Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Review – Simple and Satisfying

It was a lot of fun playing Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road thanks to how well it’s been put together, and the simplicity and silliness of it all. A sweet grandma stopped me on the street with a fairly straightforward request. However, the only way for my party to solve her dilemma was to then engage her in a battle of rock-paper-scissors, called Focus Squabbles in-game.

Elsewhere, a student required help tracking down a kraken, a mysterious ghost-like being that would speed away as soon as I approached, taking me on a merry chase across South Cirrus, where the game is based. The story mode puts you in the shoes of Destin Billows, a young boy who seems to despise football at the outset. In fact, it’s the reason he chose to study at South Cirrus Junior High, a school with a non-existent football club, thanks to a past incident that tarnished the school’s reputation.

Destin quickly finds himself embroiled in the lives of his fellow schoolmates, with a few of them joining him on a mission to revive the football club and take it to the very top of the school’s social order. However, that’s no easy feat, and you’re tasked with helping the fledgling team manage its reputation in a story that’s largely predictable but charming and fun nonetheless.

It’s in the way everything is presented to you. There’s a light-hearted vibe to it all, and gorgeously rendered environments help sell the experience to a large extent. Coupled with a soundtrack that’s pretty well done, exploring the school and engaging with your fellow students is a breeze. While the lack of any graphical options is a bummer, the game runs pretty smoothly for the most part.

With that being said, I did notice dropped frames and slight stuttering on my PS5 during a few cutscenes, and a weird shimmering effect around shadows with HDR turned on (it’s off by default). They didn’t really mar the experience in the slightest, but they’re there, and it’s worth pointing out.

However, those are minor issues that don’t take away from the fact that this is a very good-looking game. I only wish that its pacing in Story Mode was better, as it takes quite a while before Destin, Cedric, and Briar Bloomhurst even get to take to the field. For the most part, the game’s opening hours have you going from objective to objective while picking up collectibles, petting cats, and indulging in some very entertaining rock-paper-scissors-based combat with your fellow students or Cirrus’s citizens.

"There’s a light-hearted vibe to it all, and gorgeously rendered environments help sell the experience to a large extent."

It’s a fairly simple system that’s quite easy to pick up, and racking up wins wasn’t overly challenging. That might sound like it gets boring pretty quickly, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking about it. You would be wrong, however, as it’s all done with so much heart and earnest simplicity that it just clicks, pulling you in without you being any the wiser. It’s easy to get distracted as you walk around town, although the number of activities you get to do is fairly limited.

Each character you meet has their own motivations, which are strong enough to keep them interesting as the story progresses. The English voice acting is serviceable, although I would recommend going with subs over dubs for this one. The character models are another highlight, and Briar’s smoldering energy was a personal highlight. Destin, as a protagonist, is quite compelling, and his love for football pushes him to contribute to the sport in any way he can, despite not being able to play it himself.

This sets the stage for some interesting team-building mechanics once you manage to gather a few recruits for your fledgling football club. Scouting out new talent and forming bonds with them is an important part of the gameplay loop, underlining Destin’s role as a manager extraordinaire who isn’t afraid to think outside of the box. Special training sessions often open up as a result of your recruitment efforts. They bring quirky yet interesting twists to the Focus Squabble system, or could be on-field simulations that train you in the game’s important mechanics.

A social system is in place and does add a layer of immersion to the entire experience, with texts coming in from your buddies and a few limited options that you can send back in reply. You get notified when new messages come in and can check them out at your leisure via the Inacord tab on your in-game menu. It isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it’s nice that it’s there.

"It’s all done with so much heart and earnest simplicity that it just clicks, pulling you in without you being any the wiser"

Harper Evans forms the other part of the story, with the weight of his father’s legacy weighing on him despite his prodigious skill on the field. Other characters are largely forgettable but do enough in the moment to justify their presence in the game’s cast. Overall, the Story Mode was where I spent most of my time with this game, although I suspect fans of the anime might prefer the Chronicle Mode and its random character pack-based team collection mechanic that brings a frankly overwhelming number of characters in packs of twelve to pick up and build teams with.

The extra modes didn’t feel as compelling as the Story Mode, but I can see die-hard fans losing themselves in Chronicle Mode and its unique proposition of reliving events in the Inazuma Eleven universe. I was tempted to jump in, but found myself wondering what Destin and his fellow team members would get up to next too often to make the other modes interesting. The Kizuna Station mode was the one I visited least, as I found its city-building activity too drab in comparison to the rest of the game, but I do think it’s going to have its takers.

A competitive mode lets you take on the CPU or online opponents, while a smattering of other options gives you more than enough to do in the game to keep you occupied for a while. But it’s the football that’s going to draw in the most players for Inazuma Eleven Victory Road.

And on that front, the game delivers, although there are minor gripes. For starters, the controls don’t feel smooth enough to support the mechanics that are given to you. Achieving breakthroughs in Focus Battles on the pitch needed a bit of trial and error until I could get used to the game’s controls. Executing more complex moves and strategies is similarly held back by the controls, which can get quite hard to remember in the heat of the moment. Not only that, the game’s fast pace doesn’t let you take a minute to familiarize yourself with them without pausing the action, which defeats its purpose.

" The Kizuna Station mode was the one I visited least, as I found its city-building activity too drab in comparison to the rest of the game."

However, that’s only a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, thanks to how each match is exciting and unpredictable. The game isn’t afraid to come at you hard, and I was hard-pressed to find openings where I could sneak past my opponent’s defenses. The anime-inspired touches that come with the territory in a game like this one feel well-thought-out and do well to bring interesting twists to the table.

They form a gameplay loop in which you weave between opponents, execute passes to teammates, and use your innate abilities to pull off offensive and defensive moves that wear their inspirations on their sleeve. It’s a superb balance between offense and defense that makes each match a test of skill, just as a football game in an anime world should be.

I just wish it hadn’t taken so very long for the Story Mode to begin introducing all of the mechanics on offer, as I felt that trying out other modes without familiarizing myself with the game’s controls wouldn’t be advisable. If that sounds like you, know that you’re going to be locked into the story for a while before you finally get to a training session that lets you learn the basics as well as a few advanced mechanics to use on the pitch.

It might have been better to simply implement a tutorial similar to the one in Chronicle Mode at the outset and perhaps dive into more complex mechanics at a later point, but it is what it is. I’m just glad that things are fun and challenging once you get on the pitch, with the enemy AI putting up quite a good fight even in easier battles. You’re going to be repeating more than a few encounters thanks to sometimes not being able to meet the objectives required to progress to the next one.

"You’re going to be repeating more than a few encounters thanks to not being able to meet the objectives required to progress to the next one."

Overall, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is a lot of fun to play. It’s done so well and is so charming that you’re automatically willing to forgive its flaws, while it offers up quite a lot to be a game that’s very easy to recommend. LEVEL 5 has done well to bring the original anime’s vibe and tone to life in this one. It’s a great choice for some football fun over the holidays, and might even give you aficionados an impressive show.

This one’s definitely worth its price tag if you like football, anime, or a combination of the two. If you were a fan of the anime, you’re going to have a lot of fun with this new adventure. Just give it the time it needs to get started, and you’re golden.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.