Burning Blood: Just ONE PIECE of Bandai Namco’s Upcoming Lineup

Further bolstering Bandai Namco’s recent love of arena-style fighting games and showing multiple new incarnations at once, One Piece: Burning Blood pits the cast of the series in 3-on-3 battles, hot-swapping characters in large arenas surrounded by spectators—which, one would think, was a bad idea when fighters can be launched into the background and damage far-away structures.

Presumably there’s a story mode that has to do with the Straw Hat pirate Luffy himself, but while I played in the new digs of Bandai Namco last week, I wasn’t shown story… I was offered the chance to get my fight on against anybody in the vicinity of the new Bandai Namco offices.

And fight I did! One Piece: Burning Blood combines a three-dimensional one-on-one arena and the jump-in character changes of titles like Marvel vs. Capcom, where comboing is the nature of the beast. And there are multiple ways to accomplish it too, like chaining character combos together with characters being swapped in and out to deal the damage. Though this same idea can be used to break a combo as well—jumping another character in at just the right time will interrupt any combo and send both parties back to square one. Which I learned after fighting Roberto… dammit, Roberto I wasn’t ready!

Hell, you can even launch an opponent into the arena itself when you’ve beaten them into submission, for example taking down a chunk of glacier in the distance after a solid punt. It’s a neat little animation sequence, which happened to me a few times fighting against other writers covering the event. Which reminds me… dammit Miguel, I was still trying to grasp the controls! Gimmie a second to make sure, and no, I didn’t mean to kick you that time, so one shot and we’re even!

Like many anime-based fighting games Bandai Namco has taken on, mashing a light/jab button will chain into a combo, while heavier attacks can stun or knock down an opponent. Combining the two, including the simple special technique system (two-button presses for the majority of them) and the ability to let another teammate jump in on the fun, and you’re brawling. After your gauge is filled up press R3 for Burst mode, and R3 again to unleash a super-strong attack. The system appears to be designed with a Super Smash Bros vibe—anybody can jump in, fight, and mash and do pretty well, but the real test is stretching the combos as far as Luffy can stretch himself.

Watching others engaging one another in fights and seeing the intensity of some players threw me off guard, including one dude that was more pumped for One Piece fights than I’ve ever been since I first discovered Street Fighter II. Behind me, they raged like the finals of EVO, while I tried to focus on blocking and countering.

Thankfully the game feels balanced and not particularly unfair after knockdowns or recovery skills. There are a few overpowered heavies I found, mostly the big buff characters you would expect, but hopefully that can be resolved to a reasonable level in the final release. I wasn’t able to catch a number for the final cast of characters—at least 30 to be sure—with a handful of supporting characters to hop in for added destruction as assists. Bottom line, there’s plenty of team configurations to choose from, so if you’re tired of Nami or Sanji or the Stretchy One himself, you can get some distance from them and play with plenty of other characters.

The fights ran smoothly no matter the characters (or their controlling players, no matter how they screamed) and showed damage on their model the more they took, which was a nice touch. It’s thankfully not quite to the same level of clothes-shedding as something like Senran Kagura—though on female characters it’s reminiscent—but the dirt and torn clothing is cool to see after a hard slog. Combine the little touches like that, or the animated and destructible (kinda) backgrounds, or that all of the Japanese DLC is included on the North American version, and you’re all set.

One Piece: Burning Blood is scheduled for release on May 31, across pretty much everything but a graphing calculator or 3DS (PS4/PS Vita digital release/Xbox One/Steam). So get your straw hats ready, kids, it’s time… well, to punch and kick everybody in the face, methinks. Sail on! (And I will get you back, Miguel and Roberto!)