It’s been a long time since there was another football game choice for players, Fifa and PES have remained unchallenged for years. But Bandai Namco has teamed up with veteran developer Tamsoft to revive the football manga masterpiece Captain Tsubasa hoping for a triumphant return to gaming, adding another notch to its already impressive legacy.
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is a love letter to long time fans allowing players to play out all the major matches from the original manga and extra game only stories.
There are few modes in the game such as Versus where players can pick one of the 21 teams and go head to head creating dream matches. Online versus where players can rise through the ranks of different leagues with their custom made team. But players should play The Journey first to get accustomed to the controls.
Much like Fifa’s The Journey, this is a single-player campaign that will let players take control of a character and play out their season. In Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions The Journey is split into two parts – Episode: Tsubasa where players will play through the Boys’ Fight and J Boys’ Challenge arcs where players will not only get a firm grip of the game but they will be able to delve deeper into the lore of Captain Tsubasa experiencing his battles first hand.
The second part is Episode: New Hero where players will play an original story, creating a new character to play for one of Tsubasa’s rival team, I chose Furano being a massive fan of Matsuyama but there’s also Hyuga Kojiro’s Toho and Jun Misugi’s Musashi to pick from.
Each story comes with new original animation and will allow fans to have a never seen before glimpse at Tsubasa’s rivals stories. Players will be confronted with multiple-choice dialogues on a regular basis, there isn’t a wrong answer here but decisions will lead to different paths in the story, players will be able to unlock titles if there is a smiley next to a choice.
Players will have to increase their character’s stats which are divided into six categories: shooting, dribbling, passing, tackling, intercepting and blocking, your character will award points for how well they do in a match.
Obviously depending what position your player is they will be able to increase stats in some categories better than others, so if your character is a striker try to get them to tackle and block more than they would so they gain points.
All the points will go towards the overall cost of your player, the higher the cost the better the player, this will be a factor when players build their own custom teams. Players will be able to customise their character with special shots and skills to be used in matches.
Building friendships is another factor and characters will be able to forge bonds with team and non-teammates. Increasing with non-teammates friendships will allow your character to learn the ability of the corresponding friend, so if you pick Tsubasa you can learn his Drive shot.
Players’ teammate’s stats will be raised by the amount of critical plays completed, goals scored and how many times you activate the V-zone gauge.
Completing both modes will take about 20-30 hours to complete and more if you want to get everything. Tamsoft have really captured the essence of the series with each character feeling like they do in the series. Fan or not The Journey will captivate players getting them pumped and raring to go for each match.
My only issue is that there should have been more anime cutscenes used, instead of the stills used to create montages that last a bit too long. However, the CG cutscenes of the big moments suffice and retell the story really well.
Visually Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is stunning, the cel-shaded art style really captures the anime aesthetics, each character looks and feels like their anime counterparts. The special moves and critical plays literally leap off the screen.
The only downside, as a lot of work has gone into the characters, the rest of the surroundings are really lacking with dated visuals, crowds stadiums and everything else becomes a massive afterthought.
The game includes all the music from the anime which helps to complete the whole Captain Tsubasa experience. There’s only Japanese voice acting, with the original actors reprising their roles, another addition that makes this one for fans. However, there should be different languages included as reading the constant subtitles can become a chore for non-fans.
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions has been described as an ‘arcade football action’ game where players will be allowed to carry out super plays in real-time. There’s quite a bit of depth here that will take practice to perfect. Each character has a Spirit gauge that will be consumed after performing actions like sprinting, shooting, unique dribble and more.
Every confrontation works a bit like chess as certain moves are more effective than others depending on your situation, instead of using sprinting to pass the last defender and wearing down your gauge, players can wait for the defender to approach them and use a Unique dribble to get past them. Thus saving energy and you’ve now taken a player out of the game.
Learning how much a move depletes your spirit gauge is an important factor to scoring goals and keeping possession. Each team will be able to change their tactics on the fly by to adapt to how the opponent uses their possession. As your team pulls off successful tackles, dribbles or win duels the V-Zone will steadily fill up.
Once full, teams in possession will receive a massive boost and all their gauges will fill up a lot faster meaning players will be able to pull off skills and unique dribbles somewhat at will. Even though there is a varied choice in what players can utilize, there still isn’t that openness for creativity, a lot of the features do become repetitive over time and each match can feel like it’s following a predetermined path.
Each character has a special shot like Tsubasa’s Drive shot, or Huyga’s Tiger shot, but it doesn’t end there, players can initiate block moves to counter these special shots allowing them to throw their whole body in front of the shot. Keepers have a super save which can save any shot but can only be used when the V-zone gauge is full. All of these specials have amazing cutscenes that add to the Captain Tsuabasa experience.
Verdict
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is an amazing comeback for the series, all the detail that has gone into recreating the feel of the anime is a winning combination alongside the character animation.
This is highly recommended for fans of the series. However, fans of regular football games may find the game is not as fluid as what they are used to.
Some players may feel there is a slight repetitiveness to the gameplay and not much openness to be as creative as other football titles.
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is out on the 28th August on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC
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