One Piece: Grand Battle

One Piece is a one or two player fighting game much like Power Stone. Players are thrown into an enclosed arena to do battle, using their attacks, special moves, a helper character, and the environment around them.

Six modes will be available in One Piece, including the common Story and Versus modes. Versus mode will support 2 players.

There will be 16 characters to choose from, all very unique and specially developed. Characters’ moves are all completely different and reflect their traits from the show. There are even 32 separate support characters to choose from that will accompany your main character during battle. When asked which time period within the anime we could expect characters to come from, they told me that was still a secret, but the general time frame is from the beginning of the series up to the introduction of Smokey.

There will be 6 deeply interactive levels and a 7th training level to fight in. Levels are very interactive and have many embedded easter eggs for players to find. Of course fans of the anime may have an easier time finding them, but I was assured there are more than enough to find and that some Japanese players have played 1000 different times to find them all. Unlockables range anywhere from very small cosmetic details to bigger content like new modes or levels, but nothing was specified just yet. Bandai hopes that not only fans of the anime play One Piece, but fans of the game’s genre will be attracted to its gameplay and eventually watch the anime themselves.

And lastly there are desperation moves. When a players health has been diminished they can perform a special attack that will deal massive damage. Depending on the amount of remaining health it will do more damage. So if you have more than a third of your health left you may only see the first couple steps to the desperation move, while if you have less than a fifth you’ll see the whole thing (these values are just being used as an example, they didn’t explain the exact amount of health that would trigger the move). I was able to witness one and it was very impressive, as well as over the top.

With the TV show One Piece being #1 on Cartoon Network’s Toonami lineup, this game seems like a great choice for Bandai to bring out right now. Shonen Jump’s One Piece is being developed for the Gamecube and Playstation 2 and is aiming for a September release.

For All E3 2005 Previews