 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Hand Co. |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | Party | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Card | |
| Buy Now: |   |
I’m going to just come out and admit it – I know next to nothing about the One Piece universe. I do know in general the characters and their personalities, but I haven’t watched enough of the show to really know what it’s all about. Fortunately, since this is a party game that doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that I do have plenty of experience with “party” games dating back to the original Mario Party, and all told One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival is a fairly average one. While it has all of the essential features a party game needs, it never comes together as anything more than another standard entry in the genre.
For those of you that are One Piece fans, you’ll likely be pleased by how the franchise is integrated into this game. Playable characters include all seven Straw Hat Pirates: Luffy, Nami, Zolo, Usopp, Sanji, Robin, and Chopper. The main game takes place on a board of panels, with each panel represented by one of several characters from the series. Panels are divided into five different types: Home, Normal, Event, and Captain. Home panels simply act as bases for each player, and cannot be stolen. Normal panels trigger mini-games, with the winner taking the panel. Of the close to 30 mini-games, they’re all firmly entrenched in the Mario Party mold. The outcome here is simple – win the mini-game, and you win the panel, the crew member pictured becomes an ally, and most importantly you win the accompanying cash prize.
Event panels house several different characters, including Mihawk (destroys a rival’s panel), Trace (change ownership of an adjacent panel and give it to you), Lapin (a panel of your choice cannot be stolen for one or more turns), Vivi (take another turn), the Navy (lose 5,000,000 berries), Friends (gain 5,000,000 berries), and more. Since the selecting player automatically gains all Event panels and benefits from most of the effects on them they’re among the most desirable in the game, unless of course the Navy shows up.
Finally, Captain panels result in special Captain games. Captain games are basically 1-vs.-3 battles, with the player choosing the panel taking on the role of the Captain. Although the Captain must face off against the other three players, he is generally more powerful or has certain advantages to help even up the odds. Since Captain panels come in pairs, whoever wins not only takes the panel, but also the accompanying Captain panel located somewhere else on the board. As a result, Captain games can result in huge momentum swings, particularly when you factor in stealing panels from other opponents.
So how does stealing work? Basically, if you surround an opponent’s panel with panels of your own, you’ll then convert that panel or panels to your own and nab the reward that comes along with it. Opponent panels can be trapped in this manner diagonally, horizontally, and vertically, so there are several ways to go about maximizing the number of panels stolen. As long as all of the panels trapped belong to the same player, all panels will be stolen. Also, if you trap a Captain panel you gain the other captain panel in the pair as well.
There are a few other minor nuances I won’t go into great detail about here, but the above basically covers all of the different varieties in gameplay. There’s also a Vs. mode, which allows players to play the games available in the Board Game mode. Captain and Normal games must first be played in the regular Board Game mode before they can be played individually, but Straw Hat Pirates Member’s Games (also Captain-like games – one for each member of the Pirates) are available from the start.
The primary problem with One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival is that there’s just not enough variety in the mini-games. In fact, in the very first board game I played, I ended up playing the same mini-game three different times on a 25-panel board. I knew that couldn’t be a good sign, and indeed that pattern continued in subsequent games. So not only do the same mini-games show up far too often, but in general most of them play almost identically to each other. In reality, 30+ mini-games actually feel more like 10.
For example, games that require you to knock someone out of a slippery ring, punch weird monsters into a different quadrant than your own, knock opponents down while on stilts, etc. all still come down to the same basic gameplay mechanics with slightly different conditions and rule sets. Not every game is that way of course, but the majority of them are really similar to at least one or two others. While you could blame this in part on the need to keep mini-games simple and easy for anyone to play, other franchises (even Namco’s own Pac-Man Fever that also has roughly 30 mini-games) come to the party with more variety than this.
The other problem is that the game goes overboard with the amount of dialogue present in the game. After every mini-game and event, you’ll have to sit through one or more small load times and then the dialogue that occurs afterwards. Party games are supposed to be fast-moving affairs, but unfortunately the cumulative effect of these here is that it slows the game down considerably. Of course that may’ve been the development team’s intention given how short each game is already, but more likely it’s simply a misguided attempt to inject more of One Piece’s personality into the game. And yes, it does achieve that, but the flow-killing breaks in gameplay simply aren’t worth it.
Graphically the game takes the super-deformed characters over light-hearted and primitive cel-shaded environments route, so you’re not going to be amazed here. They do a decent job of maintaining the spirit of the show though (from what I’ve seen of it anyway), and the portraits accompanying dialogue help as well. The amount and quality of the voice acting is nice (aside from it interrupting the flow of the game too often), and the music is standard, vaguely pirate-related rollicking fare you’d expect in a party game about an unusual gang of pirates.
Bottom Line:
Although One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival doesn’t match the standards set by the Mario Party franchise, it may make a decent alternative for gamers burned out on Mario or fans of One Piece. Either way there are much better ways to spend a night in with friends.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 5.5 |
Posted: 2006-09-28 15:49:20 PST