Pandora's Box: The Ultimate GameCube Tier List

#109: One Piece: Pirates' Carnival

Rating: E

Players: 1-4

Price Range: ~$44 USD

A game based on the anime/manga series One Piece.

Oof...

What a weird game.

Now, I've got a story for this one.

My parents...somehow, for some reason, got this game. Why? I don't know.

As for my own history with the franchise, well, the only experience I have consist of the very excellent live-action interpretation on Netflix...

...

...

...

...And this game.

Yeah, I'm not very well versed in the series at all, but I thought the live-action show was truly amazing and made me a certified fan, of the Netflix show I mean.

As a person whose only exposure to the anime was with this game, seeing characters such as Buggy, Arlong, and especially Kuro fully realized in live-action form felt like a childhood memory was unlocked.

It was defiantly a cool moment.

As for the game itself?

Well, it's...alright.

It's a party game and unfortunately the lowest one on the list, whose placement was entirely intentional.

You see, One Piece: Pirates' Carnival's main game is the Board Game portion of it, in which you choose your character from the series and jump into the square board itself.

Here, you and the players periodically reveal squares to either reveal an event, to start a minigame, initiate a battle with other players, or...well, get money right away.

There are Captain spaces in which, if you win, you get all of the spaces relating to that captain, and if you have two spaces that border those from other players, you can steal them renegade style.

The goal of the game is to have as much Berry (the currency in this universe) by having the most squares and winning the most minigames.

It at least gets points for being different than other party games.

In a time where all matter of game franchises tried to capitalize on Mario Party with mixed to negative results, the game had very low review scores, and to be honest, it isn't that bad.

However, that's not to say there aren't problems, because there's a lot of them.

Firstly, the minigames. They range from...okay to nonsensical, annoying, and frustrating.

You see, another thing this game does that makes it stand out would be the Captain minigames, in which you play as a captain within the series, both antagonistic and friendly in the show.

What these boil down to are 1 vs. 3 minigames that was popularized by Mario Party. It is admittedly cool for the solo player to play as one of the antagonists with their own dedicated minigames, with even the Straw Hat Pirate crew members themselves having Captain minigames as well.

Although, like Mario Party, about most of the time they heavily favor the solo player as opposed the three or balancing it at all, with Arlong's minigame being an unfortunate example of this.

Essentially, all three players shoot at this dart board in the minigame.

Simple enough, right?

Well, no, it isn't.

You see, after each player shoots their dart and scores point, the player who is Arlong gets three darts and shoots at the same circular board. However, what you have to do as him is, in addition to gain points by hitting the thing at all, create a triangle with those three darts. In that said triangle, you remove the darts from the other three, and it is very much one-sided in favor of the one as Arlong.

Even the other minigames themselves aren't anything to ride home about, as not only do many of them not make any sense at all given that I am not well versed in the anime at all (to an almost comical degree), but the voice acting, especially from Luffy and Zoro can get irritating very quickly.

Speaking of which, because this game is based on the version of the series localized by 4kids, who were infamous for utterly butchering anime among other cartoon shows minus maybe the 2003 Ninja Turtles show and Sonic X, it mispronounces Zoro's name as Zolo, which is so off putting and just plain wrong.

I mean, Zoro not only sounds cooler but rolls of the tongue a lot easier. I don't know whether this was a mistranslation or a conscious decision, but I think everybody, including myself, will just call him Zoro at the end of the day.

Overall, for a party game, it's perfectly fine.

A good game though? That's a bit up in the air.