One Piece videogames were actually quite wild in terms of what got released out of Japan during the PS1 and PS2 era, with a very inconsistent series of releases outside of Japan, some esclusive to North America, some to European countries, some like One Piece for the GBA being the weird case of being regionally exclusive to North America, as in, there doesn’t exists a Japanese GBA cart of that game because it was never made in the first place.
One Piece Grand Adventure also falls into this category, as it was never released in Japan but made esclusively for North America and Europe, still by the same developer of the Grand Battle series (and behind a lot of One Piece games over the years), Ganbarion, to profit off the good sales for One Piece Grand Battle Rush (just One Piece Grand Battle in NA and EUR territories) on PS2.
I said PS2 as in the Gamecube version is a NA exclusive, in Europe we just got it on PS2.
But yeah, keep in the mind the “to profit off” part, which will also explain why this review might be shorter than expected.
This time around it reaches up to the Skypiea Arc, so it’s already an improvement, i guess, but aside from that, it is a release that clearly made from scraps, given how there are even some glitches and weird errors unique to both American and European versions, more inconsistincies, weird description of characters or their clothing (which also have wrong or random colors that aren’t even consistent within the game itself, same for the “Marine” hats somehow appearing in some sequences despite the 4Kids based localization changed them to “Navy”), heck, even the box art is half recycled from previous Grand Battle games, the ones never localized outside of Japan.
And badly cobbled together to boot, with Luffy holding a mysterious non-existent orb/sphere.
There is not much to say about gameplay itself, since it uses all the mechanics and systems of Grand Battle Rush (sporting a slightly revised interface), characters have the same movesets, just adding some new support ones, plus a new mechanic, Accel Heat, which has three levels (requiring from 1 to 3 charges respectively), and can be used to cancel both yours and the opponent moves, increase attack or increase speed.
reinstating cut from the western release of Grand Battle Rush… actually not quite, you have Enel back, but since this version just now covers the Skypiea arc, there’s no playable Aokiji, and there’s no Foxy either, might as well since we never get that far into the series with this one either, hence they didn’t even had to bother with keeping the Davy Back Fight mini-games, which are just gone.. or are they?
They added instead Ohm (the Enel priest that also trained a giant dog to boxe people, remember him? No you don’t), of all people, and the weird choices don’t stop there, as they added Kuina (Zoro’s dead childhood friend), and Zeff, which makes a bit more sense, even if the latter two are mostly cloned in terms of movesets from Tashigi and Sanji’, respectively.
But then again they did add Wapol (which wasn’t playable even in the Japanese version of Grand Battle Rush, as i’ve already lamented), does have Tashigi as a full playable character instead of just being a support one, so i will shut up on this regard, as the roster – even with the cuts, weird additions and half-salvaged character picks – sports 24 playable character, good enough.
Grand Adventure also has all the sames mode seen in Grand Battle Rush (aside from the Mini-Games/Davy Back Fight one, for reasons i just explained), with most modes now contained-nested under the Grand Battle one, and there is an Arena mode that is new to this “version” (this is where you can unlock 226 cards from the original One Piece card game, they didn’t replace them with screenshots this time around), some new items and alternative versions of the arenas, alongside new ones and some generic locales that are exclusive to Adventure Mode.
The old mini-games from Grand Battle Rush are actually still here (alongside a couple new ones), but now they’re under the “Special Game” option under the Grand Battle menù, and they have to be unlocked by playing through Adventure Mode.
And iaside from the reharshed content from Grand Battle Rush, the main new addition is indeed the Adventure Mode, as one would expect since its’ called “Grand Adventure” and all… and it’s interesting, it’s not a bad effort in terms of actually trying to get some RPG-esque experience out of a 3D arcade styled fighting game.
The gist is that you venture (you Team Venture, if you will) on an ensemble of interconnected maps, where you move from island to island in that specific sea map, with every dot/location being either a VS battle with special rules against a named fighter foe, or a “Rumble Battle” where you have to defeat generic mooks until you empty their collective life bar, often under a time limit.
Sometimes you gotta visit (often for story reasons, at least for the Luffy campaign/adventure) the locations in a certain order before you can progress, or go back to a previous sea map to access the next area where you’re supposed to go, but it’s mostly about doing the story missions to progress onwards, as these are marked with a red circle around their map location, with optional fights being instead marked with blue circles/rings.
It’s not really confusing or obtuse, but in order to give some feeling of an adventure, they also decided to add some very light RPG elements…which was indeed that Abe Simpson quote at the time, i was alive when it started to become a genre-crossing trend, so much that even GTA had stats to be grinded in San Andreas.
What this means is that you get exp from winning battles, and when you have enough you level up and can improve one of 6 stats: health, defense, attack, super attack strenght/defense, support characters’ strenght, and item’s power when used as weapons. Also, the more you progress and level up, the more of the combos and supers you can unlock for the characters.
Named fighters also have their own level, so you might need to grind a bit to avoid being killed early since the enemy might be 2 or 3 levels above your character (the other ones that can join you in the campaign have to be levelled up separately, as expected), and have fare more health that you, for example.
Often the fights have bonus conditions that wen met will usually reward you with items that strenghten some character stats upon obtaining, and can be seen from the “Loot” sub-menu, that and allies/support characters, which will become selectable in all modes after progressing or completing enough of the campaign in which they’re unlocked, some being completely optional or excluding you from getting other specific allies in certain campaigns/adventures.
The game features 5 “Adventures”, with the first being the “Easy” difficulty Adventure featuring Luffy as Captain and basically offering a very abridged but mostly canonical/faithful recreation of the story beats up to the Skypiea Arc… though you first have to get the first ending, concluding the adventure at Crocodile’s defeat in Alubarna.
The others are increasingly difficult quasi-canonical (or straigh up invented) campaigns featuring series antagonist like Buggy, Crocodile and Smoker/Chaser. Again, quasi canonical, but then again even Luffy’s adventure, the closest thing to a proper Story Mode the Grand Battle subseries (at least speaking of the localized ones) ever had…features Chopper as an optional recruit.
It’s fine as a means to give you a semblance of adventure, of an actual story, though in the long run it becomes a bit tiresome, since you have to go through most of Adventure Mode content in order to even unlock the other characters, the campaigns require more and more grinding as they progress, and it doesn’t help that to unlock the second-last adventure, Chaser/Smoker’s, requires some random never before asked or hinted at bullshit, as in you not only need every item/loot/treasure gained from all battles that have a bonus reward condition, but also beat Luffy’s campaign, as in, go back and finish the now opened Skypiea portion.
Outside of Adventure Mode, you can choose to use the powered up data of the characters you levelled up there in Grand Battle mode, or import the “custom/powered up” versions of character made by other people via password…. if you want to fuck up the balance even further.
Bonus points for trying to do something new with what they had, i don’t believe Ganbarion got a lot of time to even consider doing a proper sequel and had to crank this out ASAP.
But still, it’s hard not to see One Piece Grand Adventure as a quick “cash grab”, especially since it’s basically a “Turbo Edition of a Turbo Edition”, since Gran Battle Rush seems basically to be Grand Battle 3.5, yet clearly more slapped together and with just a new big mode that is touted as the main new attraction… a nice enough one, but still, there are no real big changes or sizeable expansions in terms of roster, no revised-improved movesets, it’s technically identical to GB Rush in every way, so it’s not even an improvement in term of looks, to say nothing of it still having the 4Kids stink all over it, which also meant still not having all the previously cut characters from the original Japanese version of Gran Battle Rush reinstated (since by that time they were able to depict up to the Skypiea arc), with mostly nice but also kinda weird roster additions to make up for it.
I can’t deny that the prospect of basically shelling out 50 bucks for a slightly expanded revision of what even western audiences paid full price for just 1 year before… wasn’t great, but in hindsight i do kinda recommend this one, since it has more content, more characters, more modes, and it’s basically as complete as the Grand Battle Rush experience will ever be, and it’s still a pretty fun game, even if that is because One Piece: Grand Adventure IS Grand Battle Rush with some new content, yet not enough to be either a full fledged sequel or a proper revision-expansion.
If you have to play one, pick Grand Adventure for some fun Power Stone style local mayhem, and maybe take a look at Adventure Mode for some single player content.
This is where the Grand Battle series would have ended…. but it did return eventually in 2014, with the Japanese exclusive One Piece: Super Grand Battle X for the Nintendo 3DS, which had Amiibo support (unlocking Nintendo costumes for the Straw Hats like Franky in a DK outfit) and was also a sequel of the Gigant Battle series made for the DS, also developed by Ganbarion.
But that is a tale for another summer, maybe one of Japanese only One Piece imports…
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