Firefox crashed and I really don't want to rewrite this, but I'm going to anyway. If you're not a One Piece fan, you can probably ignore this thread, because there's really no reason for you to play this game when Power Stone exists and is much better.
I got the PS2 One Piece Grand Battle demo with the new Shonen Jump today, and I have good news: it's not as bad as I was expecting. For a licensed anime game, that is the best endorsement I could probably give.
The game plays kind of like a cross between Treasure Battle and the earlier Grand Battle games, though I haven't played the third. Anyway, it plays a lot more smoothly than the PS Grand Battle games (though it'd be really hard not to) and you can move around the entire backgrounds, not just in one plane. Remember the phrase "Power Stone gone retarded" from the Urban Reign thread? Yeah, that fits here too.
The dubbing hurts my head. It's really, really bad. I haven't seen the 4Kids version of the show, so I can't say whether or not they got the same voice "talent" but as bad as it is, it gets the job done. It's nowhere near as annoying as, say, the first new TMNT game was with the incessant "SLICE AND DICE!" so there's something to be happy about. If you were going to buy this game anyway, it's not exactly a dealbreaker.
The graphics are fine, everything is well rendered, but my complaint lies more in the visual style than the actual graphics. The characters have this squished-down, childlike look to them. Some characters look okay in it, but there was really no reason for it. The Treasure Battle models were very faithful to the show and the manga and they were perfect. These... are kinda creepy at times. Look at some screenshots of Nico Robin, for instance. Terrifying.
Having suffered through unlocking most of the cast of Treasure Battle, I will probably pick this up when it's out, because it's an OP game I haven't been trudging through for years. If you're a fan you'll probably dig it, unless you're really uptight about the voices.
