One Piece: Romance Dawn Preview (PSP)

Bandai Namco are in the talkative mood this week, and have given out some new tidbits about the latest One Piece game for PSP – Romance Dawn, scheduled for release on December 20^th.

One Piece: Romance Dawn lets you play as Luffy on his quest to become The Pirate King. What’s different about this game is that for the first time you can play through the plot of One Piece in RPG form. Now you can really relive the experiences of Luffy and his crew from the original Manga/Anime, meeting new friends and fighting fierce enemies to the death on your way. Well, not really, but, like in make-believe…

Screw it, let’s just take a look at the new battle system.

Grand Tactical Battle

Yep, that’s what its called. Grand tactical battle. Just rolls off the tongue. Anyway, in this battle system, each player is assigned action points, known as ‘Cost’.  Eurgh. Maybe they’ll fix the naming scheme in the localization. Anyway, this ‘Cost’ gives you the ability to freely enter commands. As soon as it runs out, you get fatigued and can’t attack anymore. The battles work on an active turn system (think Final Fantasy), so if you aren’t smart about how you designate your Cost points, you may find yourself receiving a good beating from the enemy. I guess that’s why they call it ‘tactical’ battle.

Your Cost is displayed in the left upper screen, so you can keep an eye on it as you throw out moves by tapping various buttons on your PSP. Attacks are classified as ‘weak’ or ‘strong’, and the attack power and accuracy of each move depends on what type of attack it corresponds to. It is most effective to use ‘weak’ attacks against faster, nimble opponents, and heftier tanks can be taken on with ‘strong’ attacks.

Hitting the attack button repeatedly leads to combos, and you can have fun even while mindlessly mashing the buttons.

You store TP every time your attack hits the enemy, and if you save up enough TP you can use special moves.

Each special move wastes varying amounts of TP, and there are also ‘Hidden Skill’ moves which require a substantial amount of TP but are more powerful than specials.

Boss Battles

Each boss battle in the game faithfully recreates scenes from the Manga/Anime, including each boss’s special abilities gained from the cursed fruit. A different plan of attack is required to defeat each boss and this adds extra suspense and challenge to the game. Let’s take a look at one of the boss battles in the game, which pits Luffy against Sir Crocodile.

Sir Crocodile possesses the power of the Sand-Sand fruit, which allows him to turn his entire body into sand. In this form, most attacks won’t hit him.

Dialogue recreates scenes from the series, leading to a more suspenseful fight.

Crocodile’s special move: ‘Ground Death’. Each boss has a unique and powerful special move, so be careful!

Other Bosses appearing in Romance Dawn

Wapol

Don Krieg

Captain Kuro

Arlong

@infoharvester