Review: Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Is Packed With Experiences
Level-5 is officially two for two when it comes to games that successfully survived development hell. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time turned out exceptional , even with so many ideas packed into it. Now that Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is here, it feels a bit like each mode might be one direction the final game could have took and Level-5 decided to finish them all and toss them in together. While it didn’t turn out as wonderfully as the latest Fantasy Life , it’s far better than I expected.
There are a lot of modes in Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road , so many that I must confess that it sometimes feels like each one felt like it could have been a full game in a way. Or, at the very least, that feels true for both the Story and Chronicle modes. Story Mode is the story of a new team and a new dream. Destin Billows (Unmei Sasanami) loved soccer, but was forced to give up on actively playing due to his health. He claims to be genuinely happy to be transferring to South Cirrus Junior High School, as it doesn’t have a team. However, after learning about the school delinquent Briar Bloomhurst (Jouji Sakurazaki), who was a star player and forced to abandon his dream, and being basically badgered into friendship by Cedric Freud (Heita Kisoji), to restore the football club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ArR7UnwT8w
It’s absolutely wild. Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Story Mode feels like playing through a shonen sports manga. We see Destin and Briar meet and decide to move forward together. We watch Destin take part in rock-paper-scissors style RPG battles against members of the student council, police officers, nosy neighbors, and staircases. We pet and photograph cats. We kick illusionary soccer balls. We listen in on gossip from classmates. We find new teammates. I mean, we eventually also play soccer too, but the process of living life, seeing these kids at school, and getting a better understand of why it’s so important they bond and do well. I could see some folks get frustrated at exactly how long it takes to form the new football club and start hitting the field, but I adored the progression pace and story being told.
But then, for people who want to get into actually playing faster and building up the “best” team, there’s Chronicle Mode. Our goal here is to help Vic, Misty, and Clark “Wandaba” Wonderbot get the strongest team of 11 players with the strongest Keishin to defeat the Mind Eaters who could make humanity extinct. This involves heading into soccer matches across time, reliving past Inazuma Eleven game and anime storylines. It’s a lot. Especially since Player Universe can be used recruit players and we use the Team Dock to put together our team. In general, it isn’t a bad place to start, since it begins with Mark Evans (Mamoru Endou) going through a tutorial that explains how to actually play soccer and is more about completing actual matches. We can choose Chronicle Battle, Route Unlock Battle, Rare Drop Battle, and Hero Battle to advance our goals. Success in matches is dependent on meeting the History Check, which involves certain actions during teams like “Pass to Kevin,” “Shoot as Kevin,” “Complete a Focus Battle,” “Complete a Focus Battle as Axel,” and “Play for Victory.” This means it can be tricky, but difficulty does scale up and does get more immediately into the game.
Images via Level-5
Like Story Mode, I’m a fan of this Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road mode, even though it involves a lot of grinding to get through it. Chronicle Mode still has a story structure. There’s still character building and team organization, which I love. The active soccer matches work well, and it isn’t difficult to pull off the extravagant special moves the series is known for. I also didn’t find it too difficult to pass the History Checks. The Focus Fields and Focus Battles are helpful for dealing with Zone defending, and I love how we have the standard shots, Long Shots to attack from a distance, and Shot Chains along with our Specials when enough Tension builds up via playing. The ease of play might be a bit of a downside, as I almost felt as though the CPU could have been a bit more intelligent and responsive to my actions. But then, there are so many routes here, with the Go Galaxy and LBX: Little Battlers eXperience ones added post-launch , so it’s genuinely possible that there’s so much that I haven’t hit the more challenging bouts. Plus allowing us to deplete enemy Keeper Power helps with getting one past the better goalies.
The Competition mode rounds things out. You can take part in essentially a quick match feature with preset teams, play in 1v1 and 2v2 games, and take part in online tournaments. The tournaments can involve seasonal rewards, to encourage constant participation. While there are a lot of options, including a Bond Town where you can create a town and explore, I feel like the campaign modes are stronger and a better time. It’s because all you really need to do is grind out characters to win, but that isn’t fun! Since I was coming into it so far after launch, I felt discouraged for a few hours. What’s worse is that sometimes I’d experience terrible lag. So even though I did invest five hours into that mode, my success could be affected by outside factors.
Images via Level-5
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is a lot, and it feels like an installment that attempts to cover almost every possible aspect of the series. It doesn’t top the earliest Mamoru Endo DS entries for me. However, there’s so much here that it feels like a mode exists for every possible player. Not to mention that it is admirable to see it not only released, but is genuinely good. There are some minor issues, such as balancing and NPC intelligence in matches. The CPU isn’t great about making decisions. However, the fact that we are seeing rebalancing and substantial updates like Re-Story make me wonder if this could eventually turn into a 9 out of 10 game in a few weeks or months with additional patches and fixes to things like online multiplayer.
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is available on the Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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