We took out a little time to try the new team building MMO from Joy Games, One Piece Online 2: Pirate King, the sequel to their previous title One Piece Online and an adaptation from the popular anime One Piece. In this browser based free to play RPG we start out journey as one of four classes and progress through a narrative story arc inspired by the show, meeting up with key characters to form a Crew and battling against the oppressive Marines.

Story wise it’s quite difficult to explain what Joy Games have done, essentially the quests and storyline aren’t that separate from either the show nor their previous title, it doesn’t feel so much that they are trying to make a unique story, but instead just use key pieces of information, characters and buzz words to show that this game is about One Piece. The truly awful English translations create some stilted narrative and some of the conversations feel forced to try and establish a character, such as the first character “Shanks” that you meet (also the first character in One Piece Online) in the middle of a conversation just saying “Let us go and drink wine and gamble” just to emphasize that this is something he does in the show. Other truly awful dialogue moments is where you get your first weapon and the characters start talking about how it has increased their Battle Power, a mechanic to define how powerful your team is, or acquiring a Justice Coat and being told “Justice Coat is a good gear which can increase your defense power.” It’s just bad.

Progression is extremely linear, regardless of which of the four character classes you choose (Sniper, Sailor, Doctor or Dark Mage) players will have the same experience, there is no diversion when it comes to storyline and the classes are essentially the same but with a different primary skill and need to be positioned differently in your Crew formation. What the game lacks is any replay value; going through the same story-arc to try out a different class almost seems pointless, particularly when you can recruit NPCs to fill that role anyway. As we progressed we unlocked more and more features, ever the way with these Asian RPGs, indicated by new icons constantly being added to our UI that continued to grow ever more cluttered with free spins features, logins, online giftpacks and new mechanics to help customize out character and Crew. Levelling up also gives us access to specific characters to join us, as with One Piece Online the first character we meet and add to the Crew is the primary protagonist of the show Luffy, once acquired players are shown which main cast member they will meet next (Zoro at level 14 as it happens).

With the story and trying to reach the next level to meet new characters it’s fair to say that the game is geared towards players who love One Piece, the dialogue being a tip of the hat to show information that fans will be able to identify with. Players are encouraged to keep playing to meet their favourite characters and fight alongside them, but the reality is that there’s not that much depth to their interactions or their place in the recycled storyline.

Mechanics wise players will also see that One Piece Online 2 hasn’t tried too hard to buck the trend of tradition, the many features are similar to not only One Piece Online, but to many other turn based RPGs such as these. With the linear progression what we found was that we were battling away through very familiar content, albeit the combat system is slightly different and players do have a lot more control over their characters actions, able to choose their targets and add much more strategy to battles. However, the higher you get and then finally reaching max level, there isn’t much to do other than fight through the same content over and over in an endless cycle of grinding to get new gear, level up your Crew and continue to increase your battle power to aid you fighting against players and top the leaderboard ranks. The new features that are unlocked as you level up are all very similar in nature, if not in description, and don’t feel particularly meaningful.

Graphically we’d say the game is a step back from the previous RPG, the style lacking the detail in the game backgrounds that they originally had, opting for a softer and blurry style instead. Character models don’t quite sit right on the backgrounds and stand out quite strongly, which we don’t really like. Furthermore every character you meet looks exactly the same, all the Doctors look like each other, all the Snipers look like each other, there’s no cosmetic options and so running around the world you see a dozen clones at any one time, however, to keep the immersion players can have their game be a solo adventure and simply opt to hide all players.

Ultimately when it comes down to team based RPGs then we’ll say that whilst it isn’t groundbreaking and definitely has a weak storyarc, One Piece Online 2 at least isn’t the worst RPG of this type that we’ve played. The world itself is fun and the general theme and the various characters are at least interesting, if a little two dimensional in comparison to the anime, and fans of the show that aren’t expecting anything too in depth might get a kick out of it. The lack of replay value is what hurts us the most and the extremely linear content in terms of actual progression and storyline, all in all it feels like a lack of time and effort that could have otherwise been a pretty decent game but falls short by some distance.

SCORE:

• Graphics: 5


• Gameplay: 5


• Performance: 7

• Pros: Performance has improved greatly, combat feels more involved, Crew customization.


• Cons: Linear content, terrible English translations, the storyline and features very similar to previous game.

Rating: 6

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.