One Piece Treasure Cruise

One Piece Treasure Cruise is the kind of free to play game that gets by almost entirely on its license.

One Piece is popular, so naturally a bare-bones freemium game that includes Luffy and other notables from the manga and anime is popular as well.

I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for the rubber pirates and legendary treasures One Piece Treasure Cruise wouldn't attract a second glance from most mobile users.

But to its credit there's a bit more going on than a simple rehash of a familiar formula with a piratey coat of paint.

If you've ever played a game like Puzzle & Dragons - where you have a team of characters that adhere to different elements, fight wave after wave of enemies, earn money and new recruits, then sacrifice recruits to power-up your favorites - then you've basically played One Piece Treasure Cruise.

Well, okay, it's a little different. Instead of matching three of a kind to attack enemies, you just tap on a character on your team.

Once they strike you have a small window in which to tap on another character in order to build up a combo chain and deal more damage.

It's more immediately engaging than matching gems for the millionth time, but it's also pretty shallow and gets dull fast.

I will say that the presentation is pretty nice. The story segments are fairly well done, the tiny characters look good, and the animations for the special attacks are enjoyable. That's about all I've got.

All things considered, One Piece Treasure Cruise is a decent excursion that changes up a fairly tired formula.

But ultimately the changes are too minor for it to feel significantly different. If you're a fan of all things One Piece it could be worth a look, though.