By Namco Bandai have released a new trailer for One Piece: Romance Dawn, their upcoming PSP RPG. Be warned that spoilers are shown, all the way up to the final events of the series’ Marineford arc. (Then again, if you’re here looking at this article, you probably already know what happenss.)
More details have been released with regard to gameplay. First, you can select the island you want to visit from a world map, where you can view the episodes. It’s most likely an “episode” refers to an entire arc, although this is unclear. After selecting an episode to play, you can travel through the cities as any one of the Straw Hats.
The battle system, termed the Grand Tactical Battle system, combines turn-based battle with action-based combo. The result seems to be reminiscent of Xenogears gameplay. Attacking will cause you to accumulate Tension Points, which can be used to activate special attacks.
The game is shown to cover at least to the end of the Marineford arc. The story is told through a combination of manga-looking skills, skits (similar to those from Tales games), and anime cutscenes. There is a total of 30 minutes of animation, newly redrawn by Toei Animation, included.
(As an aside, the Boss fights show that much more story detail will be included in Romance Dawn than we saw in Pirate Warriors, as we see the Straw Hat crew take on the Baroque Works Numbers in Alabaster.)
In addition, you can customize character appearances with items such as Ace’s Hat, the Heavenly Ones’ (Tenryuubito in fandom) bubble helmet, and black angel wings. These items also change stats in some fashion. The trailer also shows that there’s some item synthesis system in the game.
Finally, the opening song is an original created especially for the game—”Eternal Waves” by TRIPLANE. One Piece: Romance Dawn will be released on December 20th.
