Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Review

If you've never played an Inazuma Eleven game, this is a strange place to start. If you have, even the original DS games or the anime, Victory Road is going to feel like something you've been waiting years for, because it has been years. The headline feature is the Chronicle Mode, which lets you recruit players from across the entire franchise history. Over 4,500 characters. That number sounds like a joke but it isn't, Level-5 went back through every game, every anime season, every spin-off, and pulled them all in. Building a team from characters spanning fifteen years of the series is exactly the kind of thing that should absolutely not work but completely does. The core tactical gameplay holds up well. Matches are a blend of real-time movement and tactical decisions, when to use Special Moves, how to read the opposing team's formation, which players to rotate in. The Special Move animations are still ridiculous in the best way. Watching a player summon a fire wolf to kick a ball through the goalkeeper has not gotten old. Where the game trips up is getting you there. The opening hours are slow. Like, noticeably slow for a modern release. The tutorial drags, the main story's new protagonist takes a while to get interesting, and the scouting system, which you'll use constantly, involves a grind that can feel borderline disrespectful of your time in the early game. Once it opens up though, it genuinely opens up. The competitive mode has a solid player base, the Custom Town management systems add depth between matches, and the Chronicle runs deep enough that veteran fans will still be finding characters months in. Not for everyone, but for the right person, this is a 200-hour game.