One Piece: Kaizoku Musou review (part 2)
Aug. 31st, 2012 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopSo as I mentioned in part one, a big part of the appeal of this game is the wonderful individuality to how all the different characters play. To illustrate exactly how and why, I present you with my impressions on all thirteen.
Luffy
As the hero and the guy you’ll be playing through 90% of the story mode, Luffy comes pimped out with twice as many features as anyone else. His R1 command can be set to use any of several different attacks, including his cannonball-repelling Gomu Gomu no Fuusen, and he gets four special more gauges as compared to everyone else’s measly two. Emptying just one will get you a Gomu Gomu no Shotgun, two gives you a spinning fuusen attack, but most of the fun comes from three and four which give you Gear Second and Gear Third respectively. Activating Gear Second will get you a massive speed and power boost for a few seconds, and when the timer runs out Luffy will finish it off by gatling-gunning down everything in sight. Gear Third has him inflate an arm and then a leg to attack for massive damage, after which, yep, the player will indeed be stuck controlling a mini-Luffy who can only run away for several seconds before he pops back to normal. Strong, fast and versatile, he delivers pretty much everything you’d hope for.
Zoro
The first time the game lets you try out Zoro after fighting as Luffy is a glorious moment. While Luffy’s standard punch moves mostly just hit whoever’s standing in front of him, Zoro’s will clean up everyone standing on either side as well, and there’s a whole different sense of force and impact in the way his moves connect (Brook’s a little similar actually – it’s a swordsman thing). He also has some great spinning slash moves, his ‘[X] pound canon’ for long-distance hits, and a very showy mid-air strike that will slice anyone up there to ribbons. His one-gauge special move is his ‘Sanzensekai’ ougi, and his two-gauge has him sprout extra arms and heads for that weird Ashura thing. This latter is just a single-hit type move, not one of the ones that gives you a temporary power up before returning the character to normal, which is probably for the best – the animators really don’t need to deal with that sort of bullshit.
Sanji
Sanji basically handles a lot like Luffy. He doesn’t have the forward range of Luffy’s rubber limbs, but since he also doesn’t have to wait for his arms and legs to snap back on the end of an attack, he moves even faster. Two gauges of super-move power will put him in Diablo Jambe mode and give you the short-term power up of having one foot on fire for a little while, culminating with him hitting anyone who’s still up with a big finisher. His R1 command is an interesting one – can’t quite figure out what move it’s supposed to be, but the effect is to have leap around like a ricocheting bullet between the heads of anyone unlucky enough to be in range, and so gets more impressive the more opponents you’ve got. He doesn’t have nearly so much to make him stand out as much of the rest of the cast, but on the scale of a game like Kaizoku Musou that’s not much of a complaint.
The one truly irritating thing about playing as Sanji is that I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve failed one of his levels because Nami or Robin died before I could reach them to help. I sincerely doubt it’s coincidental that it’s the two girls who need to be protected in Sanji’s world more than anyone else’s. I suppose it makes arguable sense, but mostly it just gets old fast. No-one else’s final stage took me half so many tries to finish as Sanji’s did.
Nami
Nami, to my great joy as a diehard fangirl, soon turned out to be easily one of my favourite characters in this game. While the Monster Trio obviously hit a lot harder than she does, combat quickly falls into the grove of punch-punch-punch/slash-slash-slash/kick-kick-kick without much nearly so much variation as you get with Nami, whose moves are a glorious mix of regular staff blows, tornados and lightning bolts. The way her clima tact creates storm clouds is her main distinguishing gimmick: hit your opponents a few times with one of your standard combos, and they’ll develop a small storm cloud hovering over their heads. R1 is Nami’s Thunder Charge command – hit it and every storm cloud in the vicinity will discharge a lightning bolt at once. If you’re too close, she’ll shriek and duck for cover (think her entrance into Enies Lobby), but with a little more distance she’ll whoop and punch the air. What this all means is that rather than just mashing ‘attack’ until everything falls down, you’ve get real incentive to keep half an eye on the state of the battlefield and how many storm clouds you’ve got building, ready to dodge out of the action and trigger them when you find a good moment. It suits both the established mechanics of the Clima Tact and Nami’s character beautifully. It’s always particularly satisfying to hit a major boss with this one. X3
Meanwhile, Nami’s R2 attack launches a tornado that will pick up just about everything in front of her (short of bosses) for quite respectable damage. Since it has a short wind-up time and leaves her vulnerable from behind it’s not much of a melee move, but it’s a great way to announce yourself when entering a new area or greet a column of enemies trying to barge in on your territory. (I miss this one badly when playing as anyone else.) Her single-gauge super move is her one real flaw – it’s the version of ‘cyclone tempo’ we first saw in Alabasta, has such a narrow field it hits only one or two opponents at best, and takes so long to wind up that most bosses will be gone before it connects. Later on this gets replaced with an impact-dial move, which is a little faster, but none of this really matters once you unlock her two-gauge move, which is a Thunder Lance so powerful that I’ve taken down Pacifistas with little more than a single hit.
I really like playing as Nami.
Usopp
Usopp, on the other hand, ranks pretty far down the list. As you’d expect, he doesn’t hit very hard but he has the longest ranged attack of anyone on the cast, but when the battle system lacks any way to let you lock on and target the enemy, trying to make use of your long range advantage mostly means missing two hits out of three. His other main attack involves whipping out his 10 tonne hammer, which does about as much damage as it does in canon – though this does also lead into some niftier moves which have Usopp release shuriken all over the field or launch his favourite Tabasco sauce attack (which actually makes everyone it hits spew fire before keeling over *g*). You can also make him throw down some oil with R2 and set it explosively alight by hitting square, though the timing is a little fiddly. His single-gauge super move hits a nice, large target area, but doesn’t do much against bosses.
The best part of playing as Usopp is his two gauge super move, which delivers him a temporary power-up by transforming the mild-mannered Usopp into Sogeking. Whether this actually does much for most of your regular attacks is a little hard to say, but hitting R2 in Sogeking mode releases not a small patch of oil but a flavour dial full of gas, which you can then ignite for a massive explosion. Usopp also has the honour of being the one character who will actually get a whole different victory cutscene if you happen to win a level while still in Sokeking mode. Finishing as Gear 2 Luffy, by contrast, has no such effect.
Sat what you like about Usopp, you can’t deny they’ve been awfully faithful to the character.
Chopper
Chopper, poor little guy, may be Kaizoku Musou’s one real misstep. Yes, Chopper’s the cute one, but leaving him in his cute form through the battle mode was a mistake. It goes without saying that many of his moves involve him switching temporarily up into heavy point, but it doesn’t last and his default form remains neither very strong nor very fast nor very interesting to play. The most memorable thing about Chopper (you may be seeing something of a theme here) is his two gauge super move, which prompts him to let out a bloodcurdling howl and transform into his monster form, in which shape he deals enough damage to bring down multiple Pacifistas or other major bosses in one run. As soon as the gauge runs out however, it’s back to being chibi. You’d think they could’ve done so much more with Chopper by letting you cycle through his various forms, either by hitting one of the R buttons or by pulling off different combos, or by implementing his three minute time limit as part of the gameplay, but it’s all been wasted here.
Robin
As you’d expect, Robin’s an unusual one. Most of her moves involve making arms sprout up out of the ground in various patterns to damage anyone they hit, but she doesn’t have nearly as much range as you’d hope for and most of her moves don’t have the push-back effect against your enemies that everyone else’s do, which leaves most of the stronger enemies free to go on attacking you even as you’re hitting them. A lot of her moves take a while to finish, which is a regular frustration when you realise in the middle of one that she’s not quite facing in the right direction and have to wait before you can correct it. Her R2 attack has her immobilise an enemy with multiple arms, but since it only sporadically works on bosses, is tricky to aim at the best of times and only gets one target, it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. It seems a crying shame they couldn’t have given her a few moves that would make arms sprout directly on enemies’ bodies or which would trip them up mid attack run or the like, as she often does in canon.
All that said, she’s interesting to play even if only for variety, and she does have some very nice attacks which send your enemies flying or bring gigantic arms slamming down on their heads. Her two gauge super move is… er, you remember that thing she did to Franky after Enies Lobby when he was playing all hard-to-get about joining the crew? Yeah. That. It’s one of those moves that only hits a single opponent so it can be pretty hard to aim, but it’s well and truly worth the satisfaction of landing it on one of the more annoying bosses. >D Hey, maybe that’s why they didn’t include any of the female villains in this game.
Franky
The loving detail the animators have put into Franky’s hip-thrusts in his victory cut scene is truly mesmerising. He has a big blue star decorating the front of his swim trunks in this game. We dare you to try and look away.
Kaizoku’s Musou’s Franky is truly wonderful. He’s on the slow side and some of his ‘weapons left’ gun attacks have the usual long-range aiming problem, but he makes up for all of it with style. His main gimmick is a cola gauge that gradually depletes as you use his various attacks and has to be refilled by hitting R2 when he runs out. You don’t run out of backup cola, but since refilling leaves you vulnerable for a couple of seconds and will be cancelled if you’re hit in the middle of it, it’s a good idea to get yourself clear of battle first. You can still fight with your gauge empty – presumably you do less damage, but the more obvious effect is that Franky will lean forward and pant for a few seconds after every attack rather than striking a pose the way he usually does. Franky strikes a lot of poses to let you know he’s not running on empty. It’s pretty awesome. He also poses and does some more hip thrusts when you’re holding down circle for the few seconds it takes to get his two gauge super move instead of just the single. Since you’ll generally want to be pretty close to your target before releasing that move, the resulting effect has already traumatised a couple of unsuspecting people who were watching me play.
Franky’s main attack is his ‘strong right’, which shoots his right hand off on a chain and can be swung around in combos for pretty nice area damage or latch onto an enemy’s chest before electrocuting them. By far my favourite move of his, however, is his ‘Coup de boo’, which I am sure you will all remember from Enies Lobby as the move he used to escape while chained up by making his butt inflate. In combat, this fires him forward into the enemy, after which he will celebrate by doing his own personal rendition of the famous 'boobs and butt' pose.
Words cannot express my glee when I finally unlocked and mastered this one.
Brook
The most important thing you need to know about Kaizoku Musou’s Brook is that he runs like this:
Quite some time elapsed before we got around to doing any actual fighting on our first run with him.
While we weren’t expecting a whole lot from Brook, he turned out to be quite fun to play as in a similar way to Zoro (sword styles clearly translate well to musou combat), though as a fencer obviously uses a completely different sword style. There’s something quite elegant to the way he moves and his habit of sheathing his sword again neatly on the end of attack sequences. He also has some musical moves, which send nearby enemies to sleep or give him a temporary power-up. If he’s hardly a contender for favourite playable character, he still delivers more or less exactly what you’d want from him.
Hancock
Me and Hancock seem doomed to never quite get on. In anime/manga canon, the idea that she can strike a pose and turn a whole platoon of sexually frustrated soldiers into stone makes me twitch and seethe; in this game, the fact the R2 version of the same attack takes out only the two or three closest to you is among my greatest disappointments. Is it so much to ask for a little bleeding consistency? :(
Petty complaints aside, she’s not bad to play – if not the utter game-breaker I might have hoped for, she’s still reasonably fast and there’s plenty of amusement value in a move set that includes such silliness as her stomping some guy in the face as he radiates tiny lovehearts. Her snake follows her around the battlefield and is involved in some of her attacks, which looks a little odd – you do get the impression that she a long way down the developers’ priority list and that they had to invent most of her moves from scratch at short notice when canon gave them so little to work with – but overall it’s not too glaring.
Her single gauge super move is her ‘slave arrow’ thing, which does have the splatter radius I wanted from R2, and while it doesn’t do much damage on its own, it will turn everyone it hits to stone, including bosses. All such attacks leave them stone for a short period before they revert back, for the record, but since they can be hit and damaged while frozen this is hugely useful. I got Akainu a couple of times. You better believe I enjoyed that.
Jinbe
Jinbe is probably the character I’ve played the least. The trouble with Jinbe is that he’s in the strong-but-slow category, and when you’re the heavyweight standing between Whitebeard and Franky in a game where even the best of the heavyweights will never be the most interesting to play, you’ve got no hope. Them’s the breaks.
Like Hancock, and to a lesser degree like Whitebeard, Jinbe gives me the impression he was a long way down anyone’s priority list. He’s well worth a run or two, if only for the amusement of summoning whalesharks and huge waves of water from nowhere – which would be pretty funny even if his first stage wasn’t Impel Down and directly over the firepit at that. Beyond that though, there are just so many other characters I could be playing instead.
Whitebeard
Man, is this guy slow. Unfortunately, this is more or less the defining impression you’ll get from Whitebeard. Obviously he also hits awfully hard, but if the notes on Hancock weren’t enough of a clue, someone has clearly gone in with a mad determination to keep this game reasonably balanced, so poor old Edward Newgate had to lose out on something and speed was it. This is something of a disappointment to me because quite frankly, if I’m playing as Whitebeard I want to be tearing through those enemy schlubs like effing Godzilla. I do not care if he’s only on level one.
That said, when you do manage to get one of his attacks in without being interrupted halfway it’s generally well worth the trouble. R1 releases one of his trademark shockwaves to send everything in front of you flying. R2 is Haoshoku Haki, which will knock everyone around you straight down into the deck. How this one works is a little interesting – there seems to be a limit on how much damage you can do any particular soldier with Haoshoku alone (use it twice on the same guy and you’ll knock him down again but he won’t lose any extra hitpoints), but how much damage that is varies stage to stage. It looks like it’s probably dependent on the level of the guys your fighting relative to your own, which canon would seem to suggest is pretty close to how it’s supposed to work officially. Points for that. The rest of Whitebeard’s arsenal has similarly devastating effect. Far from a favourite, but definitely good for some variety.
Ace
Anyone wanna guess my other favourite character from this game? ;)
The detail the developers have put into Ace’s move set is amazing. Whereas the other non-Straw Hats feel a bit like also-rans and even the move sets of some of the mains are padded with what turns out to be a couple of different ways of doing the same thing, Ace suffers no such neglect. The One Piece wiki page for the Mera Mera no Mi lists more than a dozen named moves Ace has used over the handful of times we’ve seen him in action, and they are all in this game. Hiken? That’s his one-gauge super move. Higan (flame gun)? △□, then mash □ for extra shots. □△△ will give you Shinka Shiranui. △△□ will give you Enjoumon (flaming net). □□□△ gives you Jujikan (crossfire). A couple of unnamed moves will have Ace sprout firey wings – that do make me awfully suspicious that someone got halfway through animating Marco before he was cut from the cast, but what the hell, it looks awesome. And as you might have guessed, his two-gauge super move will have Ace power himself up for a short period by surrounding himself in flame before releasing the full might of a Dai Enkai: Entei, otherwise known as That One That Covered Half An Island In Flame That Time He Fought Blackbeard. (With game mechanics on Ace’s side, Blackbeard is never so lucky when I run into him.)
The main individual gimmick to Ace is that on the penultimate move of several of his combos, he’ll develop a flaming aura which focuses down to a point over a second or two, and if you hold off hitting the last button until just as he finishes this little power-up sequence, he’ll hit for way more damage. The variant on his Shinka Shiranui move that uses this, for example, will hit an area about three times larger than usual. In practice, most of these moves take so long that by then you’ve either been hit or flown so far over your enemies’ heads that your attack misses them, but the effect is so shiny I will happily use them anyway. (Oh shush. What do you think I’m playing this game for anyway?) Ace can be hit more or less as easily as everyone else, but considering that the same minor inaccuracy makes it possible to beat the likes of Crocodile, Kizaru, Aokiji and Akainu, I am hardly going to complain. What I’m basically getting at here is that playing as Ace delivers on basically every part of fighting as a crazily over-powered Logia that you could ever ask for.
And on a final note:
Tag-team fun
The more I use the partner-mechanic, the more I like it. You link up with a partner by hitting L2 when one of your teammates is nearby. Some of the time, you’ll be rewarded by a couple of lines of dialogue between the new partners, and for this alone I have now spent an embarrassing amount of playtime partnering and de-partnering various people repeatedly just to get them to say something. Zoro and Sanji snark at each other in predictable fashion (something like, “Hey Marimo, think you can keep up?” “That’s my line, kuso-cook.” IIRC) Usopp demands his new ‘subordinate’ obeys his instructions if it's Luffy (fortunately Luffy doesn't give a toss) but will tend to beg the others for help rather more desperately. Hancock will refer to most unfamiliar men simply as ‘Otoko’ (man) and reel off instructions (Usopp gives a nervous affirmative, Zoro is all like, “Huh? Me?”, Sanji has nothing but boundless enthusiasm), though Ace gets a little more interest as ‘Luffy’s brother’, and responds by thanking her for looking out for his troublesome little brother (awwww).
Once partnered, they’ll follow you around, and any time you land a particular combo thereafter you can switch out with them for as long as it takes them to land a combo of their own. With some of the more awkward characters like Chopper, Usopp or Jinbe, this quickly became my main strategy. If Sanji’s being summoned to help any of the girls, he’ll show up with hearts in his eyes (XDXDXD). Zoro’s easily one of the most useful characters to partner with, since his summoning combo is easy to land and he does very nice damage. Ironically, even though Sanji wouldn’t usually need the help, I finally made it through his final stage without either of the girls biting it largely thanks to partnering him with Zoro. Hey, I’m just saying – they make a great team. *g*
When you call your partner in to attack you’ll also get another word or two from them, which quickly became my other excuse for trying out unlikely combinations. And when I say ‘unlikely combinations’, what I mean is ‘Hancock and everyone else’. Luffy’s the only one she calls in by name; he responds by reminding her he’s not marrying her (more XD). Most of the others just get called ‘otoko’, except the other girls (can’t quite make out what she says to Nami, damn) and Chopper, who’s “soko no seibutsu” (“You there, creature.”) when you first partner up with him. He responds by insisting he’s a pirate. When she actually does summon him to attack though, she’s back to calling him ‘otoko’ and Chopper sounds pretty happy with that – and okay, so it’s probably just a thing where the programmers didn’t bother including any extra lines, but it still makes me go awwwww. (Never did like the idea of Hancock joining the Straw Hats in the series, but put them all in a game and suddenly I am all over that. Novelty value will go a long way.)
So that’s Kaizoku Musou in a gigantic, mutant nutshell. Best value we have ever had out of our PS3, bar none.
Luffy
As the hero and the guy you’ll be playing through 90% of the story mode, Luffy comes pimped out with twice as many features as anyone else. His R1 command can be set to use any of several different attacks, including his cannonball-repelling Gomu Gomu no Fuusen, and he gets four special more gauges as compared to everyone else’s measly two. Emptying just one will get you a Gomu Gomu no Shotgun, two gives you a spinning fuusen attack, but most of the fun comes from three and four which give you Gear Second and Gear Third respectively. Activating Gear Second will get you a massive speed and power boost for a few seconds, and when the timer runs out Luffy will finish it off by gatling-gunning down everything in sight. Gear Third has him inflate an arm and then a leg to attack for massive damage, after which, yep, the player will indeed be stuck controlling a mini-Luffy who can only run away for several seconds before he pops back to normal. Strong, fast and versatile, he delivers pretty much everything you’d hope for.
Zoro
The first time the game lets you try out Zoro after fighting as Luffy is a glorious moment. While Luffy’s standard punch moves mostly just hit whoever’s standing in front of him, Zoro’s will clean up everyone standing on either side as well, and there’s a whole different sense of force and impact in the way his moves connect (Brook’s a little similar actually – it’s a swordsman thing). He also has some great spinning slash moves, his ‘[X] pound canon’ for long-distance hits, and a very showy mid-air strike that will slice anyone up there to ribbons. His one-gauge special move is his ‘Sanzensekai’ ougi, and his two-gauge has him sprout extra arms and heads for that weird Ashura thing. This latter is just a single-hit type move, not one of the ones that gives you a temporary power up before returning the character to normal, which is probably for the best – the animators really don’t need to deal with that sort of bullshit.
Sanji
Sanji basically handles a lot like Luffy. He doesn’t have the forward range of Luffy’s rubber limbs, but since he also doesn’t have to wait for his arms and legs to snap back on the end of an attack, he moves even faster. Two gauges of super-move power will put him in Diablo Jambe mode and give you the short-term power up of having one foot on fire for a little while, culminating with him hitting anyone who’s still up with a big finisher. His R1 command is an interesting one – can’t quite figure out what move it’s supposed to be, but the effect is to have leap around like a ricocheting bullet between the heads of anyone unlucky enough to be in range, and so gets more impressive the more opponents you’ve got. He doesn’t have nearly so much to make him stand out as much of the rest of the cast, but on the scale of a game like Kaizoku Musou that’s not much of a complaint.
The one truly irritating thing about playing as Sanji is that I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve failed one of his levels because Nami or Robin died before I could reach them to help. I sincerely doubt it’s coincidental that it’s the two girls who need to be protected in Sanji’s world more than anyone else’s. I suppose it makes arguable sense, but mostly it just gets old fast. No-one else’s final stage took me half so many tries to finish as Sanji’s did.
Nami
Nami, to my great joy as a diehard fangirl, soon turned out to be easily one of my favourite characters in this game. While the Monster Trio obviously hit a lot harder than she does, combat quickly falls into the grove of punch-punch-punch/slash-slash-slash/kick-kick-kick without much nearly so much variation as you get with Nami, whose moves are a glorious mix of regular staff blows, tornados and lightning bolts. The way her clima tact creates storm clouds is her main distinguishing gimmick: hit your opponents a few times with one of your standard combos, and they’ll develop a small storm cloud hovering over their heads. R1 is Nami’s Thunder Charge command – hit it and every storm cloud in the vicinity will discharge a lightning bolt at once. If you’re too close, she’ll shriek and duck for cover (think her entrance into Enies Lobby), but with a little more distance she’ll whoop and punch the air. What this all means is that rather than just mashing ‘attack’ until everything falls down, you’ve get real incentive to keep half an eye on the state of the battlefield and how many storm clouds you’ve got building, ready to dodge out of the action and trigger them when you find a good moment. It suits both the established mechanics of the Clima Tact and Nami’s character beautifully. It’s always particularly satisfying to hit a major boss with this one. X3
Meanwhile, Nami’s R2 attack launches a tornado that will pick up just about everything in front of her (short of bosses) for quite respectable damage. Since it has a short wind-up time and leaves her vulnerable from behind it’s not much of a melee move, but it’s a great way to announce yourself when entering a new area or greet a column of enemies trying to barge in on your territory. (I miss this one badly when playing as anyone else.) Her single-gauge super move is her one real flaw – it’s the version of ‘cyclone tempo’ we first saw in Alabasta, has such a narrow field it hits only one or two opponents at best, and takes so long to wind up that most bosses will be gone before it connects. Later on this gets replaced with an impact-dial move, which is a little faster, but none of this really matters once you unlock her two-gauge move, which is a Thunder Lance so powerful that I’ve taken down Pacifistas with little more than a single hit.
I really like playing as Nami.
Usopp
Usopp, on the other hand, ranks pretty far down the list. As you’d expect, he doesn’t hit very hard but he has the longest ranged attack of anyone on the cast, but when the battle system lacks any way to let you lock on and target the enemy, trying to make use of your long range advantage mostly means missing two hits out of three. His other main attack involves whipping out his 10 tonne hammer, which does about as much damage as it does in canon – though this does also lead into some niftier moves which have Usopp release shuriken all over the field or launch his favourite Tabasco sauce attack (which actually makes everyone it hits spew fire before keeling over *g*). You can also make him throw down some oil with R2 and set it explosively alight by hitting square, though the timing is a little fiddly. His single-gauge super move hits a nice, large target area, but doesn’t do much against bosses.
The best part of playing as Usopp is his two gauge super move, which delivers him a temporary power-up by transforming the mild-mannered Usopp into Sogeking. Whether this actually does much for most of your regular attacks is a little hard to say, but hitting R2 in Sogeking mode releases not a small patch of oil but a flavour dial full of gas, which you can then ignite for a massive explosion. Usopp also has the honour of being the one character who will actually get a whole different victory cutscene if you happen to win a level while still in Sokeking mode. Finishing as Gear 2 Luffy, by contrast, has no such effect.
Sat what you like about Usopp, you can’t deny they’ve been awfully faithful to the character.
Chopper
Chopper, poor little guy, may be Kaizoku Musou’s one real misstep. Yes, Chopper’s the cute one, but leaving him in his cute form through the battle mode was a mistake. It goes without saying that many of his moves involve him switching temporarily up into heavy point, but it doesn’t last and his default form remains neither very strong nor very fast nor very interesting to play. The most memorable thing about Chopper (you may be seeing something of a theme here) is his two gauge super move, which prompts him to let out a bloodcurdling howl and transform into his monster form, in which shape he deals enough damage to bring down multiple Pacifistas or other major bosses in one run. As soon as the gauge runs out however, it’s back to being chibi. You’d think they could’ve done so much more with Chopper by letting you cycle through his various forms, either by hitting one of the R buttons or by pulling off different combos, or by implementing his three minute time limit as part of the gameplay, but it’s all been wasted here.
Robin
As you’d expect, Robin’s an unusual one. Most of her moves involve making arms sprout up out of the ground in various patterns to damage anyone they hit, but she doesn’t have nearly as much range as you’d hope for and most of her moves don’t have the push-back effect against your enemies that everyone else’s do, which leaves most of the stronger enemies free to go on attacking you even as you’re hitting them. A lot of her moves take a while to finish, which is a regular frustration when you realise in the middle of one that she’s not quite facing in the right direction and have to wait before you can correct it. Her R2 attack has her immobilise an enemy with multiple arms, but since it only sporadically works on bosses, is tricky to aim at the best of times and only gets one target, it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. It seems a crying shame they couldn’t have given her a few moves that would make arms sprout directly on enemies’ bodies or which would trip them up mid attack run or the like, as she often does in canon.
All that said, she’s interesting to play even if only for variety, and she does have some very nice attacks which send your enemies flying or bring gigantic arms slamming down on their heads. Her two gauge super move is… er, you remember that thing she did to Franky after Enies Lobby when he was playing all hard-to-get about joining the crew? Yeah. That. It’s one of those moves that only hits a single opponent so it can be pretty hard to aim, but it’s well and truly worth the satisfaction of landing it on one of the more annoying bosses. >D Hey, maybe that’s why they didn’t include any of the female villains in this game.
Franky
The loving detail the animators have put into Franky’s hip-thrusts in his victory cut scene is truly mesmerising. He has a big blue star decorating the front of his swim trunks in this game. We dare you to try and look away.
Kaizoku’s Musou’s Franky is truly wonderful. He’s on the slow side and some of his ‘weapons left’ gun attacks have the usual long-range aiming problem, but he makes up for all of it with style. His main gimmick is a cola gauge that gradually depletes as you use his various attacks and has to be refilled by hitting R2 when he runs out. You don’t run out of backup cola, but since refilling leaves you vulnerable for a couple of seconds and will be cancelled if you’re hit in the middle of it, it’s a good idea to get yourself clear of battle first. You can still fight with your gauge empty – presumably you do less damage, but the more obvious effect is that Franky will lean forward and pant for a few seconds after every attack rather than striking a pose the way he usually does. Franky strikes a lot of poses to let you know he’s not running on empty. It’s pretty awesome. He also poses and does some more hip thrusts when you’re holding down circle for the few seconds it takes to get his two gauge super move instead of just the single. Since you’ll generally want to be pretty close to your target before releasing that move, the resulting effect has already traumatised a couple of unsuspecting people who were watching me play.
Franky’s main attack is his ‘strong right’, which shoots his right hand off on a chain and can be swung around in combos for pretty nice area damage or latch onto an enemy’s chest before electrocuting them. By far my favourite move of his, however, is his ‘Coup de boo’, which I am sure you will all remember from Enies Lobby as the move he used to escape while chained up by making his butt inflate. In combat, this fires him forward into the enemy, after which he will celebrate by doing his own personal rendition of the famous 'boobs and butt' pose.
Words cannot express my glee when I finally unlocked and mastered this one.
Brook
The most important thing you need to know about Kaizoku Musou’s Brook is that he runs like this:
Quite some time elapsed before we got around to doing any actual fighting on our first run with him.
While we weren’t expecting a whole lot from Brook, he turned out to be quite fun to play as in a similar way to Zoro (sword styles clearly translate well to musou combat), though as a fencer obviously uses a completely different sword style. There’s something quite elegant to the way he moves and his habit of sheathing his sword again neatly on the end of attack sequences. He also has some musical moves, which send nearby enemies to sleep or give him a temporary power-up. If he’s hardly a contender for favourite playable character, he still delivers more or less exactly what you’d want from him.
Hancock
Me and Hancock seem doomed to never quite get on. In anime/manga canon, the idea that she can strike a pose and turn a whole platoon of sexually frustrated soldiers into stone makes me twitch and seethe; in this game, the fact the R2 version of the same attack takes out only the two or three closest to you is among my greatest disappointments. Is it so much to ask for a little bleeding consistency? :(
Petty complaints aside, she’s not bad to play – if not the utter game-breaker I might have hoped for, she’s still reasonably fast and there’s plenty of amusement value in a move set that includes such silliness as her stomping some guy in the face as he radiates tiny lovehearts. Her snake follows her around the battlefield and is involved in some of her attacks, which looks a little odd – you do get the impression that she a long way down the developers’ priority list and that they had to invent most of her moves from scratch at short notice when canon gave them so little to work with – but overall it’s not too glaring.
Her single gauge super move is her ‘slave arrow’ thing, which does have the splatter radius I wanted from R2, and while it doesn’t do much damage on its own, it will turn everyone it hits to stone, including bosses. All such attacks leave them stone for a short period before they revert back, for the record, but since they can be hit and damaged while frozen this is hugely useful. I got Akainu a couple of times. You better believe I enjoyed that.
Jinbe
Jinbe is probably the character I’ve played the least. The trouble with Jinbe is that he’s in the strong-but-slow category, and when you’re the heavyweight standing between Whitebeard and Franky in a game where even the best of the heavyweights will never be the most interesting to play, you’ve got no hope. Them’s the breaks.
Like Hancock, and to a lesser degree like Whitebeard, Jinbe gives me the impression he was a long way down anyone’s priority list. He’s well worth a run or two, if only for the amusement of summoning whalesharks and huge waves of water from nowhere – which would be pretty funny even if his first stage wasn’t Impel Down and directly over the firepit at that. Beyond that though, there are just so many other characters I could be playing instead.
Whitebeard
Man, is this guy slow. Unfortunately, this is more or less the defining impression you’ll get from Whitebeard. Obviously he also hits awfully hard, but if the notes on Hancock weren’t enough of a clue, someone has clearly gone in with a mad determination to keep this game reasonably balanced, so poor old Edward Newgate had to lose out on something and speed was it. This is something of a disappointment to me because quite frankly, if I’m playing as Whitebeard I want to be tearing through those enemy schlubs like effing Godzilla. I do not care if he’s only on level one.
That said, when you do manage to get one of his attacks in without being interrupted halfway it’s generally well worth the trouble. R1 releases one of his trademark shockwaves to send everything in front of you flying. R2 is Haoshoku Haki, which will knock everyone around you straight down into the deck. How this one works is a little interesting – there seems to be a limit on how much damage you can do any particular soldier with Haoshoku alone (use it twice on the same guy and you’ll knock him down again but he won’t lose any extra hitpoints), but how much damage that is varies stage to stage. It looks like it’s probably dependent on the level of the guys your fighting relative to your own, which canon would seem to suggest is pretty close to how it’s supposed to work officially. Points for that. The rest of Whitebeard’s arsenal has similarly devastating effect. Far from a favourite, but definitely good for some variety.
Ace
Anyone wanna guess my other favourite character from this game? ;)
The detail the developers have put into Ace’s move set is amazing. Whereas the other non-Straw Hats feel a bit like also-rans and even the move sets of some of the mains are padded with what turns out to be a couple of different ways of doing the same thing, Ace suffers no such neglect. The One Piece wiki page for the Mera Mera no Mi lists more than a dozen named moves Ace has used over the handful of times we’ve seen him in action, and they are all in this game. Hiken? That’s his one-gauge super move. Higan (flame gun)? △□, then mash □ for extra shots. □△△ will give you Shinka Shiranui. △△□ will give you Enjoumon (flaming net). □□□△ gives you Jujikan (crossfire). A couple of unnamed moves will have Ace sprout firey wings – that do make me awfully suspicious that someone got halfway through animating Marco before he was cut from the cast, but what the hell, it looks awesome. And as you might have guessed, his two-gauge super move will have Ace power himself up for a short period by surrounding himself in flame before releasing the full might of a Dai Enkai: Entei, otherwise known as That One That Covered Half An Island In Flame That Time He Fought Blackbeard. (With game mechanics on Ace’s side, Blackbeard is never so lucky when I run into him.)
The main individual gimmick to Ace is that on the penultimate move of several of his combos, he’ll develop a flaming aura which focuses down to a point over a second or two, and if you hold off hitting the last button until just as he finishes this little power-up sequence, he’ll hit for way more damage. The variant on his Shinka Shiranui move that uses this, for example, will hit an area about three times larger than usual. In practice, most of these moves take so long that by then you’ve either been hit or flown so far over your enemies’ heads that your attack misses them, but the effect is so shiny I will happily use them anyway. (Oh shush. What do you think I’m playing this game for anyway?) Ace can be hit more or less as easily as everyone else, but considering that the same minor inaccuracy makes it possible to beat the likes of Crocodile, Kizaru, Aokiji and Akainu, I am hardly going to complain. What I’m basically getting at here is that playing as Ace delivers on basically every part of fighting as a crazily over-powered Logia that you could ever ask for.
And on a final note:
Tag-team fun
The more I use the partner-mechanic, the more I like it. You link up with a partner by hitting L2 when one of your teammates is nearby. Some of the time, you’ll be rewarded by a couple of lines of dialogue between the new partners, and for this alone I have now spent an embarrassing amount of playtime partnering and de-partnering various people repeatedly just to get them to say something. Zoro and Sanji snark at each other in predictable fashion (something like, “Hey Marimo, think you can keep up?” “That’s my line, kuso-cook.” IIRC) Usopp demands his new ‘subordinate’ obeys his instructions if it's Luffy (fortunately Luffy doesn't give a toss) but will tend to beg the others for help rather more desperately. Hancock will refer to most unfamiliar men simply as ‘Otoko’ (man) and reel off instructions (Usopp gives a nervous affirmative, Zoro is all like, “Huh? Me?”, Sanji has nothing but boundless enthusiasm), though Ace gets a little more interest as ‘Luffy’s brother’, and responds by thanking her for looking out for his troublesome little brother (awwww).
Once partnered, they’ll follow you around, and any time you land a particular combo thereafter you can switch out with them for as long as it takes them to land a combo of their own. With some of the more awkward characters like Chopper, Usopp or Jinbe, this quickly became my main strategy. If Sanji’s being summoned to help any of the girls, he’ll show up with hearts in his eyes (XDXDXD). Zoro’s easily one of the most useful characters to partner with, since his summoning combo is easy to land and he does very nice damage. Ironically, even though Sanji wouldn’t usually need the help, I finally made it through his final stage without either of the girls biting it largely thanks to partnering him with Zoro. Hey, I’m just saying – they make a great team. *g*
When you call your partner in to attack you’ll also get another word or two from them, which quickly became my other excuse for trying out unlikely combinations. And when I say ‘unlikely combinations’, what I mean is ‘Hancock and everyone else’. Luffy’s the only one she calls in by name; he responds by reminding her he’s not marrying her (more XD). Most of the others just get called ‘otoko’, except the other girls (can’t quite make out what she says to Nami, damn) and Chopper, who’s “soko no seibutsu” (“You there, creature.”) when you first partner up with him. He responds by insisting he’s a pirate. When she actually does summon him to attack though, she’s back to calling him ‘otoko’ and Chopper sounds pretty happy with that – and okay, so it’s probably just a thing where the programmers didn’t bother including any extra lines, but it still makes me go awwwww. (Never did like the idea of Hancock joining the Straw Hats in the series, but put them all in a game and suddenly I am all over that. Novelty value will go a long way.)
So that’s Kaizoku Musou in a gigantic, mutant nutshell. Best value we have ever had out of our PS3, bar none.