One Piece: Treasure Cruise is a Free-to-Play Mobile Phone Game published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game is available as either the original Japanese version or the later Global version. Some events and updates may differ between the two, but they're mechanically the same game, with the Japanese version being about a year ahead in contentnote .
The game follows Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates' adventures from the anime, going to each each major island/location the heroes visit on their journey. Each island contains a series of battles, each fight being framed by dialogue and scenes from the show. Thanks to events, even filler arcs and movies get representation as well.
This game contains the following tropes:
- Adaptation Distillation: Mihawk's presence in the Baratie arc is removed, meaning that Zoro's swords are never broken, he isn't hampered by any wounds during the Arlong Park arc, and he doesn't explicitly acquire Yubashiri and Sandai Kotetsu during the Loguetown arc. Their duel happens in the cutscenes for Mihawk's raid, but its consequences remain left out since it isn't part of the game's story proper.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The auto-targeting system has some strange priorities - a unit's rarity is a factor in which enemy is targeted next, but that often doesn't coincide with which enemy the player wants to take out first.
- Awesome, yet Impractical:
- Characters farmable from raid missions. When fully evolved and leveled up, they have high stats that can boost your teams, and tend to have really good specials and and captain abilities. However, they also possess a cost of 50 and have really high initial cooldowns for their special, requiring a player to either stall for a long time or just forget about using it. It takes a lot of grinding on raids to max out their specials to something more reliable.
- Some captain abilities and specials in general tend to be too impractical for actual use outside some niche roles. For example, Raid Monster Chopper can boost STR characters' attack power by a whopping 3x as a captain, very powerful for a free-to-play unit, but the side effect is that the team suffers a severe HP cut that is difficult to maintain in extended fights.
- Young Whitebeard, a unit that can be obtained from an Ambush raid, possesses a special that at max power can cut enemies' health by a unprecedented 40%. Unfortunately, his starting cooldown requires the player to wait for 36 turns, far too long for many teams to work with effectively, and even maxing it out leaves the cooldown at a just-barely-tolerable 24 turns.
- Boring, but Practical: Slasher teams, as there are a good number of solid, easily accessible Slasher characters, most anyone can get Mihawk, the strongest Slasher captain, since having him drop isn't necessarily dependent on luck, and Slashers are just plain strong. Even if you've put together some good non-Slasher teams, past a certain level, a solid sixth of your friend list will probably be Mihawk teams, so you'll always have a Slasher captain ready to borrow.
- Raid Donquixote Doflamingo is yet another free-to-play slasher unit with a high attack power and an incredible special that not only manipulates orbs, but also double their effectiveness for one turn. Because the number of characters who can boost orb effectiveness to that degree or higher can only be count on one hand, Doflamingo has seen usage even in teams that are not optimized for slashers just because he is that useful.
- Boss Rush:
- The second half of Mihawk's training forest pits the player against most of the bosses from East Blue and the early Grand Line, as well as Ace.
- Rayleigh's training forest ends with a gauntlet consisting of most of the Supernovas, capped off by a fight with the Dark King himself.
- At Chaos Difficulty, Colosseum missions will throw at least two boss characters at you back-to-back, each with their own caveats and quirks that you have to work around in order to succeed.
- Crossover: With DBZ Dokkan Battle. For a limited time, Frieza and his men were fightable on a special island that would drop valuable rewards as part of a competition between the two games, to see who could rack up more wins against the boss (Frieza for Treasure Cruise, Doflamingo for Dokkan)
- Counter-Attack: Some bosses (Colosseum Rebecca being the first example) grant themselves a "Counter" status, in which they return any damage they receive upon their attack timer reaching the end. Given that most teams easily exceed their own health when it comes to dealing damage, a counterattack is likely to guarantee a One-Hit Kill.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The timing of attacks can differ between characters, and even between one character and their evolution, so it's easy to drop your chain if you've just evolved a character whose timing changes dramatically.
- Difficulty by Region:
- To the fanbase's resentment, no increases to the maximum box size were implemented in Global for a long time, even though the game had progressed past the point were the Japanese version's box size was increased. This left international players with a 200 space inventory maximum, while Japan players could upgrade their box size to 700. Thankfully, Global did eventually get a couple bax space expansions.
- The Global version received a reduction in the stamina recharge time much sooner than the Japanese version did.
- Devil Girl Nico Robin, a unit that could be received during the the Halloween events, has the second part of her Special do different things in the Global and Japanese versions. In the Japanese version, she completely removes the Blind status from your crew, while in Global, she reduces Despair by one turn.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- A fair number of possibilities, should one get lucky and pull something good from Rare Recruit. It's also possible to get a very strong early-game unit or two from the rotating fortnight events, as bosses still have a small chance of dropping on the lower difficulties.
- Ashura Zoro is common, non luck-based one, given that he's easily evolved from a unit that everyone gets for free early on, has a very strong Captain Ability for DEX teams, and it's easy to double up on said ability through your friend list, seeing as most players have him.
- New players are often recommended to farm Arlong, as he has one of the highest attack stats in the game, even in the current Japanese version, and is a good captain for Slasher teams, which tend to be very effective the whole game. The point where Arlong becomes available generally makes him more of a Disc Two Nuke, but it's possible to get him much earlier from Rare Recruit or if his fortnight event comes around.
- To celebrate the release of version 6.01, all players (including new players) were given materials to Super-Evolve Gear 2 Luffy into Elephant Gun Luffy, who boasts incredible attack, a strong special with a none-too-outrageous cooldown and the ability to delay, and a very powerful captain ability. As Luffy is the very first character every player obtains and evolving him to Gear 2 Luffy is not difficult at all, new players present for this event can breeze through the early stages without breaking a sweat.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect:
- How the healing mechanic works. When meat shows up next to a character, hitting the enemy with a Perfect causes the meat to fly off; you must do less than that without missing to actually eat it and regain health. This is inverted with the bomb icon, which will damage your team in the same conditions.
- The Legend Gild Tesoro has a similar mechanic to meat orbs, which makes your crew stronger after hitting 4 or more Greats, and weaker if you hit a Perfect.
- Dual Boss:
- Paired enemies are typically fought as bosses once each on their own before fighting together one or two stages later. The Baroque work teams a natural fit for this, since working in pairs is already their modus operandi.
- Donquixote Doflamingo's raid ends with you facing down the Heavenly Demon and his own copy at the same time, each with the same amount of high health.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A lot of design decisions from the early parts of the game stand out as a bit odd.
- Chef Zeff is your typical rare story drop, except he has a Captain Ability that multiples the attack of affected characters by 2.5, something normally reserved for raid bosses or Rare Recruit units. His maximum level is 50, which is oddly low for a unit with that powerful of an ability.
- Arlong's attack stat is ridiculously high, being among the top five in the game to this day. He's weak enough in other area's that this may have been an intentional design choice, but he remains such an easily obtained, pure beatstick of a unit that many players chalk it up to this trope.
- Asura Zoro's top tier Captain Ability far outshines those of the comparable Luffy and Sanji units that players also get from the story.
- Units whose Special changes into a slightly stronger or slightly different Special upon evolution, such as Ace or Robin. This makes it pointless to skill up their special before evolution, since the new Special won't inherit any levels from the old one. There books may still even be dropped from some fortnight events, as if you'd want them.
- Golden Pound Usopp is perhaps the most renowned, as his Special Ability so far outclass that of the rest of his evolutionary line that an update to the game eventually allowed his alternate evolution to be "side-evolved" into the Golden Pound evolution to help players rectify the mistake of picking the wrong evolution, the only instance of such an option in the entire game.
- Some early-game characters can carry out Tandem attacks if they are grouped in the same crew and possess a TND orb in their slot. Tandem attacks have since been cut (likely due to being too impractical to effectively implement in the long run), and the TND re-delegated to being a neutral orb exploitable by niche abilities.
- Freemium: Rainbow Gems can be bought for real money, and are tied to most of the game's major functions, but non-paying players still get a steady allowance of Gems from log-in bonuses and story progression rewards.
- Fixed Damage Attack: Several characters, such as Vista, Fullbody, and Diable Jambe Sanji, have skills like this designed to deal with high defense, low health enemies.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Some OS will skip frames during the attack animations, making it difficult to consistently hit Perfects. Fortunately, this can be worked around by turning off sound effects in the options.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Outside of attack animations referencing moments from a character's roles in the series, a few possess unique game mechanics and effects that serve as direct interpretations:
- Gear Fourth: Boundman is a 2.5x PSY Fighter captain that can actually change form after triggering his special - Luffy bulks up, deals an insane amount of damage, makes most orbs beneficial, boost fighters by 4x instead, and increases defense by 56% for 3 turns. Once that time's up though, he binds and despairs himself for 7 turns as a downside. Not only does this mirror Luffy's incredible power while in Gear Fourth mode, but it also represents the wait afterwards that would have players scrambling to protect him until he recovers. Furthermore, he was first introduced in the Japanese version when the Neo-Doflamingo Clash was underway, pitting Luffy's PSY against Doffy's INT.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Turtle Time happens one day a week, for two 30-minute periods ten hours apart, with the exact timing varying each week, and the timing further varying between users based on the sixth digit of their ID number. Safe to say, online calculators are your friend. As with most stamina-based games, consulting a guide generally saves the player a lot of wasted opportunities.
- Just determining which you units you might want to farm for your teams counts, as the skills they use against you are often not indicative of the skills they actually have.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: A number of bosses start the fight by changing all of the player's available orbs into orbs of one or two particular types. This can be easily exploited by bringing along a character with an appropriate orb manipulation skill and changing what are probably neutral orbs for your team into advantageous ones.
- HP to One: Killer's special deals 100x normal damage to a target, but reduces your HP to a single point.
- Inconsistent Dub:
- The status ailment that players of the Japanese version know as Silence is called Despair in skill descriptions, but the in battle icon for it displays the word "Gloom" above your captains' heads, often causing players to think they're two seperate ailments.
- Dialogue and skill names use the term "Neptunian" for Sea Kings, but one of Luffy's lines on Little Garden uses Sea King.
- Some dialogue in Jaya has Zoro's name spelled "Zolo".
- Unit description and event banners can't agree if Absalom's nickname is "Perv-salom" or "Ero-salom."
- The name of the version of Strawhats' ship that is acquired early in the story is the Merry Go, but the flying version is acquired later on is labeled the Going Merry.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- Character availability mostly is mostly dependent on whether they've appeared in the game's portrayal of the story, but some characters from later in the series are available from events or Rare Recruit. Most notably, events for post-training Coby and Helmeppo, and childhood versions of Ace, Luffy, and Sabo, both of which happened in Global before it had even gotten past Alabasta.
- The Straw Hats' Time Skip designs are the English version's start screen. At the time, neither Funimation's television coverage nor the DVD releases (which are ahead of the television episodes by a few months) were anywhere near the timeskip yet.
- Naturally, for global fans who only watch their respective localized versions of the anime, events based off of the most recently animated arcs in Japan will be this. For example, the raids and events based on the Whole Cake Island and Wano arcs have been incorporated into the global version of the game, and numerous playable versions of Big Mom and Kaido have been released, which spoil major reveals about both of their powers (Big Mom's power to control souls and Kaido's dragon form). At that time, the English dub had just reached the beginning of Punk Hazard, and even the German dub, which had passed it, was still just partway through Dressrosa.
- Loophole Abuse: Certain bosses may come with "knockout protection" buffs, which prevent them from getting KO'd for a few turns by letting them hang on with 1-HP (ex: the Afro-Luffy fortnight, Spandam in the Tower of Justice). However, the KO-shield only prevents a KO from normal attacks. If one of the player's characters has a damaging special, it is possible to finish off the boss with that special if the damage dealt exceeds their remaining health.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Farming for any unit from a story missions. There are double drop rate events that cycle through all the islands, but they only serve to make the process of obtained to the more stubborn units almost bearable. Farming on regular days or even half-stamina days is often recommended against.
- Some of the bonus missions ask the player to farm X number of generic units or money backs, but it's usually of a magnitude that translates to "do this mission roughly this number of times." A shout out to the missions in Alvida's Hideout is deserved, as two of them require some very specific units, two of which are somewhat uncommon and will likely be the last holdouts.
- Any mission can become this if your team is only just barely capable of completing it. One bad orb or one enemy that spawns with too low of a cooldown can turn your run sour. Similarly, if you're dependent on a particular or uncommon team to clear a level consistently, farming can become dependent on which captains your friend list provides you.
- No-Sell: A recurring special is the ability to negate enemy attacks of a particular attribute for one turn, generally the attribute that the user is weak to, making them valuable allies on a monotype team.
- One-Hit KO: Raid Doflamingo is the first major example of this in the game, where, during his raid, if allowed to attack under roughly 20% health, will deal 99999999 damage, which is far higher than any team could dream of reaching.
- One-Time Dungeon:
- There's a quick, easy "Thank You" mission that appears on Extra Isle that can only be played once you've rated the game on the app store. This mission reappears after each major version update, and can be completed again by updated your rated in the app store.
- As of recently, the mission will now only ask if you want to rate the game, but if you decline, you can still play the mission.
- Palette Swap: The most basic grunt units tend to come in five different colors, one for each attribute.
- Power Up Letdown:
- Sogeking is a stronger version of Golden Pound Usopp, but his special takes more turns to use and he has more of a cost to use. Because of its smaller cost time, Golden Pound Usopp's special can be used more in a fight than Sogeking's.
- Some stages automatically grant minor but beneficial boosts to your party. This sounds like a blessing, but then you learn that you can't overwrite their small boosts with your own, more powerful specials...
- Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage
- The "kid" versions of some characters that become available during special events are usually just as good in a fight as you'd expect a child to be. An exception to this is the kid version of Sabo, whose unique ability gives a niche role on certain PSY teams.
- Special event version of the Straw Hats are generally found to be terrible, though there's typically one good unit in each batch.
- Save Scumming: The game saves at the start of each of the player's turns, and only at the start. If you have a character special that deals damage or shuffles orbs based on a random factor, one can keep resetting and trying the special again until a favorable outcome is achieved.
- Socialization Bonus:
- There's the usual friend list recruitment system found in many mobile games, but there's also the Barrel Breaking game that requires another player within a few kilometers of you (or a GPS duping app) to play.
- In exchange for linking a Twitter account, players can spin a for a random prize up to five times a day, by letting treasure Cruise send out one of several pre-made tweets. Prizes include money bags, Cola for upgrading ships, experience boosting turtles (including rare Elder Turtles), and even a ful stamina refill.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Strength beats Dexterity, Dexterity beats Quick, and Quick Beats Strength. Psychic and Intelligence are strong against each other.
- Wolfpack Boss: Multiple boss characters are accompanied by minions that would prove annoying if left alone. Some take further by re-summoning them after certain conditions are met, forcing a change in strategy.
