S&S Review: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2

Title: One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2
Format: PSN
Release Date:  September 3, 2013
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Tecmo Koei, Omega Force
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: T

The legendary Stray Hat Crew is back for a second time on PS3, and although it fully captures the ambiance of the long running series, the game falls short yet again during gameplay.
Story and Presentation:
If you're anything less than a hardcore fan of One Piece, then you probably won't get anything out of the story.  I actually got out of the series years ago, so I was pretty lost as to what was going on story wise.  What I do remember though, is how wacky and over the top it is, and it hasn't changed one bit.  The game captures the anime's unique style pretty much perfectly, with all of the characters accurately represented.  I know I'm going against the masses here, but I would have liked to have the option of an English dub.  That's one thing I love about the Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm games, they offer you the choice between Japanese and English voice acting.  Visually, the game is solid.  I can't really explain it any better than, it will never blow you away at any time, but it's not flat out ugly either.  You do get the occasional bland texture that repeats throughout a particular map, but thankfully the action is fast paced enough you won't notice it.  I love the cutscenes in the game, but they have a bad way of abruptly interrupting gameplay.  The game doesn't do a good job of transitioning well between massive fights and cinematics.  They seem to have been mashed together, which just isn't all that smooth when you play it for yourself.  The music is your standard fare of anime/action tunes that features heavy rock music to listen to while you play.  It's serviceable at best, and if you're expecting a great score, you're going to be severely disappointed.
Core Gameplay and Multiplayer:
One Piece is pretty much setup just like a Dynasty Warriors game,  you thrown into this open battlefield, where you effortlessly take out hundreds of enemies.  The campaign mode, or Dream Story, loosely follows the main story of the anime.  Just a reminder, the story won't be all that familiar if you haven't been keeping close to the show.  Combat starts out pretty slow, but you'll learn the ropes pretty quickly, and start racking up crazy high kill counts.  It's not a tough game at all, I found myself using the same combo over and over.  If you don't want to hear Luffy spew out the same lines repeatedly, you'll want to take advantage of multiple combos.  New characters will become available later in the game, and it encourages you to find a character that's suitable to your play style.  When you get deeper into the game, taking down identical enemy Marine grunts is still quite fun, even though it may get a bit repetitive.  I'm a pretty big fan of the Dynasty Warriors games, but I still believe if you don't like that style of play, you may still find some enjoyment out of it.   Battles don't offer up a lot of variety however.  The simple pattern consists of capturing bases, defeating mini bosses, and ending with a main boss character.  The on field HUD is chaotic and cluttered, I found myself forgetting what I was supposed to do because of the unintuitive design of the UI.
Final Thoughts:
Even with all that said, I still had fun playing through the campaign.  The game is actually pretty long, the single player campaign will last 12 to 14 hours.  The game also has a ton of incentives for you to go back and playthrough it again, if you wish to do so.  If you're a fan of the anime, then I would suggest picking this up.  If not, I wouldn't recommend it.
S&S Rating: 6.5/10 @whatsPlay