Anime licensed games in general get kind of a bad rap. There will always be a prevailing notion that they're somewhat less of a game because they aren't originally from this medium. However, I can't actually say almost any anime game I've played is an entirely frivolous, soulless game. Even weird ones that shouldn't even exist like Ravemaster on GameCube.

People following these kinds of games maybe know about the history of a game like Shrek SuperSlam. The gist is that they were given a really tight deadline to produce a game that was divisive among their team-- But soon they got a second wind and decided to make it something. Heavily inspired by competitive Melee at the time, they ended up making the game a lot more hardcore than what a Shrek game should be. Extremely expressive movement, with Power Stone inspired environmental mechanics. While at the top level the game devolved into something very awful; The attempt was both prescient and ostensible.

I bring up the Shrek anecdote not because One Piece Grand Battle 3 has any sort of documented design history that led to a cult following-- it's mainly to illustrate that these are still games with ideas in them. I do think these games tend to suffer from massive design clutter just because of the odds they're given though. Typically not even given a full year to complete these games-- They have to fit in as many callbacks to the source material as possible, which doesn't always translate well to game mechanics.

The Grand Battle series is kinda unique in that it's entire presentation and style are I'd say, on brand. But no other game or related media actually does what they do or look like how they do. You hear a lot of people decry anime arena fighters nowadays because there are too many of them; But each of these games are genuinely very unique. The sequel to this game, Grand Battle Rush is one of the best looking games ever created in my opinion. Insane texture work, with really cool shadow masking techniques. The way it handles character outlines is cool too, it's a combination of many different blend modes which made the outlines not always super graphic. Something that you'd think would break art direction, but it's accounted for everywhere.

So, I'm writing for One Piece Grand Battle 3 mainly because there's one design element in this game that really stuck out to me and best embodies my thesis here. The fact that these are really games worth looking at. In this game, Hina is a playable character. Any One Piece fan might be surprised to hear this. In the series she only ever did one thing and basically never came back. But because she was relevant in 2003 she's here now! She has the ability to make her body into shackles that detach after latching onto a target. In game, she has a move that adds up to two stocks of charge, and with 2 charges her shackles ensnare the opponent for the longest duration. The first guess is that you use this in tandem with one of her other moves, just a straight lunge that applies the shackles. As a sort of way of just catching someone, or maybe it's like a command grab. But this move isn't unblockable, and it's slow and terrible.

You'd think there was no use of charging her stocks, but there actually is one. At the end of her horizontal auto combo (There are 3 combo trees. Horizontal, Vertical, and Guard Break. There are two enders unique to the Horizontal and Vertical path. Either continue forward, or end with the other button. Example being A->A->X as a horizontal string with a vertical ender.) the vertical ender will whiff its final hit if the combos motion went over unlevel terrain. The hit right before applies the stock shackle effect. The interplay here is monumentally interesting to me. Because in a more modern game, these moves would be scripted. But there's an emergent quality here. All of her strings end with her ensnaring the opponent, just to automatically break it with the followup. It's one move, and yet. Whiffing it this way grants you an entirely new combo extension.

Interactions like this are kinda why I always look at these games. There's, a lot. And also, I just love One Piece.