Is One Piece Treasure Cruise Shutting Down Soon?
One Piece Treasure Cruise is a free-to-play mobile game that’s easy to pick up but hard to master, in which you collect your favorite characters from the One Piece anime and form teams to fight with as you sail through the seas. Other One Piece mobile games, such as One Piece Thousand Storm, have been declining in popularity and even had to shut down servers for the global version of their game. Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Blazing, a mobile game also published by Bandai Namco, has shut down recently as well. Could Treasure Cruise meet the same fate?
This article will have minor spoilers for recent events in the One Piece anime, proceed with caution.
The quick answer — No. It’s not. One Piece is the best-selling manga in the world and the second best-selling comic book of all time.[1] One Piece Treasure Cruise is the most popular mobile game of the series with frequently updated and profitable Japanese and global versions of the game. It is safe to say that before One Piece ends, there is very little chance outside of the complete depletion of the player base and whales (A consumer who spends a lot of money on microtransactions, primarily keeping free-to-play mobile games afloat). However, there are a lot of signs that it is going to enter its endgame phase.
Let’s start with a clear sign that the end of Treasure Cruise is coming sooner rather than later. The One Piece manga is ending soon. Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, has claimed that One Piece is about 80% done and is hoping to end it in the next five years.[2] However, that is hard to imagine. One Piece is a story full of so many mysteries and details that are carefully fleshed out and expanded upon at a leisurely pace; At this point in the story, it is hard to imagine that the story could end in five years even if Oda is proceeding at his fastest pace. Despite that, it is hard to say that this isn’t an indication that One Piece is about to enter its final phase and that we might see the end of this journey before long.
Next, we have the addition of the captain of the Roger Pirates — Gol D. Roger, the Pirate King; A man and title that has kept fans at bay for decades has finally been revealed and added to the One Piece Treasure Cruise roster. For a significant portion of the story, it was not even known that his name wasn’t Gold Roger and fans were left to wonder about his strength and tales. This is a man who clashed with the strongest man in the world in his prime, gained notoriety from other pirates and the world government, and set off the catalyst on which this entire 1000+ chapter series is founded on.
When you start the tutorial in Treasure Cruise, you are joined by Shanks — Luffy’s role model and mentor to some extent — and a kid Luffy at the start of Luffy’s journey to hopefully attain the same status as Roger. Now, you can obtain the man that took Shanks under his wing and Luffy shouts the title of at the end of each episode. “I’m gonna become the King of the Pirates!” Now you can have him and he is just as strong as anyone with his level of hype and portrayal should be.
This brings me to my next point, the power creep. One Piece Treasure Cruise has started to reach the unavoidable stage that many gacha games have met before their untimely demise. Throughout the last few years and months, Treasure Cruise has tried to keep the gameplay fresh and make new units worthwhile by introducing multiple game-changing mechanics. Let’s go through a few mechanics added in recent memory…
V2 Legends — a new legendary unit of a character with an already existing legend, possibly leaving the V1 legend obsolete if they were not already. V3 legends exist now as well.
Double Characters — a unit that has two separate characters combined into one. Usually, the two characters have two different classes, types, and abilities that the player can take advantage of as they switch between them in battle.
Limit Breaking — further upgrades to characters through the use of materials that are relatively rare or hard to obtain for a casual player.
Super Types — a mechanic that some units can use that allows them to activate a new special ability whenever certain conditions are met. This often improves type advantage bonuses and decreases the type disadvantage.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adding these features, they change up the meta at the time of their implementation and keep the game fresh after years of similar units. The fact that new units are going to take advantage of newer mechanics and immediately shoot up to the top of the list of strongest characters is also something that would be silly to complain about. This is inevitable but the way that Treasure Cruise handles team building and the way they structure new content has prevented the power creep from becoming unacceptable and wiping out too many of the old units — plenty of which still have some role on teams for their niche abilities or versatility.
However, as we move forward and the One Piece story is still undergoing one of its longest story arcs to date (102 chapters while probably only halfway completed), it is difficult to not show concern for the possibility of extreme power creep and bloated additions to the roster while waiting for the story to progress. How many more mechanics do we need to keep old units relevant by upgrading their stats? Do we need to keep adding new legends to characters that already have plenty of legend units or do we start giving less relevant — maybe not so deserving — characters the spotlight? Are there going to be any more gimmicks like double characters that, while admittedly fun and fresh, are going to take over and infest the lists of the best units in the game? These questions have to be answered and these decisions have to be made; With no clear answer or easy choice, it is more likely that Treasure Cruise is going to enter its endgame phase soon just like the series itself.
We don’t have to worry about any of this in the immediate future. Treasure Cruise has carefully been adding new content to satisfy the player base and keep old units relevant. The introduction of the Pirate Rumble mode (Arena PVP) adds a new side to every unit in the game with different stats, abilities, and niches. There are always new raids and events happening with each update, old events are unlockable in the regular game mode while some return interspersed throughout the year in modes such as Treasure Map or Kizuna Clash. Sugofests — banners in which you have increased chances to pull Sugorare characters (considered the best in the game) — are more common than ever. The global servers are safe as they are always catching up to the content on the Japanese servers but have also recently celebrated the addition of the Korean version with generous helpings of premium currency.
Although there is the possibility that Treasure Cruise will shut its doors in a few years’ time, it is in a really good spot right now. Even if you’re not a fan of One Piece, give it a try. It is a tantalizing mobile game with a heavy focus on strategy and team building that makes it easy to pick up but satisfying to learn. There are plenty of layers to peel back as you get into it and go through the mystifying world of One Piece. One Piece Treasure Cruise is free to play and available right now on Android and iOS.
[1] Mateo, Alex (February 3, 2021). “One Piece Manga Has Over 480 Million Copies in Circulation Worldwide”. Anime News Network Archived from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved May 9, 2021.
[2] “Oda Reveals That He’s Going to Finish One Piece in 5 Years!,” One Piece Fan Page, August 31, 2019.
