Introduction

One Piece Triple Duels II is one of the more interesting RPG Maker projects I've looked at over the past several months. Unlike many of the other games I've looked at which are relatively standard turn-based RPGs. One Piece Triple Duels is a collectible card game. Sure, in the grand scheme of things its relatively simplistic in comparison to many of the other card games out there. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game has more mechanical depth, but the quality of a card game isn't determined by its complexity, but by how fun it is to play. And, One Piece Triple Duels is more frustrating then it is fun for me.

Story

Story wise the card game covers all of arcs from the manga, but renders them down to short summaries in order to save on time. And this decision is a mixed blessing. On one hand cutting down the various arcs to short summaries interspersed with matches allows the player to traverse through various arcs rather quickly if they have cards that are up to snuff. On the other hand this method of covering the story greatly hinders any scenes that could have had an emotional impact upon the player.

Gameplay

If I had to pick one game to compare One Piece Triple Duels II to then it would have to be Crimson Vs. from the .hack GU series of PS2 games. And while Crimson Vs. was fun up to a point. It was a good decision on the developer's part to make it a side quest that can be played in the background since the outcome of a match was determined entirely by what cards you had in your deck and the order you had them in. In One Piece Triple Duels II the outcome of a match is also determined entirely by what cards you selected and the order you placed them in. And since the player has no real control over the match after selecting their cards the process of working through the duel can become extremely boring and tedious. Some of the later matches might require you to tap away on the keyboard for the better part of two minutes.

To make matters worse the game eventually begins to hinder you on the cards that you can play during matches. These limitations can either be in the form of card levels or card types. Neither one of these factors is welcome in my opinion since the AI isn't held to the same standard. And to make matters worse, certain cards can ruin the effects of other cards in a way that doesn't make a lick of sense in my opinion.

I first came across this issue while utilizing everyone's favorite gender bender. The ability of this character raises the health points and attack power of not only his own card but all of the cards behind him. This can cause cards whose effects activate if they are in prime condition to be deactivated. It's just mind boggling that raising a card's health points would take it out of prime condition.

Another gripe I have with this game is that it doesn't do a particularly good job at explaining the effects of some of the cards. The best example of this issue is the various bombs you can acquire over the course of the game. All of them simply list their effect as explosion, but unless you try them out you'll never know how powerful that explosion is.

Another issue in the same vein is that some cards have effect descriptions that are entirely misleading. A good example of this is fighting bull whose card claims that he doubles the attack power of the cards that come after it. In reality this card grants an ally card +25 attack points when an enemy initiates an attack. And this effect will activate twice. So the maximum gain you'll get from this card is +50.

Though to end on a positive note the game does include an impressive 375 unique cards to collect. To put this in perspective the base sets for Yu-Gi-Oh and the My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game only contain 126 and 211 unique cards respectively.

Graphics & Sound

In terms of visuals the game does alright for itself. It isn't anything amazing, but I'd be a fool if I was expecting anything particularly imprssive out of a game about playing cards. On the sound side of things the game makes use of a few tracks from the show. Though, I'm not sure if all of the tracks are derived from the anime. As for why I can't make that determination. I'm not actually a fan of One Piece or even a watcher of the anime. Any knowledge of the show that I do have has come from reading the wiki or watching short clips on youtube. Regardless, the the soundtrack is pretty decent.

Conclusion

One Piece Triple Duels II is a hard game for me to judge. On one hand the main game feels like a mini-game or side quest like Crimson Vs. or Triple Triad. On the other hand this game can easily eat up in excess of 30 hours if you wish to acquire everything. Especially if you aren't familiar with the cards you'll need to utilize to win certain battles on your first attempt.

Then again I find the matches rather boring to sit through since you have no control over the outcome after you've selected your cards. Add in all of the other gripes I have with this game both mentioned and not mentioned and your left with a game that is more aggravating for me then fun when you get to the last couple of arcs. As such my recommendation for those that want to play this game is only do so if your a fan of One Piece and card games or are a die hard fan of card games and want to experience as many of them as possible.