Since the year 2000, around 36 One Piece games have been released on a variety of home consoles and portable platforms. Of those, only nine have made it to North America, and like almost all titles based on big anime and manga properties, the quality has varied. The latest game, One Piece: Unlimited World Red, is one of the better games to use the license, though there are a few things that prevent it from being the best of the series.

An infamous pirate, Red the Aloof, has broken out of a military-run prison to wreak havoc on the pirate world for his own personal gains. Meanwhile, Luffy and his crew are sailing to Trans Town to return Pato, a helpful tanuki ally, to his home. After making port on the island and saving an innkeeper from a small group of thugs, Luffy discovers that his entire crew has gone missing. Luffy goes on a quest to find his crewmates and return to sea and search for the legendary One Piece treasure.

In an interesting twist, the game doesn't try to make any concessions for series newcomers. Despite it being the first One Piece entry on the Wii U, it doesn't fall into the trap of trying to recap the story from the beginning. There may be brief name cards attached to each character when they're first introduced, but you don't have to relive the story of how Luffy assembled his eclectic crew.  The game assumes you're already familiar with the characters, their personalities, and their histories up to this point and moves forward from there. For those who are new to the series, the lack of setup can make things confusing, but the story is easy enough to follow, so you won't feel totally lost if you don't understand everything that's going on.

Unlimited World Red is a typical third-person adventure brawler where you traverse several environments that see you and your crew revisiting several important locales from the series, including the dual climate island of Punk Hazard and Skypiea. There are few puzzles in the game, and exploration is very restricted due to the level design, which features very few avenues off the main path. The focus is on the fighting, and there are plenty of enemies along the way to each stage's boss, all of whom have dueled with members of the pirate crew before.

The battle system tries to do a few things to avoid the stigma of being a button-masher like One Piece: Pirate Warriors. With the exception of the fights in Punk Hazard, every area allows you to bring up to two other companions with you. In addition to having competent AI so they can take care of enemies on their own, they also act like extra health bars since you can switch to them at any time and they don't take any damage until you take control of them. The combat controls are simple enough that there are a decent amount of combos you can squeeze from the system. The game takes advantage of this by adding a Rush mechanic, where completing the list of displayed combos gives you and your party a temporary strength boost when battling hordes of enemies. There's also a phrase system in place that lets you equip your party members with phrases they'll shout out on command. They act like buffs in combat, so you can get a small health boost, a defense boost, or a boost to your special attack meter, depending on the phrases and characters.

While the system may seem to be a little deeper than the formula in Pirate Warriors, it isn't nearly as fun to use during encounters with regular foes. Part of this has to do with the camera, which is so close to your character that your view of the battlefield is noticeably reduced. This wouldn't be as bad if your moves weren't so flashy. Whether it's stretchy limbs flying all over the place or large puffs of smoke coming from cannon fire, there's enough happening on-screen that your view of the battle can be greatly obscured by your own actions. The effects also obscure the prompts that let you know an enemy is about to attack. While mindlessly flailing around might work out in the end, it also means that you're taking damage that you could've avoided. Even though these issues hurt the regular fights, they don't affect the boss fights. The camera is pulled back enough during boss battles, so you have a better view. The area is usually devoid of cronies, so the number of elements on-screen doesn't become distracting. Those small changes make the boss fights more enjoyable despite their inherent difficulty.

The battles comprise the bulk of the Adventure mode, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing offered. As you go through each level, you can collect random animals, fish and items to bring back to Trans Town. Once there, you can use the items and some cash to craft new buildings and expand the town. Item shops, for example, can be built and restocked, so you can have extra healing items or status cures for each mission. You can also open up areas that take you on side missions to obtain better phrases or level up your character without going into battles. The randomness of the item drops in stages means that some revisiting may be necessary if you want to expand the town to the fullest, and the game feels artificially extended as a result, but it remains a good addition nonetheless.

Though the primary focus of Unlimited World Red is the Adventure mode, a second mode, Battle Coliseum mode, almost feels like it was meant to be in a different game. The title takes on a separate story, with the Straw Hat Pirates teaming up with Trafalgar Law to enter a tournament and take down the leader, Donquixote Doflamingo. While the fighting system is the same as the main game, the structure is much different. You can choose which battles you want to participate in: Duel, which pits you one-on-one against a boss, or Scramble, which lets you team up with another person and gives you a quota of regular enemies to defeat within a given time limit. As you win, you unlock new characters and battle types for this mode. Special Matches pits two characters together for story purposes. Battle Royale has you facing two bosses simultaneously along with an accompanying enemy horde, and Boss Rush has you going through bosses one at a time. Even with the lack of cut scenes, Battle Coliseum is a surprisingly lengthy mode that can last for a few hours if you're looking to unlock everything. It's also a valuable and worthwhile mode since some of the items you obtain here can be applied to Adventure mode.

The Wii U version has a few features that are different from the other platforms. If you've already purchased the 3DS iteration, you can share save data between the two platforms. The lack of cross-buy support means that it is an expensive proposition to have the same game twice, but this may be of interest to die-hard fans. Multiplayer gameplay is limited to two players instead of four, but instead of splitting the game so that one player uses the GamePad and the other uses the TV screen, it goes for a more traditional split-screen method. Similar to Resident Evil 5, the split is horizontal but has black space to maintain aspect ratio. It's an odd choice since it was demonstrated that the Wii U can handle completely different video feeds for two players. Those looking for the GamePad screen to do something special will also be disappointed to learn that the only feature is off-TV play. It doesn't display a special inventory screen or map at all times; it's a strange omission since the 3DS version has this feature and the Wii U's configuration makes it a perfect candidate for this functionality.

Graphically, the game is great. The use of cel-shading has produced a world that matches the anime quite well, and there are no signs of aliasing. Worlds are bright and colorful, and the effects for just about every move are plentiful, so everything feels lively even if it's something as mundane as a punch sailing through the air. The animations are fluid, and despite everything happening on-screen, there's never a hint of slowdown. Aside from the issues mentioned earlier that pertain to combat, the only other issue in this department has to do with the cut scenes. The game fluctuates between traditional scenes with full body portraits and fully animated scenes using the in-game engine. The former is enough of a staple in a number of Japanese titles that fans are accustomed to seeing it, but the latter is more confusing since some scenes feature full lip sync while others do not. By failing to fully commit to a style, the inclusion of the scenes feels less polished and cheapens the title.

Like the graphics, the game's audio is quite nice. The score matches the anime well enough in that it tries to evoke a sense of adventure and grandeur for all the locales you visit. It doesn't assign specific themes to specific areas, so going to the desert area of Alabasta, for example, doesn't produce a desert-sounding theme. It means that the soundtrack is virtually interchangeable between levels and lacking some identity in that respect, but the music is good enough that it's more than what you'd expect from most anime-based titles. Elsewhere, the sound effects are fine, while the voice acting is done well thanks to the original cast reprising their roles for the game. As is the case with most anime-based titles, the voice-overs are all done in Japanese with English subtitles, so those looking for the Funimation cast to be present will be disappointed.

One Piece: Unlimited World Red is good. Although the combat is quite messy when facing waves of normal enemies, the excitement of the boss fights more than makes up for it. There's some nice variety to the adventure in terms of things you can undertake, and the additional Battle Coliseum mode is a nice bonus for those who want to extend their time with the game without resorting to the available DLC. The great presentation goes a long way toward pleasing fans of the long-running series, but for those just getting into it, this game isn't a bad place to start.

Score: 7.0/10