It is common for video games to be based on a famous property or movie. The Three Musketeers: One For All! is a PC-to-WiiWare port of a 2.5D action platformer loosely inspired by Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers novel. Unfortunately, the game's archaic design and several other issues cause it to fall far short of the classic status of its namesake.

You play as Porthos in his quest to save the two other musketeers, Athos and Aramis, and the musketeer's protégé d'Artagnan from the villain, Count Xavier. Throughout the game you will encounter different types of stages, all presented in a 2.5D set-up. While the platforming is done on a 2D plane, the camera occasionally pans in a 45-degree angle, and archers occasionally fire arrows from the background to the foreground.

The game is reminiscent of an 8-bit era action platformer such as Castlevania, but isn't nearly on the same level of quality. For the most part, level design is very bland and repetitive, with the path only occasionally branching in order to have you fetch a key or unlock a door. The puzzles are limited to pushing a crate to the right place in order to access a higher platform or a ladder. It's all very simple.

The enemy AI is also extremely basic, only noticing your character when you walk to a specific spot close to them. When you move back out of their range, they return to their original location. Some enemies simply charge at you until they fall in a hole, which results in a replacement quickly respawning and doing the same thing.

Character movement is mapped to the Nunchuk. The only attack that Porthos has, an upward sweep, is mapped to shaking of the Wii Remote. While this in itself isn't a bad thing, it is not reliable. Most of the time attacks register correctly, but sometimes there is a little lag between shaking the controller and seeing attacks happen, and occasionally they fail entirely. Unfortunately there is no way to map the attack to a button, so players must tolerate this unreliability. Porthos also has a very short melee attack range, and his sweep attacks occasionally miss short enemies.

On a more positive note, One for All! has a very distinct cel-shaded look, reminiscent of a European cartoon. The characters and environments look exceptionally good. The game also has a unique story telling mechanic that has Porthos narrating the story through comic book panels in first person, and it doesn't feel out of place. The voiceovers are well done, using authentic sounding French pronunciations.

Still, there are a couple of technical issues that hinder the experience. The first annoyance that players will encounter are lengthy load times; it takes about twenty to thirty seconds to load a level, and there are other occasional loads in specific parts of a level. There is also no proper way to pause, with the only method of stopping gameplay being the pressing of the Home button to bring up the Home Menu.

Ultimately, The Three Musketeers: One For All! is a mediocre game with numerous issues, both technical and design-related. It is also hard to recommend it due to its bland and archaic gameplay design. There are much better titles on WiiWare.