The worst part is, for someone like me who has absolutely no familiarity whatsoever with the anime or story itself, I often find myself getting completely lost as to what is happening, and who is saying what. I lost track of motivations too many times, simply because speech itself was so hard to keep track of, and all because, barring maybe a few occasions of full featured cutscenes, this game’s storytelling is limited to text dumps, 16-bit RPG style.
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In many cases, that is endearing- for example, when a game is consciously trying to channel the classic 16-bit RPG era style. However, when a game is not attempting to do that, when it is trying to actually tell a story that’s pretty overwrought and dense, this isn’t the best way to do it. In fact, it comes off as positively cheap, as a misguided way to cut corners.
It didn’t. Well, not entirely. I guess the actual story told here was fun enough- from what I understand, it covers nearly 500 episodes of the anime- although it wasn’t told all that well, and if you were playing this game just to experience (or re-experience) the story, I’d advise you to pursue better avenues. One Piece Romance Dawn is shockingly low budget in that regard- all exposition is delivered via text and written dialog, all of it.
Just to be clear- I don’t watch One Piece. I actually don’t even have the slightest clue what the series is about. All I know is that it is a popular anime that’s been pretty long running. Unlike the times when I was asked to review a game based on, say, DragonBall Z, where even though I did not watch the anime, I knew at least the general lore and framework of the series, I am completely clueless on One Piece. This game was in fact be my first experience with the story. And considering how well the DragonBall Z: Legacy of Goku RPGs on the Gameboy Advance sold me on the DragonBall lore, I had some expectation that One Piece Romance Dawn would do the same.
The story, thus, was a disappointment for me, mostly because I couldn’t keep track of it thanks to the game’s excessively poor storytelling. Luckily, the actual gameplay here came through. One Piece Romance Dawn is a turn based RPG. It’s not the best RPG in the world- don’t expect that. It’s not the most complex. Don’t expect that either. It’s pretty straightforward and standard, with some mechanics thrown in for token ‘depth,’ but it plays well enough that it comes off as a decent RPG, although nowhere near the cream of the crop that the 3DS has to provide in this genre.
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