Captain Tsubasa: Rise of the New Champions he had managed to create an aura of great interest, great expectations and obviously deep nostalgia around him right from the start. On the other hand, Holly & Benji, has been among the most loved anime ever, not only for a generation: his return, thanks to the remake produced a few years ago, has done nothing but increase the interest generated around what it is. a brand with unprecedented power, especially in Japan. Being able to finally have an arcade title focused on football seemed like being able to take a breath of fresh air and fun, only to realize that you have set the bar of expectations too high. We tell you, therefore, what did not convince us in Captain Tsubasa, which we believe is a great missed opportunity.
Tsubasa's Journey
As we have already said, Captain Tsubasa it could have been a great opportunity, a step towards a new videogame proposal for the world of football. Detaching from that simulation-like proposed by Fifa and PES, focusing on a pure arcade, done and finished, Bandai Namco could come to propose a fresh, innovative product, perhaps starting from those solid foundations that Dream Team, the mobile gacha title available for over two years, he had already skillfully placed. Nevertheless Tamsoft, the software house that was concerned with the development of Captain Tsubasa, has created a product that leaves you almost amazed by how cheap it is in the gameplay and not at all in depth.
Fortunately, he thinks of saving the whole shack. the rendering of the narrative aspect. As was already known thanks to the previews and from this pre-launch period that has accompanied us since the first announcement in January, in addition to the canonical challenge modes locally and online, Captain Tsubasa offers us a vast experience, lasting about twenty hours, with the story mode, known as Travel. A clear reference to that The Journey that Alex Hunter himself had experienced in his Fifa trilogy. In turn, the story mode will be divided into two chapters: Episodio Tsubasa ed Episodio New Hero. As for the first we are going to weave the narrative line that sees Tsubasa engaging in the middle school tournament, approaching for the first time some of the iconic Japanese players, from the Tachibana twins to Hyuga, passing through Soda and Jiro, without forgetting Nitta and Misugi. . The first chapter will also and above all serve to better learn some game mechanics, launching us in a series of tutorials that follow one another and thus going to better explore the sterile and truly trivial playful proposals to get to the final victory.
The Tsubasa Episode will allow us to control exclusively the Nankatsu team, the school of Tsubasa, and graphically draws heavily from the remake released in 2018, which allowed us to return to live the exploits of Holly & Benji with a more polished and innovative style. So forget about experiencing the early stages of Ozora's development, because the Elementary Tournament is not among the narrative proposals included in Captain Tsubasa, Genzo has already left for Germany and the goal is to win the third consecutive youth tournament. Therefore, through animated events that will tell some scripted situations, both to get closer and closer to the topical characters of the manga and to present us the techniques we already know well, the first chapter of The Journey proceeds to the conclusion in a few hours, so much to lead us to the final victory and launch us into what is the heart, then, of the single player mode.
In fact, in Episode New Hero, we will have the opportunity to go and build our player, a promising young footballer from Japan. Following a bit what are the traces of all the other single player careers of soccer games, we will find ourselves creating our avatar and placing it in one of the schools at our disposal. Using World Youth and Road to 2002 as a narrative carpet, we find ourselves in the narrative segment during which the various middle school teams find themselves participating in an American competition from which the best players in the world will be selected, ready to wear the jersey of the national team of the Rising Sun.
From here, therefore, you will find yourself making your own journey, with the aim of becoming the new champion of Japan, interacting with all the well-known heroes of Captain Tsubasa. Unlike what happened in the first chapter, New Hero becomes very role-playing in his proposal, putting us in front of multiple choice dialogues, but above all in front of the need to develop our own athlete: in addition to making friends with other athletes, you will also collect Player Points, essential for increasing the statistics of game and also refine the individual technique. A much deeper and more interesting adventure than the Tsubasa Episode can be, which - we repeat - was born with the sole aim of providing us with a narrative context and presenting the tutorial in a different way.
Woody and frustrating gameplay
Once the aspect linked to the modes present in the game is concluded, we come to the great sore point of the entire videogame structure of Captain Tsubasa, namely the gameplay. Let's start by reiterating, in case there was still a need, that we are faced with a pure arcade, which does not even try to approach football simulation: not only that, because if you are used to Dream Team, you will find yourself even more displaced, given that if in the mobile title everything is managed based on statistics, numbers, multipliers, critics and the classic triangle of player types, in Captain Tsubasa there is none of this. It's all boiled down to one poor roulette and mere chance.
Putting your formation together, with a layout that is very reminiscent of PES, you will have the preliminary possibility of selecting tactics, which you will then manage with the directional cross keys, as also proposed by Fifa: you can thus pass through a wall defensive to a brazen attack, up to a counterattack. In the long run you will notice that these tactics were only incorporated for give color to the maneuver, but which will not generate any kind of effect. Captain Tsubasa does not require any kind of strategy, nor does he ask you to apply a different one from shooting as soon as possible to reset the stamina of the opposing goalkeeper, so that he will no longer be able to save anything. But we'll get to that shortly.
Your team, at least initially, will inevitably rely on one of the champions, be it Hyuga, Tsubasa, Nitta and so on: each of them will be able to replicate their famous skills, all preceded by animations that represent the real flagship of Tamsoft's production. For everything else, however, you will find yourself using all the commands already known to football titles, including short passes, through passes, shots and crosses. Just like in Fifa and PES, then, there will be a stamina bar, here indicated as Spirit: you will consume it between running, dribbling and defensive tackles, but it becomes essential for goalkeepers. Once the extreme defenders find themselves having completely exhausted their Spirit, between normal or special saves, which will require you to automatically activate certain skills, they will no longer be able to carry out their primary function, so every shot will inevitably become a goal. You will understand right away that the only applicable strategy, therefore, will be to pull as hard as possible, waiting for the goalkeeper's stamina to reach zero: Alternatively, you can still try to break through the door using one of your players' special skills, as long as it is Hyuga, Tsubasa and all the champions we know.
Between roulette and power ups
Beyond this totally irreverent aspect, which nullifies any ambition for constructed action or to arrive in front of the door after a series of careful steps, you can try to activate Zone V, a sort of Full Power Soccer inspired by Dream Team, which will allow you to rely on a temporary power up able to fill your stamina bar for shooting and cross as quickly as possible. This is because in the construction phase in order to get to launch a special ability you will have to hold down the shot button for a long time, up to the maximum load and thus putting yourself in the open to suffer an opponent's contrast and lose the ball. The result is a situation bordering on the neurotic, where you will have to load your shots after deftly clearing yourself or continuing to wander around the penalty area waiting to have the entire bar full.
Obviously the most annoying mechanics do not end there, because Captain Tsubasa has among its foundations the dribbling rolls. All your movements on the field, whether offensive or defensive, will be limited to two buttons, namely R1 and R2, which must be pressed both in possession of the ball to avoid the opponent and in the non-possession phase, to regain it. We are talking about roulette because in the event that your opponent presses the button different from yours you will be able to get the better of it and overcome it, in the attack phase, or recover the ball, in the defense phase, otherwise, then with two keys that will go to match, you will lose the tackle or dribble. In short, even the strongest of the attackers can be stopped by the slowest and most stumbling of the defenders, without taking into account any kind of statistics or skills, but simply by pressing two buttons.
In the absence of fouls, if not the lateral ones, the action quickly becomes an almost ping-pong back and forth that from one side to the other will lead us to a victory that will almost never give you satisfaction. Defensive moves will soon be confusing, bulk tackles and passes, especially the final ones, will often be inaccurate, forcing you to frustrate an entire action or run after a ball inexplicably thrown further than expected. And in case you find yourself getting to the penalties, know that the even coarser reproduction of the whole will force you to find yourself in front of another uncontrolled roulette, between saves that may not be enough due to a too powerful shot or trajectories. impregnable. We certainly did not expect a proximity to a simulation title, which we have already clarified is not Tsubasa, but at least a videogame proposal that would allow us to live an experience far from the frustrated and fun.
Between individual strategies, which will lead you to activate special bonuses following two successful dribbles - obviously always in a very casual way - and the total uselessness of having ten other players next to you, without the ambition to build an action worthy of note or to look for the right corner to mock the goalkeeper, you will soon find yourself in front of a morbidly repetitive and bite-free gameplay. Beyond the nostalgia that the excellent narrative and graphic component will offer you, which re-proposes with its cell shading all the magic of the anime and the precision given by the reproductions of special abilities, Captain Tsubasa remains one of the greatest missed opportunities of this quest. 'year.
