Relating to translating One Piece right into a online game, builders have sometimes taken the motion route, leaning on flashy battles and wild Satan Fruit powers as pirates sail the excessive seas. That makes One Piece: Grand Gourmet’s Sanji-centric restaurant builder with the total roster of characters from throughout the sequence is an impressed alternative. However whereas I like the premise and recognize revisiting the key areas and feeding almost each character, working to win over residents of the Grand Line typically feels as shallow because the lovestruck chef it is based mostly round.
After a storm separates them from the remainder of the crew, Sanji and Luffy discover a restaurant ship being terrorized by a bunch of pretend Straw Hat pirates who’re posing as (and giving a foul identify to) the restaurant of Sanji’s mentor, the Baratie. The duo units sail to beat the fakers in culinary battles and clear the Baratie’s identify all through the Grand Line and past. Taking a chronological path from the early Romance Daybreak days within the East Blue all the way in which to a style of the newest arc within the manga and anime, Grand Gourmet is filled with fan service in lieu of a significant authentic story. Whereas I want there was extra meat on the bone, I get pleasure from Grand Gourmet embracing Sanji’s ethos that everybody who wants meals shall be fed, and it seems, everybody the Straw Hats ever met is hungry.
Seafood, They Eat It
Your floating restaurant begins small and empty, with solely a kitchen, a desk, and Sanji’s chef expertise to cook dinner for hungry prospects. Feeding folks brings in useful money you need to use to construct out the restaurant with extra tables, sights, and decorations to enhance the house’s consolation. The extra snug the lodging, the happier the shoppers, and the extra they may spend on meals. Mockingly, consolation is an unlucky phrase for this metric. The crimes I will need to have dedicated to the idea of inside design need to be essentially the most anxious and sloppy locations to try to get pleasure from a meal. I like the thought of constructing a restaurant that pulls components from varied islands and allows you to run wild with the decor, with Sanji cooking delicacies from throughout the globe, however that tantalizing proposition falls flat in execution.
Every new area brings a set of restaurant fixtures themed to the present story arc you’re crusing by way of, be that new flooring, lamps, benches, or landscaping. For instance, the Thriller Bark set options horror-themed decor, plus a spot to plant the stray zombie buddies who accompany the residing guests on the ship. As an alternative of rewarding you for making an aesthetically pleasing, well-organized eating room, Grand Gourmet doesn’t care about precise consolation. As an alternative, it incentivizes you to cram each sq. inch with lamps, benches, and shrubbery to spice up stats. Neither Crocodile nor Eustice Kidd in the end cares what their assigned seat appears like. And due to the restricted house and clunky reorganization instruments, these areas remained cluttered catastrophes that also someway made a boatload of cash.
Some components additionally transfer past the everyday restaurant vibe to make the ship a extra interesting vacation spot, however they aren’t with out their very own faults, both. My favourite fantastical sights are assembly spots for large sea kings or land crabs, which add cool components to the ship’s deck and showcase the eccentric animal designs of the One Piece world. It’s enjoyable to gather fish to retailer in an aquarium or hold the pets of tourists in animal-friendly environments. Nevertheless, after you have the options and creatures in place, there’s not a lot else to do with them. They’re one more money-collecting attraction that doesn’t have an effect on their environment apart from offering a small bump of consolation.
Meal Prep
Like the inside design, the restaurant’s meals has promising constructing blocks however lacks the finesse to make planning a correct meal well worth the hassle. Sanji attracts inspiration from his fellow crewmates and restaurant guests, letting him make all the pieces from easy dishes like rice or spring rolls to fantastical concoctions based mostly on legendary characters or occasions from the One Piece world. Piecing collectively a balanced meal of as much as 4 gadgets allows you to promote merchandise at the next worth, and you may enhance it additional by pairing them with different meals endorsed by the identical Straw Hat crew member. Besides, just like the design components, it’s disappointing that diners are by no means choosy about what you particularly serve them; it solely issues that you just put the meals out.
The most effective plan of action is to serve what’s going to rake in essentially the most money each time, which the automated meal device already does successfully. I want there have been incentives for placing collectively a regional meal or a group-inspired platter to interrupt up the monotony of solely pairing the priciest merchandise. This extends to the pretend Baratie boss battles, which put Sanji in a Meals Community-esque cooking competitors, during which the automated meals had been nonetheless lots profitable. You possibly can all the time put collectively bespoke plates of meals and enhance a meal with totally different figures, plates, and utensils to boost the meal-planning expertise – there’s simply not any motive to take action outdoors of getting somewhat enjoyable.
Studying to cook dinner new meals is crucial to constructing the restaurant’s repute and combating pretend Baratie, however whether or not or not you’ll unlock a vital recipe is a crapshoot. Some meals are key to turning a buyer right into a fan of the restaurant, which lets them comply with you to new areas, nevertheless it’s nigh not possible to know who may know which recipe. Nothing factors you towards who to impress and what meals they’re able to inspiring. It’s a must to be fortunate sufficient to have the appropriate gadgets readily available, and the appropriate folks on board, to crack a novel recipe. Unlocking a particular meals is usually dumb luck, and whereas it may be irritating to determine, a lot of what you want falls into your lap on the proper time. The moments when issues don’t come collectively really feel unhealthy, although, particularly when your favourite characters need to be left behind when the time arrives to maneuver ahead on the journey.
Pressureless Cooker
Whereas Sanji handles the cooking tasks, Luffy units out to discover with the remainder of the pirate crew. The motion itself is straightforward, however I appeared ahead to looking out every new area as a result of it’s one of many few duties that allows the restaurant to constantly flourish in significant methods. These idle actions price Berry, affinity factors, or cash to ship the crew to vital One Piece islands, villages, and bases – the value is price it, although, as exploration rewards you with new faces to go to the restaurant, giftable gadgets to create new followers or enhance profitability, and valuable substances for brand spanking new kitchen concoctions. Some rewards are level-gated whereas others require a particular crew member to convey them house, giving me an ideal motive to stage up each member of the Straw Hat crew each time attainable (when you’ve discovered them someplace within the huge ocean, that’s).
Every crew member helps out the restaurant in a manner solely they will, and these are among the finest realized elements of Grand Gourmet. Sanji, in fact, cooks all the meals; Franky, the shipwright, creates new furnishings and may develop the sq. footage of the ship; artful Ussop makes decorations and utensils to change meals; and the swordsman Zoro trains the Straw Hats, permitting them to stage up additional for expeditions and different actions. My favourite crew member is the money-hungry Nami, who not solely bailed me out financially a number of instances but in addition negotiates a half-price low cost on new facilities as soon as a day, giving me a neat loophole to purchase costly ship upgrades on a budget. Each member of the pirate crew brings a enjoyable component to the ship, even when all the pieces doesn’t essentially assist the reason for beating the pretend Baratie.
Working a enterprise isn’t low cost, particularly when serving lots of of hungry mouths in the course of the briney deep, however I’m upset by the dearth of strain or punishment for spending far outdoors my means. Each store, buffet, and worker employed to assist the trigger has each day overhead, which put me deep in monetary hassle nearly daily. (Don’t get me began on how a lot it was so as to add Blackbeard to the payroll.) Every dawn, my Berry rely went adverse, and I needed to crawl by way of the day. As a result of no friction challenged my poor monetary administration, I by no means wanted to discover a higher approach to run the corporate. The one time anybody cares how shallow my pockets are is once I’m spending cash in the course of the day, and even then, somebody often bailed me out instantly, filling my coffers excess of crucial.
With no motive to suppose too exhausting in regards to the enterprise administration facet of issues, what has as an alternative saved me taking part in Grand Gourmet (even after the shut to twenty hours it took me to roll credit) is seeing rattling close to each single named One Piece character working across the ship and interacting with one another. It’s enjoyable to see previous comrades share a desk or bitter rivals chat about characters they relate to. Some meetups are stunning and humorous, like two villains discussing “work,” which can or might not contain poisoning folks with artificial Satan Fruits. There are additionally references to its personal lack continuity, which make for attention-grabbing meetups between characters who might not exist in the identical place or lifetime.
Every character has an affection score that, when raised to a specified stage, can provide your workers new gadgets to craft or extra prospects to ask, making them vital to work together with past simply the enjoyable of getting them aboard. Grand Gourmet appears nice too, stuffed with small particulars on the lots of of character sprites which are really spectacular. Nearly each character’s design is recognizable and distinctive, with many that includes particular animations that convey every individual to life, like Akainu firing up an enormous magma fist whereas serving to to create a brand new dish. These thrives don’t occur typically, however do inject some much-needed panache to the usually mundane manner everybody strolls round.
Whereas nearly each character the anime has produced is right here, it’s a disgrace the identical can’t be mentioned for the memorable music, voice solid, or sound results from its lengthy historical past. As an alternative, the soundtrack is proscribed to a handful of nondescript background themes on a brief loop paired with a painfully small pattern of sound results, which makes it really feel like an early iOS recreation (which isn’t an enormous shock given this recreation is so deeply tied to developer Kairosoft’s cellular recreation lineage). An enormous a part of One Piece’s enchantment lies in its audio design and music, so it’s a bummer that Grand Gourmet has none of that.