One Piece: Grand Gourmet Review

I’ve watched a little of the One Piece anime, but I do enjoy a good restaurant sim, and One Piece: Grand Gourmet has charming pixel art to match. Which makes up for what it lacks in some of the genre’s more limited takes. 

Luffy and the Straw Hat pirate crew have taken control of a restaurant ship, and you’ll move about a few different ocean spaces looking to beat Dooperlgsnerns and their own restaurant. There is a small story behind all of this, but it’s so mundane I could have done without it entirely. 

A small ship delivers patrons to the restaurant, and as the game continues, you’ll upgrade and bring in more, as well as add docking points for other types of clientele. Some of your visitors can become loyal restaurant lovers and be assigned to work in the restaurant itself, or even set up and run their own store selling an assortment of items, giving you passive income alongside your restaurant.

You need money to pay your workers a wage each day, but also to upgrade things in the ship and restaurant. You can build attractions like an aquarium, set up more tables, unlock different themed groundwork, kinda-fencing and other structures. And you’ll need money to build out the ship, unlock new types of meals, and purchase ingredients to increase the effectiveness and score of those meals. 

One Piece: Grand Gourmet has A LOT of meals to share on its tables. You’ll constantly be unlocking new types as patrons and friends suggest different ones, and it’s everything from bread to some cauldron soup mix that doesn’t look like it’ll taste healthy at all—but for every meal, someone likes it. You can fiddle around with pairing mains, sides, drinks and desserts to your heart’s content, or do what I did and just use the auto-suggested setup to constantly repair your assortment of meals into a good mix that scores well and sells just as much. Much like the pixel art characters of the One Piece world, of which there are so, so many, the meals also are super-cute in design and another highlight of the game. 

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Between all that, you can also send Luffy and someone else to explore areas and collect ingredients and gifts to give patrons and friends. And as you progress, you’ll unlock some mini-games, none of which involve a whole lot of input. 

The biggest disappointment and what holds One Piece: Grand Gourmet back from being better is simply its lack of intuitive design. Menus feel clunky; I often accidentally got in and out of certain ones, and the idea of fiddling around to make my ship’s layout any sort of aesthetic or exciting is non-existent. You can swing around the ship to get a better view behind buildings; moving things around is often a pain, and I quickly learned that I wasn’t going to achieve the styling I wanted in other similar games, and instead just up. I conditioned myself to just plop things down wherever they fit, spamming stuff around to increase table scores and trigger dining challenges and patron requests, but without creating any personal vibes or styling.

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