One Piece: Burning Blood is the latest game in the One Piece series. Rather than fight a whole bunch of smaller enemies and then take on the boss at the end of the level, these battles are all "boss" battles, where you will be fighting one on one against some of your favorite characters.

Burning Blood is all in Japanese with English subtitles. Actually, I didn’t even notice the subtitles while I was fighting until I watched someone else play. Luckily, the stuff said while you’re fighting isn’t terribly important. As far as I can tell, it is the same voices from the series. If it’s not, they did a good job impersonating the series. Your characters will say the same line for each move, so if you get by spamming a single button, get ready to hear the same lines over and over.

When you're playing a licensed game, you want the characters in the game to look like the characters that you are used to from whatever series the game is based on. In this case, the developers did a really good job of capturing the unique characters from the One Piece series. There are a whole lot of characters available, over 30 fighting and even more support characters, including obviously Luffy, Nami, and the rest of the Straw Hat Pirates, but also lesser known characters like Alvida and Cavendish. This means you will get to see a variety of people, from men in full battle armor to women in bikinis. Apparently, women can fight well in very little clothing.

From the Main Menu of One Piece: Burning Blood, you will only have Paramount War to choose at first, but you will unlock the rest real quick. In the Paramount War, you will pick episodes to play and each episode has multiple chapters. You will need to beat one to unlock the next one, but you can go back and replay previous chapters any time. Each chapter has a condition that you have to beat to win it, which isn’t always beat your opponent. Some chapters also have an extra chapter that you can unlock by completing other conditions. You will see some similar scenes in different episodes, when they are seen from the different points of view of various characters. All the episodes have to do with rescuing Ace from execution, so there are only so many completely different scenes.

Once you unlock them, in the Main Menu you will also have Collection, WANTED Versus, and Pirate Base. In your Pirate Base, you can check out your crew and use your money to buy more characters. Collection lets you view any event movies you have unlocked and replay data. You can also see your data, check for hints, see your wanted posters, and more. In WANTED Versus, you will take on various opponents for rewards. A bit further in, you will unlock Pirate Flag Battle, Online, and Free Battle.

In Pirate, you choose a Force from pretty much every pirate crew from the game and the marines. This is an online battle system where you are fighting with and against other players online to try and rule the various islands. Once you choose a force, you cannot change factions without resetting your stats. In Free Battle, you can set up a battle with whatever rules you want versus the computer or a second local player. This is a great place to level up your characters and get used to the various skills they have. I would recommend playing here a bit before choosing Online. Online will let you fight against other players anywhere. You can choose to join a random match or set up your own. I like that it does a pretty good job of matching you to "equal" players, at least as far as I could tell. It did well for me. There are quite a few different ways that you can choose to play One Piece: Burning Blood, so make sure to test them all out.

There is no way for you to change the difficulty level in One Piece: Burning Blood. In Story Mode, if you want an easier game, replay the lower chapters until you level your characters up. You can also go level them up in the other battling modes. My only recommendation to make it harder is to play through the story first before you level anyone up. I did not find the Paramount War very difficult to complete. In each episode, I could pretty much pass the chapters by simply spamming the (Square) button. Not that I like to play that way, but I wanted to test it out and see if it worked.

Obviously if you're playing online, your difficulty is going be based on your opponent. As I mentioned before, the game did a pretty good job of matching me to an "equal" player. I have no clue what they base that equal on though. I can tell you that spamming a button does not (usually) work online, which is a good thing. I like having more of the harder challenge that fighting against a real player provides.

You can check your Move List for One Piece: Burning Blood in the Pause Menu. (X) is Jump, (O) is guard. You can use (L) while guarding to move, while (Square) is attack. (Triangle) will let you do a unique attack and using these buttons in combination with the (L) can produce different attacks. (Triangle) + (O) does a really handy attack that breaks guard. There are a lot of combinations, but you can check the move list anytime you need to by pressing (Options). Don’t forget to watch the gauge on your lower left. When it is full, you can press (R3) and really have some fun! The D-pad buttons will activate various support characters and (Options) will let you skip cut-scenes.

I have reviewed a number of One Piece games by now. While I do prefer the platformer ones, I have come to enjoy One Piece: Burning Blood more every time I play it. I do not like playing online as a general rule. I usually just go online to test it and then go back to the story. In One Piece: Burning Blood, I found that I like the online play a good bit. The Story Mode feels a bit repetitive since you’re seeing a lot of the same things from different points of view, but with both the online battles and the Pirate Flag Battle online, there is a lot to keep you occupied. If you’re looking for a fighting game with a lot of online play, check out One Piece: Burning Blood today!