When one thinks One Piece video games, these days you’ll likely think about the widely successful Musou series Pirate Warriors, Bandai however is once again looking to branch out One Piece’s video game franchise by stepping away from the Musou and adventure genre. In the first One Piece fighter since the Grand Battle series, One Piece: Pirate Warriors takes some elements of J Star Victory and mixes them with it’s own spin.

One Piece: Burning Blood is an 2016 fighting game, it is developed by Spike Chunsoft, and published by Bandai Namco. It is available on PC, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, and Xbox One.

A new One Piece fighter since the release of Grand Battle.

One Piece: Burning Blood is a good, though limited fighting game taking inspiration from J Star Victory. While it’s no Pirate Warriors, Burning Blood brings plenty reasons to put dozens of hours into it here and there, the gameplay mechanics are pretty solid, however the story mode only covers one arc which is rather unfortunate.

Gameplay of Burning Blood.

THE GOOD: One Piece: Burning Blood is a decent break from the usual and more frequent Pirate Warrior games. Taking its style from J Star Victory, it’s given a great feel and play style. The animations for the specials are pretty cool and the graphics for the game itself aren’t bad at all.

A  J Star game with a One Piece roster.

THE BAD: Story mode only covers a single arc of the anime, with several characters’ storylines being playable. The battles can be super easy at times, leading to a spamming marathon.

Burning Blood is good, but very limited.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: While One Piece: Burning Blood is great for what it is, there’s certain parts that need some stronger work put into them. The story mode and some AI being part of those issues. The J Star Victory model at least works for a One Piece game, and quite possibly future Shonen anime game titles in the future.