One Piece: Grand Adventure

Pirates! Band Together for Battle and Adventure

NA release: 29th August 2006
EU release: N/A
NA release: N/A
Developer: Ganbarion
Publisher: Namco Bandai
NGC Magazine Score: 77%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

This is a strange one as it’s a game based on a Japanese anime made just for the western market (the PS2 version made it to Europe), which is quite a departure as the Grand Battle series started off as a Japanese exclusive. In terms of the core gameplay, this is essentially the previous game (Grand Battle Rush) with a few things from Grand Battle 2 – a best of, if you will. If this was all, the lack of a Japanese release would make sense, but there’s a second mode.

And it’s quite a significant one. It retells the story of the series (up to the point the anime was dubbed at the time, I expect) and has you selecting missions. Completing missions will earn you XP to increase the stats of your characters, and you build up your crew over time (Luffy’s voice is so annoying that I was glad you could swap very quickly).

Of course, the missions themselves are just battles form Grand Battle, although sometimes enemies have extra powers or moves are disabled. There are also fights against multiple enemies (a lot weaker than the standard ones) which works well enough it’s baffling that a four player mode was not added. For an average arena fighter like this, and extensive singleplayer mode is a great way to make it last a long time.

Fine

It’s entertaining, unique – and so full of developer love it’s practically coming out in blisters filled with pure gameplay pus. Lovely.
Geraint Evans, NGamer Magazine #4

Remake or remaster?

Seems like a good version of Grand Battle to re-release.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get One Piece: Grand Adventure.