It's tough to make a good party game. I mean, it's hard enough taking one idea and fleshing it out into a full-fledged game, but here you're talking about dozens, in some cases hundreds, of little mini-games, each with their own objectives, rule sets, and gameplay. Then you have the added pressure of each game being simple enough for players to pick up within seconds, yet complex enough to hold their attention for a few minutes, and let's not even get into balancing each one to ensure they're fair. On top of that, you'll need some way to tie them all together. All considered, the design definitely isn't as simple and carefree as some of the more notable party games would lead you to believe.

Unfortunately, One Piece: Pirates' Carnival doesn't really fare well in most of these areas. To begin with, One Piece only offers up a paltry 35 mini-games. This small number is problematic for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is that with a standard competition taking at least thirty minutes, players are bound to sample most of these games within their first few matches. One of the joys of party games is constantly discovering new mini-games and challenges during multiple playthroughs, and that's something that really detracts from Pirates' Carnival.

However, this wouldn't be as much of an issue if the available mini-games were enjoyable enough to withstand numerous playthroughs. But only a few manage to capture the frantic pace and simple gameplay that really defines the party game experience, with a majority of the mini-games marred by boring gameplay or poor controls. After all, the challenge and competition is supposed to come from the gameplay itself, not wrestling with the controls. Take the ice skating mini-game for example, due to the wonky controls, avoiding or colliding with your opponents is based more on luck than skill. Another mini-game requires players to balance themselves on stilts whilst trying to knock opponents over, but with a weird control setup combining navigating and balancing, the imprecise aiming that often sends players crashing down just to the side of their foe is incredibly frustrating.

That's not to say there aren't a few enjoyable mini-games to be found in Pirates' Carnival, but they are few and far between. My personal favorite involves scaling the side of a cliff. Players must tap square and circle repeatedly to build up the energy to jump, launch themselves in the air with X, and then grab on to the side of the cliff with another press of X and do it all over again. The first player to reach the top of the cliff wins, and the combination of the mash-buttons-as-fast-as-you-can mentality and knowing just when to jump and grab makes for some stiff competition, especially as players approach the finish line.

Outside of the mini-games, an Othello-esque game board ties them all together. In essence, each game board is filled with a number of squares. Winning a mini-game captures that particular square, and players take turns deciding which square they want to compete for. And if that newly-acquired square happens to form a line with any of that player's other squares, and if there aren't any blank squares in that line, the player will then steal all of those spots from their opponents.

It's a nice twist, because the emphasis isn't just on winning as many mini-games as possible, but rather on winning the mini-games in prime locations. This also keeps everyone on their toes, especially as the board starts to fill up, meaning those prime locations become far more important. And with a few events that allow competitors to steal or destroy other the squares of other players, there's no such thing as a guaranteed victory until the very end.

Yet even the game board, arguably the best aspect of Pirates' Carnival is not without its flaws. Each mini-game is preceded and often followed by a few pieces of dialog from the player's chosen character, but this really serves no purpose other than to slow the overall pace of the game. After a while, it starts to feel like Pirates' Carnival is forcing the One Piece license down your throat just for the sake of reminding you that you're playing a One Piece game.

Also, it'd be nice if the game would display the potential captures of a particular square as other games in the genre have done. There were many times I captured a square only to be shocked as I acquired a few others from my opponent as a result of a line I hadn't even noticed. Providing some indication to the player of the advantages or disadvantages of a particular move would have further strengthened the strategy element, especially for beginning players.

Another annoyance is the constant loading. Though the load times are never that lengthy, generally five or so seconds in duration, they're so frequent that one begins to feel like they spend more of the time staring at the game board and the loading screen than they actually do playing.

Lastly, as with all party games, there's not much incentive to play Pirates' Carnival outside of multiplayer. The game is designed to be played amongst friends and heavily relies on the atmosphere of competing with them, something that's lacking when facing off against the computer-controlled opponents.