From the outset, I
should probably make it clear that my first review will be a biased
one.
Well, let me explain.
The other day, I came
to the (frankly quite frightening) realisation that my infatuation
with the anime/manga behemoth One Piece has lasted for a decade. Or
thereabouts. Ten long years of catching up on the 300-or-so chapters
(now extended to a hefty 800+), checking every week for new
scanlations, new theories, new games. This relationship has outlasted
friendships, employments, university courses…we’re practically a
conjoined twin at this point. I don't think it's healthy.
So yes, I do love the
series, and probably class it among my top 5 pieces of popular
culture still going today. As a result, because I’m a fan, this
review isn’t going to be from an impartial perspective. I had HIGH
hopes for this game when I started to play it, possibly unfairly –
how can anything live up to the colossal legacy and hype that
surrounds One Piece in the manga and anime community? How can one
game carry that weight?!
Well, I guess Burning
Blood doesn’t. What could? But they have a darned good
go at it.
Burning
Blood is a 3D fighting game, similar to games like
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm and J-Stars Victory VS (this game’s predecessor of
sorts). Players first select a team of three characters to play as,
then up to three Support characters that add certain enhancements to
your characters, or power-down the opposing team. Characters are
assigned a cost relevant to their power in battle. A powerful
character, for example, costing 3000, and a less-powerful one costing
2000. Players cannot just throw the best characters and supports
together, and are required to piece together their crew to
fit into an overall limit (usually 9000, but can be extended in VS
battles).
Building a team with
great synergy is crucial to outmaneuvering your opponent, and finding
characters that work well together gives players opportunity to be
creative and experimental – a treat for those who, like me, love
spending hours in training mode figuring out the combos for loads of
different characters and combinations.
That's not to say that
this game is the deepest fighter out there, anyone
looking for the pixel-perfect pokes of Street Fighter or
fightstick-mangling inputs of King of Fighters may
be disappointed. Burning
Blood sits very much on
the “party game” side of the fighting genre, with most characters
sharing similar inputs and control schemes. Square is a character's
standard combo string, Triangle deals with ranged attacks, Circle
blocks, X jumps, and holding L1 and pressing one of the attack
buttons unleashes a special move for each. Perhaps most
interestingly, each character can activate his or her Ability by
pressing R1, allowing for additional movement options,
combo-extending effects or even outright nullifying damage. Finally,
each team shares a “Burning gauge,” which can be used to tag
other members of the team in mid-combo to continue a beatdown, call
in a teammate to break out of a combo and, when fully charged, allows
characters to enter Awakening mode, where they can unleash a huge
Ultimate Attack to finish off the opponent.
Thankfully,
despite the universal and, perhaps, simplistic nature of the control
system, each character feels different, and each have different
intricacies to their playstyle and combo strings. While players can
pick up a new character and have a basic idea of how to access the
majority of their moveset without memorising long strings of
commands, it will take more than one or two matches to truly master
everything a character has to offer. With
that said, I think that even fans may have to persist a little bit
with the engine, as it does feel slightly clunky at first and the
sheer amount of things to keep track of, such as the Ability gauge
and Burning Meter, is somewhat overwhelming to begin with.
An
issue, however, may come in the form of the Ability system. As
mentioned earlier, certain characters can activate their Abilities
mid-combo, completely negating any further damage. This effect
can only be countered by characters using a different kind of
Ability, lending an almost rock-paper-scissors vibe to battles. This
puts a bit of a dampener on creativity when it comes to building a
team – if I choose to make a team of characters that cannot counter
this Ability, what chance do I have if I come up against a team that
relies on it? While this clash between Abilities may make sense in
the context of the series, newcomers to the game may be turned off by
the restrictive and super-powerful nature of these effects.
Fans
of One Piece will no doubt also love the game's attention to detail.
This visuals, especially, perfectly recreate the colourful, dynamic
world of the anime, with every flicker of flame or pulse of energy
bursting from the characters after every attack. Character attacks
are recreated very faithfully, with little expense spared on making
the combat look like it's coming straight out of the anime. A nice
touch is that each character gets more and more ragged the lower
their health gets, battle damage showing through ripped clothes,
scuffed skin and baggy eyes.
This
dedication to fan service extends from nods to in-jokes, relationships between characters and the loyalty with which character
fighting styles have been represented in-game. It's a thrill to see
two characters making some reference to an ongoing rivalry when they
fight one another, and the over-the-top nature of some characters'
super moves throws back to the manga in the most extravagant way
possible. While fans will no doubt love it, newcomers will have a much trickier time getting in.
Take,
for example, the game's story mode. Based on a climactic battle,
the Battle of Marineford (which begins 490 chapters into the manga),
the story makes no great effort to introduce or provide backstory for
most of the characters involved in the battle, simply plunging in
halfway and retelling the events from there. This means that, while
fans are able to follow the twists and turns of the story, non-fans
will have no idea what's going on without context – even worse
being the fact that you have to play through the story to unlock the
rest of the game modes, an approach that has since been abandoned by
games like Street Fighter V, which simply has all modes and
characters unlocked from the get-go.
Non-fans
that enjoy the game's mechanics, may find enjoyment in
working through its “Wanted VERSUS” mode – a challenge mode of
sorts where players take on Wanted posters of constantly-escalating
difficulty. They consist of teams of characters, each with some theme
(Characters that use swords, that interacted in the anime, and so on)
and replace a conventional arcade mode. Possibly the best part about
this mode is that as you head up the ranks, you earn more and more
Beli (the series' currency) which can be spent on unlocking more
members of the cast and supporting characters.
The
online functionality is fairly straightforward for a
current-generation fighter. You have a Ranked mode, which allows
players to test their skill and climb up the ranks while fighting
randomly-selected players, and a Player mode, which lets players join
rooms and fight against others without putting their points on the
line. As in other games, fighting earns you titles and icons with
which to customise your profile, with all characters having some sort
of title attached to them – perfect if you want to bling it out
with the colours of your favourite!
My
favourite addition to the online is the ability to choose your
character lineup and stage preference before entering into a battle.
This enables players to simply set up their character and jump into
a match almost instantly, cutting out any time wasted on picking
characters before both players can start fighting. I've found little
trouble getting into a match, with most time between games averaging
about 30 seconds, and lag is in pleasantly short supply for a
non-competitive fighting game.
One
Piece fans will find a lot to enjoy in Burning
Blood, from the perfect recreation of the anime visuals to
the unique personalities and fighting styles of each character. The
game feels like a One
Piece game, as opposed to simply a fighting game with the One Piece
name on it. Every evasion, powerful blow or KO feels like you've
played out a scene from the anime, and the fighting system and
mechanics are fluid and deceptively deep. Each character has a
different method of approaching and fighting opponents, as well as
evading and guarding against danger. However, the slightly clunky
feel of the engine at first may turn away some fans, and I think even
a fan's enjoyment of Burning Blood may depend on how willing they are
to experiment, practise and play around with each character.
However, non-fans may not find as much to enjoy. The bulk of the
single-player content is spread between the Battle of Marineford,
story mode (nigh-incomprehensible from the perspective of someone
that hasn't read or watched the arc) and the Wanted Versus challenge
mode. The sheer amount of fanservice may leave casual players
overwhelmed, and their experience will depend on how much they enjoy
the battle system. Perhaps this issue wasn't as prevalent in the
game's native Japan, where One Piece is absolutely huge, but it will
certainly be a problem for casual fans here in the West.
Obviously,
I'm thoroughly enjoying Burning
Blood, and really do
think it's the One Piece game I've been waiting for ever since the
likes of the Power Stone-esque Grand Battle series all the way back
on Gamecube. If you're as dedicated a fan to this awesome series as I
am, well, then you'd have picked it up already. What are you waiting
for? Go! Shoo!
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