Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

"Fighting for One Piece" is a fighting game for the PS2, based on the anime One Piece, which takes a different approach than other One Piece games (like the PS1 Grand Battle) both visually and gameplay-wise.

This is the first One Piece game on the PS2 to feature the characters in their natural size, as opposed to Grand Battle's chibi-esque look. And the combat is similar to that of Tekken (without the ability to strafe to the characters sides).

Gameplay Modes (6/10)

The game features five main gameplay modes, Fighting Mode, VS Mode, Gamble Mode, Record Mode and Training Mode. Although having 5 modes, non really stands out from the others.

Fighting Mode is your basic campaign-like battles, where you battle a series of enemies until you reach a final enemy. Unlike lots of fighters in this style, each character does not have a story in the game, there is no story at all for that matter, so you never know the reason they are fighting (unless you've seen the anime).
You win Beli, a currency in the anime and the game, with each battle depending on your performance.

VS Mode is simple, you play a battle against a friend or CPU.

Gamble Mode is similar to a survival mode, though you bet a certain amount of Beli (that you must win in Fighting Mode first) before starting, and the more you bet, the more Beli you earn after winning a match, although if you lose a match, you lose all money you bet and earned during that Gamble session.

Record Mode is VS Mode, though it records the battle so you can later view in "Replay Mode".

Training Mode, as in all games, let's you easily train your skills and learn each characters moves.

Beli earned in battle can be used to unlock new characters, it will take quite some time to unlock them as, as a normal Beli rate in one Fighting Mode session is about 20 Million Beli, and you cheapest character to unlock is 81 Million Beli, with all others being over 200 Million Beli.

Combat (5/10)

The first thing you'll notice when you get into your first battle, is the character movement is quite slow, and the controls are somewhat unresponsive, this makes battles unexciting for the most part.
The controls are pretty simple, X and O are the two attack buttons, Square grabs the enemy for a sort of "Input Combos Before Timer Ends" sequence, depending on your special bar, and Triangle triggers afterimages that increases the hit counts with silhouettes that mimic your moves as you attack the enemy. All shoulder buttons are used to Guard.

Character moves are very unbalanced, each character has a completely different button set compared to another, this means you can't learn how to control one character, then pick up another character and expect to input the same button combinations. Because Left + Left + Circle may to a move with one character, but to absolutely nothing with another, this makes it difficult to just take your new characters and use them.

Some characters have linking combos, like Sanji, if you press O 3 times, he'll do a series of kicks and twirls, yet with Luffy, if you press O 3 times, he'll simple to his stand punch.
Nico Robin, for example, is a very hard character to learn how to use, since her attacks are not as straightforward as most characters (as her attacks are mostly her hands appearing beneath the enemy and doing an attack).
You'll also find some characters having several Taunting moves instead of regular attacks, this will prove frustrating if you do not learn the characters moves before hand.

Every character has a VERY different move set, and you'll almost always need to go to Training Mode to learn there moves, since you never know what button combinations are or not used for that character.

This also makes battle very unbalanced, because a character with no linking combos may have a hard time against one with them, and some characters are also considerably slower than others, which results in one character being in a considerable disadvantage.

There are also some issues with the character sizes, although faithful to their true size in the anime, this brings a series of problems into the game, for example, Aokiji is very tall, and most of his standard attacks will go over most characters and not hit. And Chopper's attacks while in his small form, are very hard to almost impossible to connect.

Graphics/Visuals (5/10)

The graphics are not technically bad, yet the environments are somewhat dull and non-colourful. And some characters and up with some really distorted graphics with some attacks (when Franky used his wind cannon-thing attack, his arms swollen and the stars on his arms distort horribly). But other than that it has quite solid graphics, and it's always nice to see the characters in there natural size.
You'll have two different costumes for each character, which are for the most part faithful to the anime.

Sound (7/10)

The BGM for the most part is good, but not that memorable, with a few exceptions like Drum Island. But a really strong point is the voice acting, it features the anime's original voice actors, and each character has a specific line for each other character (like Luffy has a line after defeating Zoro, Chopper, Smoker, etc, and so with the other characters).

To finish up:
+Faithful character design
+Original voice actors
+Good BGM
-Unbalanced characters
-Dull environments
-Steep learning curve for each character
-Characters bought with earned Beli are not worth the time