To be honest, I was stunned when I saw the title of this section. It is obviously a place to post selfies and make friends, but here I am posting game reviews. But now that I'm here, let's talk about the One Piece IP mobile game I played recently – “One Piece's Road to the Strongest”. I'm not going to brag about it, but this game makes me, an old player who has been struggling since the Symbian era, feel a little bit like I used to squat in bed and play Java games.
Let's talk about restoration first. As a long-time Pirates fan for 20 years, I am actually quite picky about IP-licensed games. Many of them are just rip-offs. But this game has made copies of classic plots such as the War on the Top, Judiciary Island, and Sky Island. In the battle animations, Luffy's Third Gear, Zoro's Three Thousand Worlds, and Ace's Entei, the performance effects are actually quite good, not the kind of perfunctory PPT. Especially when I saw those familiar voices appearing when recruiting characters, I felt a little excited 🏴☠️
The gameplay is a traditional strategy card turn-based game. To be honest, there are too many such games on the market now, but its numerical balance is pretty good, and there is no sense of suffocation that makes you unable to play without spending money. The lineup must consider positioning, attribute restraint, and skill linkage. For example, bringing Luffy, Ace, and Sabo together can trigger the fire fist linkage. For old fans, this kind of easter egg is much more interesting than stacking combat power. Moreover, the 0-yuan party can also get a lot of SSR by saving resources, which is slower, but better than stability.
When it comes to the charging model, it says 0, which actually means that the game itself is free to download. Of course there are in-app purchases, but there is no forced consumption. It's quite comfortable to play with a monthly card party. Compared with those glamorous products with overwhelming 648 gift packs now, this game is considered a good one. Of course, if you are pursuing the top ten in PVP in the whole server, you still have to spend money, but at least zero-krypton players can experience 80% of the content in the main line, dungeons, and activities.
For cross-server activities such as maritime hegemony and peak showdown, Buddhist players like me just play casually. But to be honest, watching the Straw Hats I trained become stronger step by step, and using the Shichibukai lineup of Laosha + Moria + Mingge to counterattack Gao V in the arena, the sense of accomplishment brought by this kind of development is still the same as before.
Finally, I want to complain. This game was launched in 2016, almost ten years ago now. The picture quality is indeed not as good as that of new games, but the art style is very similar to animation, and the UI is not fancy. I actually think it is more attractive than those light pollution special effects. If you are nostalgic and don't want to be fooled, you can try this and just chase the Grand Route again 🌊