One Piece: Pirates' Carnival review

The popular crew from One Piece take to the seas once more, this time in an Othello-style clash packed to the gills with mini-games

Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Pirates' Carnival features a healthy selection of 35 or so mini-games, and unlike Mario Party, these aren't button mashers that'll wear out your controllers. The mini-games include standard brawling, boss fights versus pirate captains, parachuting onto boats, firing canons at moving targets, a simple first-person shooter, and sports-based contests like basketball and dodgeball. A few are a bit confusing, but overall they're easy to pick up and decent fun to play.

This is a good-looking game, too. It's not technologically impressive but it runs smoothly and really captures the distinctive look of the "One Piece" characters, albeit in super-deformed style.There's lots of nifty voice-acting and situation-specific dialogue, too, which fans should appreciate.

Unfortunately, load times put a bit of a damper on the action; the game is constantly pausing to load voice conversations, mini-games, and unskippable instruction screens.

More info

GenreFamily
DescriptionTake one whacked-out anime series, add in a pirates' chest of minigames and mix well. Pour onto an Othello board.
Platform"PS2","GameCube"
US censor rating"Rating Pending","Rating Pending"
UK censor rating"",""
More
CATEGORIES