One Piece tower defense aspires me. That may seem like an odd thing to say. This is a licensed game base on an anime, after all. We’re practically scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel. But it comes to us from Joygame, and they have a good track record with anime games, especially titles based on Shonen Jump hits. It clearly has some money behind it too, but sadly its impressive budget doesn’t seem to have been spent on gameplay.
The game also features two modes. Story mode encompasses most of what I mentioned above while other mode is Coliseum. In this mode, players can unlock rival characters to fight alongside the Strawhats in several modes of combat that include two characters taking on a horde, one on one duels, and boss rushes. Players can also unlock missions and items that can be used in Story Mode. All in all, the game has a huge amount of content to unlock.
On the bright side, you do have a wide variety of characters at your disposal, including every member of the Straw Hat Crew and several of their most famous enemies and allies from throughout the series. Each character has their own unique fighting style, from the fast, elastic antics of series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, to the methodical swordsmanship of Roronoa Zoro, to the bizarre hand-based magic of Nico Robin.
Luffy can also explore each area with two companions in tow, control of which can be taken by a quick tap of the select button; the AI controls these teammates and does an admiral job of assisting in battle, to the point where many times the computer characters can be relied upon to fend for themselves. Once a gauge labelled SP is filled, teams can perform collaborative attacks that deal huge damage to every enemy present, and doing so can often turn the tide of battle.
During the quest you will obtain various materials and cash, and this can all be spent on upgrading the facilities in Trans Town, including Shops, Restaurants, a Pharmacy and even a Museum. It’s still a nice distraction from the “main” portion of the adventure and will see you repeatedly searching out for the materials you need to develop. It also opens up additional quests for you to complete, which will give you many hours of missions to complete in addition to the main campaign (which is unfortunately very short, I completed the story in around five hours).
Presentation-wise One Piece Online stays faithful to the anime show. Developer did a good job re-creating the characters in good detail, as well as making a game world that looks like it was ripped right out of the source material. Furthermore, action is smooth, and not once did the game's frame rate seem to suffer even when there was a lot going on on-screen. Series newbies might have some trouble making sense of it all, but franchise fans shouldn't have a problem picking this game up.