One Piece: Grand Gourmet - Switch 2 Review

One Piece: Grand Gourmet is a restaurant building game that has Sanji partnered with a player character to save the reputation of the Baratie, as evil doers have taken the name and are spreading chaos across the different seas of One Piece. Your goal is to build up a second Baratie, serve a variety of characters across the franchise and kick the fake Baratie crew out of each sea. Use Luffy and the straw hats to serve customers delicious food, build up and expand your restaurant, and become king of the restaurants.

The Good

One Piece: Grand Gourmet has done an incredible job of translating the connections between characters in the manga to the game. With characters interacting as they walk around the restaurant and pop-ups showcasing what they talked about happening throughout the day. One of the interactions that genuinely caught me off guard was child Momonosuke and Rayleigh talking about the old days, which made me remember that they did spend time together during the golden era of pirating.

The art team went above and beyond with capturing the likeness of every character in Grand Gourmet and they are immediately identifiable if you have seen or read One Piece at all. 300 of the 1000 named characters of the series are present, all the way up to the most recent arc. Not only are the characters there, but some of them bring pets like Funkfreed, the sword elephant, and large creatures such as Laboon get their own special spaces to visit the ship.

As a restaurant, you'll be serving food to ask the hungry customers and the effort put into the art of the food is perfect. Every meal looks delicious, with characters recommending recipes and eventually food inspired by them that is designed perfectly to capture their essence on a plate. Nami has an orange parfait that is topped with an orange peel that is shaped like her tattoo. Not only is it the perfect design, but at the Nami bronze statue in Kumamoto, you can buy an orange parfait exclusive to the location. I wish some of this food was just real and I could purchase it.

TL;DR

• Attention to detail
• Pixel art capture the characters
• The food

The Bad

While not a SUPER! negative point, the English translation definitely needs work tidying up. One of the most egregious points that I noticed was character pronouns being completely wrong, with Whitebeard being introduced as a she being the error that raised my eyebrows the most. There was also the mistake of shortening microphone to Mike instead of mic. One of the most distracting prominent issues, though, is just the font of the text. Instead of being something unique or stylish, you have a basic default text option. 

There are a few actions in the game that aren't quite clearly explained. While mostly an automatic experience for how things work, there are small actions like Luffy and Zoro going out on a ship to collect treasure and fish for the aquarium, where they only do this action when not busy with anything else. This is explained in tool tips that pop up, but these can be easily missed, and you're going to want to be on expeditions, which require Luffy to be on. Leaving Zoro to be the only character who will be completing this action.

Once you start having a large number of guests visiting the restaurant daily, the cute, little interaction pop-ups become a lot higher of an occurrence, to the point I had five in a row pop up, more within a minute afterwards as well. Add in the events for requests, expedition results, and the constant flow of character updates on the side of the screen, and I was very overwhelmed at times. Then there's also the ever-growing list of decorations you can place around the ship to add to the stress.

TL;DR

• Poor translation and default font
• Not clear how certain actions work
• Can feel overwhelming

Final Score: 7/10

Capturing the world of One Piece in a restaurant building game is a challenge; however, it was executed flawlessly and everyone is fully identifiable with their manga counterpart. It can definitely feel overwhelming in the late game and gets more repetitive with the actions, but the game is charming and an entertaining experience for fans. An experience that is best suited for people who are caught up with the anime with some of the best pixel art food I've seen in a game.

Thank you for checking out our One Piece: Grand Gourmet Switch 2 review, thank you to Bandai Namco AU for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Bobby Jack
• Jack Caven
• Nintendo Maniacs
• RedHero