Captain Tsubasa II: World Fighters Review - Sub-Par Soccer
Fans of manga and anime have plenty of choices in what flavour of these mediums gets their attention. You may have a penchant for the supernatural and be drawn to Jujutsu Kaisen, Bleach and Mob Psycho 100. You may love the power fantasies of My Hero Academia, One Punch Man and the long-running Dragon Ball franchise. Or you can be into some of the really weird stuff out there in those formats (no judgement here, just making a point). One very successful style of manga and anime is titles based on and focused on sports. In these stories, we meet a talented individual or team and follow them as they overcome obstacles to become champions/professional athletes in their chosen field.
Captain Tsubasa is one such sports-based title, but don’t be surprised if you have never heard of it. Until I received the review code for Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters (CT2:WF), I hadn’t either. Following the titular Captain Tsubasa as he chases his dreams of soccer stardom, CT2:WF tells the sequel manga’s story as Tsubasa competes against the world as part of the Japan youth team.
Regardless of your previous knowledge of the characters or the reference material, CT2:WF is a decent enough soccer game that does give the player that feeling of being part of the anime world, where players can make impossible kicks accompanied by a flashy light show on command, where a goalkeeper risks being launched into the net just from the power of these strikes and a super slide tackle will send your opponent flipping end-over-end like a pro wrestler selling a particularly devastating clothesline.
As fun as that stuff is, the gameplay is pretty basic at its core, but passable. By shying away from the complex controls possible in the franchise formerly known as FIFA, the simplified controls restrict the ability to play a match properly. For example, a short press of the pass button will pass the ball on the ground, while a long press will have your player lob the ball as far as possible, but there is no in-between. You can’t do a little chip to get the ball over the opponent directly in front of you, and half the time it seems like you are just passing the ball to the opposition. The most unbalanced part that really hampers the experience is the tackling mechanics. Overlooking the fact that I’m pretty sure 100% of professional players would be rolling around in tears if they ever took one of these hits, the range and power of these moves are ridiculous. It is borderline impossible to charge up a powerful enough shot without the defender sliding in from the sideline and ruining any chance at a goal. There is a mechanic where you can dribble around an attacker, avoiding a punishing tackle, but it relies on competing stamina numbers and a healthy dose of luck to come out the other side with the ball still in your possession.
I will admit that upon realising that any successful tackle will lay a player out for a good few seconds, my game plan would consist of passing the ball to the opposition just so I could lay them out, resume possession and then send a long cross into the goal area. Outside of that play, the only times it seemed like I was able to score was when one of my strikers had a super shot ready to fire off, and even then it’s not a sure thing.
The main problem with CT2:WF is the story mode just isn’t very engaging at all. While I didn’t break out the stopwatch, it honestly felt like I spent as much time watching cutscenes as I did actually playing soccer. And that is the crux of the issue developers face when they are creating games based on manga and anime. A big part of these sport-centric stories is the development of the characters as they grow, but a lot of this growth can also take place outside of the official matches. For every breakthrough Hinata made while playing a match in Haikyu!!, two more were developed through camaraderie and rivalry with members of other teams. Sure, a sports game set in one of these established worlds sounds great on paper, but the sport itself is not what makes the content great; it is the story that complements it. When making a game based on an established property, existing fans will expect you to be faithful to the story, whether recreating existing content or adding to the lore. Meanwhile, new fans need background context that connects to the greater world.
This leaves the players watching cutscene after cutscene between matches for the narrative to advance, and even the optional side content that can unlock new moves is nothing more than watching cutscenes. To compound this, apart from the stadium announcers, the entire voice-over is only available in Japanese despite the anime having a successful English-language dub available to viewers in the United States.
As with many anime tie-in games that have come before, and likely many that will come in the future, Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters doesn’t manage to find that sweet spot between gameplay and world-building. The anime-styled soccer matches can provide some fun to players, the basic control mechanics and unbalanced tackling will struggle to retain engagement. This is probably a game that will most likely be enjoyed by those who are already fans of the series, with newcomers struggling to engage with the amount of cutscenes between matches.
Captain Tsubasa II: World Fighters was reviewed on PS5 with a key kindly supplied by they publisher.
