Review: One Piece: Grand Cruise (PS VR) – One Piece enthusiasts have not really got bored in recent years. After all, Bandai Namco releases a new game with some regularity. The next big One Piece game is World Seeker and it promises to take a different turn with a big open world, many activities and more freedom than ever before. We still have to wait for this title, but in the meantime a One Piece VR-game has appeared, One Piece: Grand Cruise. The regular games are always fine, but does that also apply to the first trip to virtual reality?
One Piece: Grand Cruise- So close did the heroes never
One of the nicest things about One Piece: Grand Cruise is that you really want all heroes from very close can see. Never before have they come to life so well, which of course is due to the fact that in virtual reality everything can be shown just a bit better. The characters are also voiced by the voice actors who do the same for the TV episodes, which makes it an authentic experience. The game puts you on the ship of Luffy and co and because you gradually can enter different locations on the ship, you really feel in the middle of One Piece and that is a nice experience.
For enthusiasts it is almost a Walhalla you have never been able to come that close. Visually it looks very nice, because it is true to life, colorful and at times spectacular with some nice fights. The majority, however, you experience mostly instead of experiencing and that is where the downsides come into play. One Piece: Grand Cruise feels like an interactive museum with very little interaction. You can not move around freely on the ship – which is a shame – and the number of scenes you can experience is rather low. The game is set up in such a way that the locations you can visit are fixed scenes and although you can visit them as often as you want, there is hardly any change.
One Piece: Grand Cruise – – They have forgotten the gameplay
The game consists of a pair of main scenes. The first is a fight against the navy and the other is a fight against the Kraken. Your goal? Shoot a cannon and shoot until you weigh one of us. In the fight against the navy it is important to shoot all incoming objects from the air and in the fight with the Kraken you have to shoot either upside down or on his tentacles. Halfway or at the end of the fight there is a short scene in which one of the heroes makes a special attack and that’s it. After completing such a scene you unlock or not other scenes and then you can just look in the kitchen, on the upper deck and more.
There is, however, very little to do, except for spotting objects and making a conversation. with the characters who happen to be there. It’s okay in itself, but it’s not that every scene is continuously repeating and the game gives no indication of how you unlock certain other scenes, so you just do randomly. In addition, you have also seen each scene after one time, because it is always the same. Much more annoying is that if for example you want to play the Kraken again, you have to go through all the dread of the characters again. That is the first time fun, on the third time it is annoying.
The gameplay itself is also extremely limited, because all you can do is shoot and you move the controller in a certain direction. Press the cross and the bullet is fired. That’s it and it will not be more. You understand that you have seen this after an hour and after having walked through all the scenes twice – which are more or less identical in terms of gameplay – regardless of the choices you make, you are done with the game. Speaking of those choices, every now and then you get questions, but whatever answer you give, apart from another reaction, nothing changes. That makes One Piece: Grand Cruise a very short experience, because there is hardly any replay value and the shooting with a cannon you are after a few times sat.
Potential …
One Piece Experiencing in virtual reality has a lot of potential, that shows the experience in itself. It looks very nice, it is a nice universe to stay in, but the lack of gameplay breaks the game. It is a shame that the developer did not do anything with it anymore, because there was definitely more to do with this. Both in terms of experience and gameplay. Had at least some more fights in it, because two is very little. Especially if that is the only thing this title has to offer in actual gameplay. The possibilities are absolutely there, but the developer has made it much too easy.
