One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 1 review

These pirates can shove off

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Colourful characters unleashing cool moves

  • +

    Writing nails it

  • +

    May appeal to compulsive collectors

Cons

  • -

    Brainless scavenging

  • -

    Brainless button mashing

  • -

    Some vicious slowdown

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A pirate’s life for us? Not if it involves this much brainless scavenging. Continuing on from Ganbarion’s so-so Unlimited Adventure, Cruise bears little proof of two years’ development. Button mashing. Hiking around confusing maps. Scooping up an inordinate number of coconuts. Have we slipped through a wormhole back to 2007?

The main problem is the reliance on item scavenging to turn a simple task into an epic quest. Deep down there’s some dumb fun longing to get out: colourful characters unleashing the moves you’ve seen in the show. But where in the show do Monkey and company have to find ten coconuts, eight bits of moss and some driftwood to open a door?

We can’t even see this appealing to the ‘gotta collect it all’ crowd. Endless foraging only works if you’re rewarded. Here it opens up doors to new foraging grounds or lets you build tools to, you guessed it, allow new kinds of foraging. Combat occurs regularly enough, but there’s some vicious slowdown. It’s a shame, as the well-realised characters (the writing is bang on) could have been put to work in a much more ambitious twist on the Zelda formula. This, alas, is unlikely to happen soon, least of all in the imminent sequel, Cruise 2. Can’t wait.

Jun 26, 2009

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionAn unlimited amount of collecting and button mashing leaves this title devoid of much that we would want to play. Hey, at least the One Piece characters are there, right?
Franchise nameOne Piece
UK franchise nameOne Piece
Platform"Wii"
US censor rating""
UK censor rating"12+"
Alternative names"One Piece: Unlimited Cruise Episode 1"
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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