I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time, so it makes playing One Piece: Pirate Warriors an odd experience. A Dynasty Warriors clone laced with a franchise I know nothing of, Pirate Warriors offers the same entertaining monotony of the Dynasty Warriors franchise but with an added craziness that suits the genre well.

The One Piece franchise is characterized by crazy characters and unabashed silliness, and it works incredibly well with the over the top action and huge melees that comprise Pirate Warrior’s gameplay. My lack of One Piece knowledge made the opening of Pirate Warriors 2 a bewildering experience.

" The game is set up to make you feel powerful, with a wealth of skills that let you mow through the hundreds of AI peons that stand between you and victory. "

Once I understood that main protagonist Luffy has a body made of elastic, I at least started to make sense of the whole thing. The story is a non-canonical plot written specifically for the game, and sees Luffy’s crew members turning against him after they are enveloped by a strange mist. It won’t win an award any time soon, but the writing is pleasantly silly and always aware of how ridiculous it is.

The narrative is mostly an excuse for the action. Players control one member of the Straw Hat Pirates and must complete the set objectives on large maps, all whilst fighting against armies of thousands. The game is set up to make you feel powerful, with a wealth of skills that let you mow through the hundreds of AI peons that stand between you and victory. Basic combos never get more in depth than spamming Square and Triangle, allowing for an accessible style of play that never fails to feel satisfying.

Your hero is never alone though, with a few AI companions taking the field as well. You even have a number of scallywags who join you directly that you can call upon for follow up attacks. You can even swap control to your allies mid-battle to keep your combos varied. At the end of the day though, there is no way to avoid the feeling of spam. Just as in Dynasty Warriors, this One Piece outing just throws enemies at you, and you respond by hurling out random attacks in the hope of cutting through. It’s fun, with a satisfying weight to the flow of combat, but it never transcends the mind-numbing two-button simplicity.

"There is a lot here to love if you're a One Piece fan. There are just under thirty playable characters, all of which are rendered in a beautiful visual style that captures the kinetic majesty of the One Piece anime."

A wealth of customization options are on offer to spice things up. The maps all hold a variety of coins you can find that, when equipped and upgraded, offer passive bonuses to your characters. You can even fit them into bingo cards to gain new skills. Add in support character that can offer new skills and you have a decent amount of progression avenues to explore. Sadly, they aren’t interesting enough to feel meaningful. A few stat boost and the odd passive skill isn’t enough to take Pirate Warriors 2 out of the repetitive rut it inevitably falls into. There is only so far the simplistic combos can go in a game like this without a more meaningful sense of customization.

There is a lot here to love if you’re a One Piece fan. There are just under thirty playable characters, all of which are rendered in a beautiful visual style that captures the kinetic majesty of the One Piece anime (or at least what little I’ve seen of it). It looks, feels and sounds crazy, with an emphatic Japanese dub adding to the authenticity of the experience. The gameplay gets dull after a time, but the graphics never have this problem.

As with the Dynasty Warriors series, Pirate Warriors 2 has no problems with longevity. There are plenty of lengthy campaign levels to go through, and a tonne of level ups, skills and crazy concept art to work toward. Add in local and online co-op and you have a plentiful, though not always engaging, action experience. There’s another issue with the game being too easy. I’m certainly not one to advocate challenge for the sake of padding out a game’s lifespan, but very few sections of Pirate Warriors 2 will give you much trouble. It all leads to a game that offers quantity, but not necessarily quality.

"One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 is an odd exercise in accessible gameplay merged with a niche theme. One Piece is a popular anime, but licensed games with original Japanese dubs aren't exactly going for the global market."

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 is an odd exercise in accessible gameplay merged with a niche theme. One Piece is a popular anime, but licensed games with original Japanese dubs aren’t exactly going for the global market. Still, it’s a flamboyant and entertaining experience that achieves its sole goal of relieving stress and making you feel like a combat deity. It’s shallow, repetitive and dull at times, but the game never fails to raise a smile.

I imagine these zany antics would be even more endearing to fans of One Piece. Even though I don’t know a lot about One Piece, Pirate Warriors 2 does enough to make it worthwhile, but I’d argue that it will only really flourish in the hands of a seasoned One Piece fan. Definitely worth considering if you love Dynasty Warriors and have a fetish for pirate-based anime, but the usual caveats of repetition apply.

 This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

The next edition in Namco Bandai’s mech simulation series, developed by From Software, got some new screenshots during E3 2013. While the game will still feature a campaign mode, the focus will be on a persistent online multiplayer mode that sees three factions competing against each other dominance. Each season, the conflict then “resets” and the three go at it again. So far, it has a release date of September 26th in Japan for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 is developed by Tecmo Koei, and puts the all-out melee battles of Dynasty Warriors firmly into the One Piece universe. Of course, this will be post-timeskip and players will take advantage of new powers that Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates are touting. A new Support Gauge will also allow for tagging in different characters for short intervals. Look for it to release on PS3 in Q3 2013.

Project X Zone

Finally, we have Project X Zone, a crossover title featuring characters from Namco Bandai, Sega and Capcom titles. The game features an extensive campaign mode and 2D character battles with team-ups and special attacks. The game boasts more than 200 characters from franchises like Tekken, Devil May Cry, XenoSaga, Resident Evil, Street Fighter and more. Project X Zone will release on June 25th in North America for the Nintendo 3DS.

The 3DS title which released on March 21st sold 68,423 units in the past week, with a total lifetime sales of 459,413 units. It’s in great company with Animal Crossing: New Leaf, also for the 3DS, which sold 49,410 units to average 3,025,368 lifetime sales.

The PS3 also saw some great sales with One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2, developed and published by Namco Bandai, which sold 26,878 units and 367,959 units since it’s release on March 21st.

It’s somewhat surprising to see Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix at number 13 on the list seeing as the amount of content that’s been packed in. Since releasing on March 14th, the game has sold 183, 176 units with 9801 units sold last week itself. We wonder what Square Enix has to say about that in their next financial forecast?

Pirate Warriors 2 will focus on the Straw Hat Pirates after their two year training journey, wherein they travel to the New World in search of the mystical treasure One Piece. So there’s plenty of danger and excitement to be had, when you’re not dealing with Marines and rival pirate crews.

New stages included this time include Punk Hazard and Skypiea. To that effect, there are a ton of characters to play as including members of the Shichibukai, Marines, Blackbeard and the Straw Hats.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 is scheduled to release this Summer for PS3 in North America and Europe.

Developed by Tecmo Koei, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 will take place after the time skip and focus on the Strawhat Pirates and their journey through the New World. Familiar foes like Dracule Mihawk, Bartholomew Kuma, Pacifisa and many more show up while players can engage in fights with hundreds of foes at once on a regular basis.

They’ll also be able to explore familiar locations from the series such as Skypiea and Thriller Bark when the game releases on March 20th in Japan and Summer 2013 in North America and Europe for Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita. Till then, to the New World it is.

The game will have players taking control of various members of the Straw Hat Pirates, including Monkey D. Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Chopper and many more as they go about exploring and beating the tar out of enemies. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 will also put up some never before seen characters like Eneru from the Skypiea Arc (with the world itself being one of the new stages).

Of course, the game is all about the adventures across the New World, so you can look forward to plenty of exploration to go with the signature beat ’em up style.

Check out the new trailer above announcing the game’s release.

The new trailer for the same, advertising a trip to the New World, showcases new story arcs like the Skypiea Arc and characters such as Eneru – not to mention teasing the likes of Kuma and Marshall D. Teach. The action is also fast and furious as the Strawhat Pirates dispatch hundreds of enemies at once. If you ever wanted an indicator of the manga in fluid, fast motion, this is it.

Let’s see if it delivers compelling gameplay when it releases in Summer 2013.

Namco Bandai has announced One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 for the PS3. The game is based on the One Piece manga and anime and is quite popular in Japan. It will be heading to the PS3 sometime next year in summer.

The series has sold 1.2 million units so far, and the second game will have a lot of new features. You can play as Luffy, Sanji and Zoro and will also feature unreleased stages like Skypiea and new characters.

The game will be developed by Omega and Tecmo Koei. They have also announced a discount for the digital version of the game and it will be available on the PSN from December 12-26th.

“I am very pleased and proud to say that we have successfully shipped 1.2 million units of One Piece: Pirate Warriors worldwide, and we are glad to continue working on this fantastic franchise with One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 to keep all the fans happy,” said Koji Nakajima, producer of One Piece games at Namco Bandai Games Inc.

“It’s thanks to all of you, the people all over the world who bought the game, that I am able to announce this great news.”

Meanwhile check out the new screenshots below.