics, the cell shaded characters look nice (a little squatter than the comic and cartoon versions though) and a few of the stages I've seen (Fusha Village and Arlong Park) are colourful and have neat touches like cattle running thru, but they feel too enclosed.
There are a few neat things as well, pressing any direction on the d-pad makes Luffy take his hat on and off (have to see what it makes other characters do), character intros at the start of battle change depending on who you are (the one with Sanji and Nami was cute)
There is also a treasure mode which has character profiles, art, music and movies... the usual stuff really.
So up till now it seems ok, very much what I expected. But where it does seem to excel at is the use of the source material, it sort of elevates it from being average. Hopefully story mode will be a pretty meaty experience and I havn't even touch on the mini games. So alot left to do and alot of oppertunities for the game to get some depth and really draw me in.
...Oh and the voice actors from the US version of the anime are all here (altho Zolo sound like he maybe different) and the game comes with collectable card (mine is 1 of 3... dont how you're ment to collect the other 2)