One Piece: Grand Gourmet Review — Full Summary & Transcript

[00:01] into a video game, developers have typically taken the action route, leaning on flashy battles and wild devil fruit powers as pirates sail the high seas. That makes One Piece Grand Gourmes Sanjicentric restaurant builder with a

[00:14] full roster of characters from across the series inspired choice. But while the premise of revisiting and feeding nearly every character is promising, working to win over the residents of the Grand Line often feels as shallow as the

[00:26] Grand Line often feels as shallow as the Loveuckruck chef it's based around.

[00:38] rest of the crew, Sanji and Luffy find a restaurant ship being terrorized by a group of fake Straw Hat pirates who are posing as and giving a bad name to the restaurant of Sanji's mentor, the Baratti. The duo set sail to beat the

[00:51] Fakers in culinary battles and clear the Baratt's name throughout the Grand Line and beyond. Taking a chronological path from the early romance dawn days in the East Blue all the way to a taste of the latest arc in the manga and anime, Grand

[01:04] Gourmet is packed with fan service in lie of a meaningful original story. the bone, it's great that Grand Gourmet embraces Sanji's ethos of feeding anyone. And it turns out everyone the Straw Hats has ever met is hungry.

[01:24] and empty with only a kitchen, a table, and Sanji's chef skills to cook for hungry customers. Feeding people brings in valuable cash that you can use to build out the restaurant with more tables, attractions, and decorations to

[01:36] improve the space's comfort. The more comfortable the accommodations, the happier the customers and the more they will spend on food. Ironically, comfort is an unfortunate word for this metric. The interior design crimes that can be

[01:48] committed for the sake of profit produce stressful and sloppy places to attempt to enjoy a meal. Letting you run wild with decor that imitates classic one cooking delicacies from across the globe should be a strength, but that

[02:02] tantalizing proposition falls flat in execution. restaurant fixtures themed to the current story arc that you're sailing through. Be that new flooring, lamps, benches, or landscaping. For example,

[02:17] the thriller bark set features horror themed decor, plus a spot to plant the stray zombie friends who accompany the living visitors on the ship. Instead of aesthetically pleasing, wellorganized dining room, Grand Gourmet doesn't care

[02:30] about actual comfort. Instead, it incentivizes you to cram every square inch with lamps, benches, and shrubbery to boost stats. Neither Crocodile nor Eustace Kid ultimately cares what their assigned seat looks like. And because of

[02:44] the limited space and clunky reorganizational tools, these areas remain cluttered catastrophes that still somehow made a boatload of money. Some elements also move beyond the typical restaurant vibe to make the ship a more

[02:57] appealing destination. But they aren't without their own faults either. Some of the better fantastical attractions are meeting spots for giant sea kings or the ship's deck and showcase the eccentric animal designs of the One

[03:10] Piece world. It's fun to collect fish to store in an aquarium or keep the pets of visitors in animal friendly environments. However, once you have the features and creatures in place, there's not much else to do with them. They're

[03:22] yet another money collecting attraction that doesn't affect the surroundings besides providing a small bump of comfort.

[03:35] restaurant's food has promising building blocks, but lacks the finesse to make trouble. Sanji draws inspiration from his fellow crew mates and restaurant visitors, letting him make everything from simple dishes like rice or spring

[03:48] rolls to fantastical concoctions based on legendary characters or events from the One Piece world. Piecing together a balanced meal of up to four items lets you sell products at a higher price, and you can increase it further by pairing

[04:01] them with other food endorsed by the same Straw Hat member. The best course of action is to serve what's going to rake in the most cash every time, which the automatic meal tool already does effectively. Sadly, there are no

[04:13] regional meal or a group inspired platter to break up the monotony of only pairing the priciest products. The lack of options extends to the fake Barati boss battles, which put Sanji in a food network as cooking competition in which

[04:28] successful. You can always put together meal with different figures, plates, and utensils to spice up the meal planning experience. There's just not any reason to do so outside of having a little fun.

[04:42] Learning to cook new foods is critical to building the restaurant's reputation and fighting fake bar. Some foods are key to turning a customer into a fan of the restaurant, which lets them follow you to new regions, but it's not

[04:54] impossible to know who might know which recipe. Nothing points you toward who to impress and what food they are capable of inspiring. You have to be lucky enough to have the right items on hand and the right people on board to crack a

[05:06] novel recipe. Unlocking a specific food is often dumb luck, and while it can be frustrating to figure out, much of what you need falls into your lap at the right time. The moments when things don't come together feel bad though,

[05:19] have to be left behind when the time arrives to move forward on the journey. explore with the rest of the pirate crew. The action is simple, yet

[05:35] exploring each new region is something to look forward to because it's one of the few tasks that helps the restaurant flourish consistently in meaningful ways. These idol activities cost berry, affinity points, or coins to send the

[05:48] crew to important One Piece islands, villages, and bases. The price is worth it, though, as exploration rewards you with new faces to visit the restaurant, giftable items to create new fans or increase profitability, and precious

[06:00] ingredients for new kitchen concoctions. Some rewards are level gated while others require a specific crew member to bring them home, providing a great Straw Hat crew once you found them somewhere in the vast ocean. That is

[06:14] each crew member helps out the restaurant in a way only they can. And these are some of the best realized parts of Grand Gourmet. Sanji of course cooks all the meals. Frankie the shipwright creates new furnishings and

[06:27] can expand the square footage of the ship. Crafty USA makes decorations and utensils to modify meals, and the swordsman Zoro trains the straw hats, allowing them to level up further for expeditions and other activities. The

[06:39] MVP, however, is the money-hungry Nami, who not only can bail out the restaurant financially multiple times, but also negotiates a half-pric discount on new amenities once a day, providing a very helpful loophole to buy expensive ship

[06:52] upgrades on the cheap. Every member of the pirate crew brings a fun element to the ship, even if everything doesn't necessarily help the cause of beating the fake bar. Running a business isn't cheap, especially when serving hundreds

[07:04] of hungry mouths in the middle of the briney deep. But the lack of pressure or punishment for spending far outside of your means is disappointing. Every shop, buffet, and employee hired to help the cause has daily overhead, which can put

[07:17] you deep in financial trouble almost every day. You wouldn't believe how much it was to add Blackbeard to the payroll. Each sunrise, the berry count can go negative, but it's rather easy to crawl out of near insolvency throughout the

[07:29] day because no friction challenges poor financial management. There's never really a need to find a better way to run the company. The only time anyone cares how shallow your pockets get is when spending money during the day. And

[07:42] rescue with their wallet, filling the necessary. With no reason to think too hard about the business management side of things, what keeps Grand Gourmet mildly interesting is seeing damn near

[07:55] every single named One Piece character running around the ship and interacting with each other. It's fun to see old comrades share a table or bitter rivals chat about characters they relate to. Some meetups are surprising and funny,

[08:07] like two villains discussing work, which may or may not involve poisoning people with synthetic devil fruits. There are also references to its own lack of continuity, which make for interesting meetups between characters who may or

[08:20] may not exist in the same place or lifetime. Each character has an affection rating that, when raised to a specific level, can give your staff new items to craft or more customers to invite, making them important to

[08:32] having them on board. Grand Gourmet looks great, too. Full of small details on the hundreds of character sprites that are truly impressive. Almost every character's design is recognizable and unique, with many featuring special

[08:45] animations that bring each person to life, like Akinu firing up a giant magma fist while helping to create a new dish. These flourishes don't happen often, but they do inject some muchneeded panache into the normally mundane way everyone

[08:59] just strolls around. While almost every character the anime has produces here, it's a shame that the same can't be said for the memorable music, voice cast, or sound effects from its long history. Instead, the soundtrack is limited to a

[09:13] on a short loop paired with a painfully small sample of sound effects,

[09:25] game, which isn't a huge shock given this game is so deeply tied to developer Kyrosoft's mobile game lineage. A big part of One Piece's appeal lies in the audio design and the music, so it's a bummer that Grand Gourmet has none of

[09:38] bummer that Grand Gourmet has none of that. carefree pirate collector that brushes off strategy in favor of brute force. Helping Sanji run a floating restaurant is a great premise, but the act of

[09:53] managing a sprawling mega eery loses its intrigue when it's apparent how few decisions actually matter. Instead, most of the fun is simply in its fan service. them interact with each other in amusing or unexpected ways that provide joy even

[10:09] past the credits. But unless you're an established fan of the series or want a cute, mindless way to kill time, there's no rush to climb aboard for this culinary voyage. For more reviews of games with gorgeous pixel art, check out

[10:21] our review for Final Fantasy Resonance. Or if you're looking for an adventure of a different kind, check out our review of Castlevania: Belellmont's Curse. And for everything else in the world of gaming, keep it here on IGN.