Japanese publishers have a nasty habit of not releasing their games in Europe, or giving their titles limited releases (I’m finally enjoying Earthbound, twenty years late). When I saw that One Piece: Unlimited World Red, an action-RPG based on the titular wacky animé series was going to be readily available, I snapped it up.

The animé follows Luffy, an honorable pirate with rubber flesh, and his goofy crew of nautical misfits. As something of a fan of the source material, I was envisioning an epic, open-world adventure, like Black Flag crossed with Ni no Kuni. I was very wrong.

The adventure begins with Luffy and co arriving in ‘Trans Town’, a colourful little seaside settlement that serves as the mission hub, in which the player is dumped after each mission. It isn’t long before Luffy’s crew is mysteriously abducted and he has to rescue them.

To do so, he has to battle his way through a number of levels, each concluding in a boss fight with one of the animé’s cavalcade of malicious enemies.

Despite it’s ridiculous title, Unlimited World Red feels very limited indeed. It’s a game more focused on combat than anything else, with no element of exploration whatsoever. Each level is a selection of indistinct environments, completely uninteresting and divisible only in colour.

It feels like a game that has had no effort spent upon it. During the levels, enemies simply pop out of thin air without context, and progress is often halted by doors that need a special word to pass. Said word can be found simply by beating more enemies on the level. Literally, all the game has to offer of any interest is the combat.

Fortunately, the combat is fun and interesting to watch. There’s an obvious effort to make encounters look like the animé, with characters using familiar spectacular moves, and it is satisfying to fling someone around with Luffy’s rubbery arms.

Unlimited World Red features easy hack ‘n’ slash combat, including a lighter attack and a heavier attack with longer range. You can also control many different characters with different abilities, but the difficulty never really fluctuates. There are a few special moves thrown in for good measure, including a solo power move and a move that can only be pulled off with two other characters, dealing devastating damage to Luffy’s enemies.

Unfortunately, as the levels are tackled in parties of three, whilst you’re trying to deal with the enemies using vivid attacks, two A.I.s are doing the same, meaning that the screen is always far too busy.

Despite the fantastical story-lines of the animé, Unlimited World Red’s story is weak and makes no effort to reach out to any possible newcomers to the series. I imagine it would be completely bewildering to somebody who has never watched One Piece before, with over ten characters introduced in the space of a minute without any background or context. I certainly can’t imagine it drawing anybody in enough to watch the animé.

The only way Unlimited World Red truly impresses is through its presentation. It is a beautiful game, with eye-pleasing cell-shaded graphics. It’s just a shame that more effort wasn’t made to craft more exciting environments.

I implied earlier that the game’s developers had been lazy, arbitrarily constructing half-arsed levels and filling them full of context-free enemies, complete with one generic boss battle. However, the game is filled with unnecessary side-tasks that add nothing and only serve to distract from the poor narrative.

You can go fishing, you can catch bugs with a net, and you can collect bits and bobs which can be used to expand ‘Trans Town’. Expanding the hub is somewhat helpful, as initially it has no shops, but after constructing two or three, you’ll be set for the rest of the game, and you won’t have nearly finished building up Trans Town.

Unlimited World Red also has many side-quests, but these are where the game is at its absolute laziest. They involve revisiting one of the game’s many forgettable levels and completing an arbitrary objective (arbitrary seems to be the word of the day), usually involving collecting a certain number of materials or catching a certain type of bug.

With such vibrant and interesting source material, I might have thought that it would have taken considerable effort to make such a boring One Piece game, but then I can’t imagine that the developer spent considerable effort on any part of the game.

The only identifier that indicates that the game is tied to the animé is the characters, but strip those away and you’re left with an uninspired third-person action game with tacked on RPG elements. In conclusion, One Piece: Unlimited World Red is so boring that it’s almost not worth talking about, but thanks for reading anyway.

3/10

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