Finishi Your Pirate’s Mission in One Piece Online

Every mode also makes use of collectible coins, which offer stat boosts to characters when properly equipped. Coins are gained by killing certain enemies, killing enemies without getting hit, capturing some territories, and opening rare treasure chests. Combining three related coins will cancel out the coins' normal stat boosts and create a team skill that may reduce flinching or increase attack strength when health is low, among other effects. Because the coins are based on characters or items from One Piece, it may be hard for a non-fan to discover team skills without fully understanding what three coins have in common. Even as a fan, I was frustrated to not be able to activate certain team skills due to a missing coin, as the coin distribution is near-random, with little chance to acquire a complete set without heavy grinding.

After finishing a mission, you'll return to Trans Town, a new island that serves as your home base. Your job here is to expand the town with buildings like factories, pharmacies, and music halls. Each one allows you to further tweak your characters, with items that heal or buff them, making these side activities worth your time instead of wasting it with meaningless fluff. Since expansion requires materials found during missions or won in minigames, you're encouraged to do more than just punch through a few stages. It's fun and rewarding to actually play those minigames--especially Card Rush, which is a great trivia test for fans of the manga.
One Piece Online
We’ve talked a lot about the gameplay and still haven’t discussed the best part of the overall package, which is the way the story is integrated. Though I’ve read enough user reviews to realize that One Piece Online is giving you a version of the One Piece saga — and that would almost have to be the case, given that the manga is at 76 volumes and counting — it’s still a fantastic ride, introducing you to a ton of characters who all get a bit of time to shine. Some stages have comic-style scenes leading both in and out of them, and the end of each chapter is always interesting. Plus, if you’ve seen this before, you can simply skip it. I’d say something about the music too, but again, my knowledge of the source material is basically nil. It adds to the overall experience whether it came right from the anime cooked it up just for the game.

The coin system still exists to buff stats in the same tiresome, generic way. Slotting in new and more powerful coins as they're collected feels required, otherwise a character's power suffers. There's nothing fun about it and there's no thought required in doing it, just manual labor. However, unlocking skills requires collecting unique coins, and, given the amount of coins collected in the average level, it would take playthroughs of all the difficulties, and ceaseless grinding after that, to unlock even a quarter of the skills. They've completely revamped the useless team attacks from the first game. Now your chosen teammate levels up with you, gains their own skins, and adds extra time and damage to your super meter. There is also a mechanical component to bringing them out, you need to inflict a certain amount of damage while in super mode, but saying it requires any sort of skill would be an overstatement. Generally, pointing any attack at any group of enemies larger than ten will provide enough charge to summon your teammate.