One Piece: Unlimited Adventure

One Piece: Unlimited Adventure is an action-adventure video game for the Wii. It features an original storyline, while adapting select elements of the manga and anime up through the Water 7 Saga.

Developed by Ganbarion and published by Namco Bandai, Unlimited Adventure was the first seventh-generation One Piece game, as well as the first to be localized in North America after Funimation acquired the series license. It went on to launch a small (and mostly Nintendo-exclusive) series, starting with the direct sequel Unlimited Cruise.

The game was released in Japan on April 26, 2007, and in North America on January 22, 2008.

Storyline
One day, while fishing for provisions (the Sunny's stores having been emptied by an ill-considered eating contest), Luffy pulls a strange blue orb from the ocean depths. As the other Straw Hat Pirates express disinterest, Luffy wishes aloud for an island to explore. Seconds later, the orb spontaneously summons one, beaching the Sunny and scattering the crew.

Though stunned, the Straw Hats quickly recover and regroup, making camp by the island coast. In doing so, they find a number of wildly different environments, from dense jungles to frozen mountainsides - as well as endless hordes of hostile pirates and Marines. Throughout, Luffy's orb exhibits several more powers, chief among them a psychic link to the memories of each Straw Hat. This link activates whenever they near one of the ancient stone seals hidden throughout the island, summoning phantasms of many past enemies.

Unconcerned, the Straw Hats fight their way through these phantasms, shattering a seal with every victory. All the while, a strange rabbit-like creature named Popora tries to attack them, apparently determined to protect the seals. At first dismissive (and thinking the creature was set to guard some hidden treasure), the Straw Hats reconsider when Robin finds a set of ruins detailing the island's history.

''One thousand years ago, the island held a small but fertile civilization, supported by an elderly sage and his magical orb. This sage had molded Popora from clay and imbued him with life, as a guardian for his people. In time, however, more and more outsiders began to take interest in the island - and his people grew suspicious and hostile, demanding that Popora be refashioned into something that could destroy the outsiders.''

''When the sage refused, his orb was stolen and - despite his warnings - used to animate an idol of island's old guardian god. Corrupted by the islanders' hatred, the orb's magic created a rampaging beast that decimated the island. Even the sage found this monster too powerful to fight; in desperation, he committed his entire soul to a spell that sealed it deep beneath the island. Heartbroken, but dutiful, Popora was left to maintain the spell until the monster was no more.''

Touched by his devotion, the Straw Hats resolve to befriend Popora and free him from his lonely vigil. Though at first too embittered to accept their help, Popora eventually comes to trust them, and leads them to the remaining seals. Upon besting these seals and their phantasms, the Straw Hats storm an underground chamber to confront the guardian beast head-on.

At first, the ancient monster attacks with little more than physical blows and dark magic. As the battle wears on, however, it transforms into a dragon-like creature with the power to mimic all the deadliest abilities the Straw Hats have witnessed, from Don Krieg's poison gas to Portgas D. Ace's fire-fists. Only by attacking - as a group - from every possible angle are the Straw Hats able to overcome such raw power, and defeat the beast.

Subsequently, the beast's chamber collapses, threatening to bury the Straw Hats and Popora until Luffy shatters the bedrock with a Gear 3 attack. As the group climbs back to the island's surface, the orb - its purpose now fulfilled - turns to plain stone and shatters. From its shards rises the spirit of the sage, who thanks Popora for his thousand-year vigil and apologizes for the loneliness it imposed; knowing his spirit has only moments before passing on, he gathers the shards for one final spell.

Unable (apart from Luffy) to see or hear the spirit, the Straw Hats return to the Sunny to refresh and resupply. Soon, they cast off, watching Popora bid farewells from the island's shore. To their surprise, several similar creatures join in - friends and family, raised from the last of the orb's magic, that Popora can finally call his own.

Gameplay
The game features fully three-dimensional character models and environments, allowing considerable freedom of movement in both exploration and combat. At the most basic level, player characters can walk, run, dash, jump, and access many different attacks of varying size, range, and power.

During combat, the player character will be periodically be given a set of specific attacks. Completing this set (in any order) will enable a Break Shot, giving the set's last attack considerably higher damage and knockback power. However, if the player character is at any point knocked down, the set will reshuffle itself, erasing all progress.

In addition to standard health (HP) gauges, all player characters carry Special Power (SP) gauges, which dashes—as well as finisher (必殺) attacks—must be paid out of. Both gauges may be refilled by a number of different means, the most common being the small "recovery balls" occasionally produced from striking enemies or environmental features.

Characters
There are a total of 44 playable characters, broadly organized among three classes:


 * Class A characters, comprising the Straw Hat Pirates, are playable in all modes by default (and may, uniquely, access two alternate outfits).
 * Class B characters, comprising—along with Popora—all of the bosses encountered throughout Adventure Mode, are playable only in VS Mode.
 * Class C characters, comprising the "generic" enemies encountered throughout Adventure Mode, are playable only in the "Team Battle" subsection of VS Mode.

(All name spellings here are taken from the English spellings in the Japanese version's Vs Mode screens. They may not necessarily match the spellings currently accepted as canon.)

In addition, Adventure Mode features two generic enemies that are completely unplayable: the Rifle Marine (ライフル海兵) and the Bomb Pirate (爆弾海賊). The former is a redesigned Agent with no unique features, while the latter is a redesigned Saber Pirate able to inflict various status-effects.

Adventure Mode
The Adventure Mode (冒険モード) contains the game's main storyline, setting the Straw Hat Pirates to explore and battle their way through Popora's island.

While this mode begins with Luffy as the only playable character, it reunites him with his crewmates as the story progresses, in time gathering all eight Straw Hats into a single adventuring party. The player may switch between party members at any given time, except those who have lost all HP; if HP reaches zero for every party member, a Game Over will be declared, resetting progress to the last save point.

Initially, each Straw Hat is limited to only a few attacks of minimal power. However, enough usage in combat will unlock new attacks, as well as upgrade existing ones via a numbered level system; all attacks reach maximum power at the tenth level.

Players can also build things for the crew-members to use, such as a kitchen for Sanji (which improves his cooking range), or compounding tools for Chopper. The player can collect ingredients to make food to increase the stats of the characters, or medicine to heal them during battle. As a side-quest, Usopp can build and improve catching net and fishing rods so that players can catch different creatures on the island. All of the items may be key resources in making bombs, components for ultimate attacks or entire weapons such as the Perfect Clima-Tact.

Setting
The Straw Hats gain access to a total of eight areas in the game, six which are explorable while the other two serve as a hub and an area for the final boss battle. The areas are as follows:

Items

 * Orb: used to unlock seals on the island
 * Pickaxe: used to dig and to break rocks
 * Net: used to catch various creatures on the island
 * Fishing Rod: used to catch fish on the island

Versus Mode
The Versus Mode (対戦モード) allows the Straw Hats—and every enemy character encountered in Adventure Mode—to participate in two forms of story-free combat.


 * Team Battle (チームバトル), which arranges arcade-style battles against either CPU opponents or another player. As the name suggests, each side may build a team of up to seven different characters, which must fight in sequential order. A point-buy ceiling of either 8 or 15 points governs team composition, stronger characters (such as Aokiji or Whitebeard) "costing" more points than weaker ones.
 * Survival (サバイバル), which tasks a single player character with defeating 200 generic enemies (comprising Marines, pirates, and the Evil Guardian's minions) without any HP or SP replenishment. Effectively no time limit exists, though all completion times are recorded.

Note that Versus Mode features all eight Straw Hats from the beginning, with all attacks (except higher-tier Finishers) accessible at maximum power. All other characters must be defeated at least once in Adventure Mode to be made available.

Cast
The original Japanese version of the game follows the the TV anime's castings without any divergence. The English localization, as the first (and to date, only) One Piece game dubbed by Funimation, is somewhat less faithful to the dubbed anime; while all of the Straw Hat Pirates are reprised, many of the others predate their anime castings, with a few (e.g. Jerry Jewell as Kaku) being altogether different.

Translation and Alterations
The game's North American localization, overseen by Funimation Entertainment, features significantly fewer changes and omissions than earlier, 4Kids-localized games. Notably, no gameplay elements are excluded for "spoiling" material beyond the English-dubbed anime (at the time only partly finished with the Skypiea Arc), and the translated dialogue leaves references to violence and death uncensored, in some cases even using mild profanity.



Nevertheless, due to Namco Bandai's marketing toward a "family" audience (and, possibly, holdovers from a planned 4Kids localization ), the North American version of the game includes several content edits:
 * The Marines' uniforms are all (per 4Kids convention) edited to display the word "NAVY".
 * However, the Justice (正義) kanji on Smoker and other elite Marines (much like in the 4Kids-localized Grand Battle!) remains unaltered.
 * The guards on both of Mihawk's blades are shortened to appear less cross-like.
 * Sanji's cigarette, along with Smoker's and Paulie's cigars, are removed (though the cigar bandoleers on their jackets are not).
 * The cutscene recreating Franky's joining the Straw Hat Pirates is redrawn to cover Franky's naked buttocks with a wooden board (though the dialogue still openly mentions his nudity).

Naming conventions, for the most part, disregard preexisting English changes for the Japanese originals (e.g. Zoro, Smoker, Devil Fruit). However, several unorthodox translations and romanizations (e.g. Shock Bugs for Den Den Mushi, Alabaster for Arabasta) are present, likely due to Funimation's then-inexperience with the series; a few terms, such as Shichibukai and Rokushiki, are even left untranslated.

(In addition, all of the game's meter and centimeter measurements are changed to feet, with accurate conversions.)

Trivia



 * In Japan, preordered copies of the game were bundled with a bonus Going Merry Wii Remote Holder.
 * The game is renowned for becoming slow when loading once four characters are available to play.
 * Aside from Shanks, Whitebeard and several other characters are featured despite actually lacking a fighting style being shown for those characters (at this point Shanks and Whitebeard both have only thrown one strike each). This is not the first time in the series this has happened. For example, Grand Battle! and its sequels also featured characters which had not actually fought during the series. i.e Shanks (who at that point had not fought at all).
 * Luffy uses Gear 2 and Gear 3 simultaneously, as his special attack while using Gear 2 is Gomu Gomu no Gigant Pistol. The main difference is that unlike the manga, anime and Unlimited Cruise, he does not lose health after doing it and simply shrinks. This is likely because when the game was released, Luffy had not yet used Gomu Gomu no Gigant Jet Pistol in the manga.
 * Within the VS mode, each character has a level similar to a tier list where the higher the number, the stronger the character, however it should be noted that this is non-canon and not an accurate measure of the character's actual strength. Also, as with other in-game tier lists, it is subject to matchups and how the game is played (meaning a Level 5 may be disadvantaged against a particular Level 3).
 * If the player fight a boss which has a real part in the game and is complusory for completing the story (such as Portgas D. Ace, Red Haired Shanks, Mihawk and many others) before the little introduction the boss has a flashback including the character that will show up. However, if the player battle an optional boss, (such as Vivi, Kalgara, or Whitebeard) no flashback appears, but they still have their presentation and the little conversation before the battle. In Whitebeard's case, he had a full motion cutscene with Luffy challenging Whitebeard without initially realizing who he is.
 * How the island could summon phantasms of Kalgara and Whitebeard - two figures the Straw Hats could not possibly have memories of - is not explained. However, it is possible that the island absorbed the memories from prior visitors.
 * Zoro is clearly shown using Yubashiri even though the storyline takes place after the Enies Lobby Arc and Shu had already destroyed it. This is because while the game is after the Enies Lobby Arc, it is still before the Thriller Bark Arc, therefore, Zoro had not yet taken Shusui from Ryuma.
 * Nami's Clima-Tact is shown hanging from a bracelet on her waist, even when she uses it. This only applies to her normal outfit in the game.
 * This game marked the first time Franky, Aokiji, Paulie, Lucci, and Kaku were legally shown in North America.
 * Though Kaku is seen briefly in his human form, he is only playable in his Human-Beast Form.
 * Due to the game's rarity, a new copy can be sold for as much as $100.
 * This is the only game to date in the series to be dubbed by Funimation. It is also the "last" game to date overall to be dubbed in English.

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