Developer: TAMSOFT CORPORATION
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
Platform: PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS – Review
Even though we cover loads of games here on 3rd-strike.com, we actually don’t feature that many sports games. We do the occasional EA Sports FC review (previously known as FIFA), but that’s pretty much it. Today we try to find the middle ground with our review of CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS, which combines soccer with a well-known anime franchise. While we weren’t that familiar with the source material, the game still managed to entertain us. We did find that some parts were perhaps a bit too basic.
Story
The story is pretty much a classic rags-to-riches story for your custom player joining Tsubasa’s team. The new storyline is set several years after the first game, where Tsubasa won the Junior Youth World Challenge, and you’ll start your new journey in Brazil. You, an unknown player, often blend into the background while the franchise’s main characters interact with each other. Most of the story is presented via dialogues with the occasional action-packed cutscene thrown in for good measure. While our vague description here absolutely doesn’t do the story any justice, we are sure that fans of the series will love what’s on offer here. You’ll learn a lot more about the different characters; there is a lot of side content, and it’s all just good old-fashioned fun. If you are new to the series, however, we doubt that the game can manage to properly pull you in.
Graphics
Graphically, WORLD FIGHTERS looks quite good. The franchise’s style looks great in 3D, and many iconic characters have never looked better. The gameplay looks smooth, and animations are fluid, which is important for a sports game such as this. Even so, we noticed quite a few frame drops during short cinematics, and the loading times are absolutely abhorrent at times. The latter often takes away from the otherwise fast pace of the actual matches. We reckon this is a case of not properly optimizing the game, as the graphics should not push our PS5 to its limits.
Sound
All in all, the sound design of CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2 isn’t bad at all. There is loads of voice acting in the story mode, and even the match commentary is quite nice. The Japanese dialogue and the English commentator create a fairly jarring contrast, however, as we would have preferred it all to just be in Japanese then. The supporting sound effects are decent, and the soundtrack was also quite nice. While playing, you’re focused on the action instead of paying attention to the sound design though.
Gameplay
Unsurprisingly, CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS is all about soccer. You’ll take on other teams, be it in the story mode, via local versus, or online pvp, and that’s pretty much all there is to the experience. There are hardly any modes to choose from, and the story seems to be the focal point of the game here. Obviously, the game isn’t a realistic simulator but more of an arcade-like experience. The matches are quick and have a few quirky mechanics that make it stand out from the competition. Sadly, some parts felt a bit too basic to be truly memorable.
While local and online versus options are nice, the meat and potatoes of the experience can be found in the story mode. Here you’ll play through many scenes that involve iconic characters from the franchise while you insert your own created avatar into the mix. Some portions of the story mode are purely dialogue, while others require you to play full matches. The mechanics here are quite simple, but accessible enough for those who aren’t used to playing sports simulators. It’s all about passing, tackling, and timing, to be honest. When you have possession of the ball, you’ll have to time your dribbles right, while when you want to steal the ball from your opponent, you’ll have to estimate your tackle distance correctly. One thing that’s extremely frustrating about tackling is that when you’re on the offense and another player tackles you mid-pass, the tackle will redirect itself to the target of the pass. So mid-tackle, the direction is changed, making passing a useless way of keeping possession at times.
The game’s twist on the standard formula, except for obvious ‘special’ moves, is that your players on the field all have an HP bar. If you want to score, you’ll have to whittle down the HP of the opposing team’s goalie. When shooting at the goal, you’ll have to choose a direction. The defending player will have to do the same, and when he guesses poorly, he’ll lose more and more HP. When normal players lose HP, they’ll stay down much longer when tackled. It’s a fun spin on the classic formula of soccer games, and it kind of reminded us of 1990’s Nintendo World Cup, where players would eventually not get up anymore after being tackled too many times.
Conclusion
CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS is a decent game for the fans of the series, but it didn’t captivate us as much as we would have liked. The arcade-like soccer mechanics were engaging enough to play through the story mode, but we were quite done with the game the moment we started playing online. The narrative was fairly entertaining, but newcomers to the series will not find anything here to truly draw them in. In short, if you’re a fan of the series and love your favorite characters coming to life with flashy visuals, then this game will entertain you for a while. If you’re just looking for a casual arcade-like soccer game, then this one might not be the best pick.
