INAZUMA ELEVEN: Victory Road Review – The JRPG Football Spectacle
I dove into Level-5’s monstrous love letter to fans: a hyper-stylized football RPG with 5,400+ characters, MAPPA-cutscenes and a ridiculous amount of content—brilliant, messy and oddly addictive.
INAZUMA ELEVEN: Victory Road feels like someone stuffed an anime studio, a JRPG and Mario‑Strikers into one box and hit 'go'. If you grew up on the series (or just love over‑the‑top special moves), this is the desktop-sized fantasy you didn’t know you needed.
Gameplay mixes JRPG progression with fast, dramatic football matches: build tension, trigger flashy Hissatsu moves and manage a roster of thousands. Story Mode is a slow‑burn, cinematic ride (MAPPA cutscenes earn their keep), Chronicle Mode lets you relive and recruit characters from across the franchise, and Bond Station adds cosy customization and social hangouts. There’s deep team‑building, unique skill trees per character and surprisingly tactical moments — but it’s sprinkled with gacha systems, multiple token currencies and a grind that can feel relentless. Matches often hinge on focus battles and tension mechanics rather than pure player execution, which will delight fans and frustrate purists. Crossplay and a massive character pool make online play tempting, though matchmaking and netcode have rough patches. Overall it’s enormous in scope: glorious, occasionally sloppy, and impossibly full of fan service.
Victory Road is a thrilling, messy masterpiece: imperfect but full of heart and hours. Buy if you want a playable sports anime with huge collection and story ambitions—expect to tolerate some grind and wobblier systems.
Pros
- Massive roster and collectible depth — thousands of characters with unique skill trees.
- Cinematic, anime‑grade presentation (MAPPA cutscenes) makes the story feel epic.
- Addictive team‑building and creative Hissatsu moves — feels like a playable sports anime.
Cons
- Heavy grind, many currencies and gacha‑like recruitment can feel frustrating.
- AI, focus‑battle balance and online netcode/matchmaking need improvement; bugs still pop up.
Player Opinion
Players praise the sheer amount of content, nostalgia trips and the anime production value — many called it a love letter to fans. Common complaints target the grindy currency system (Bond Stars, tokens) and the occasional flaky AI or matchmaking. If you like collectathons and team‑building with a splash of competitive online play, you’ll probably love it; if you hate RNG and endless farming, maybe wait for updates or a sale.