The last title in the popular series from Japan was released in Europe nine years ago. Now, after eight years of development, fans can finally look forward to a new part and with a huge demo.
What game is this about? Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is the latest game from Japanese developer studio LEVEL-5. The football RPG is finally scheduled to appear this year after a bumpy development period over the last eight years.
The story follows two new friends who want to revive their junior high soccer club together after one of them rediscovers his passion for the sport.
Inazuma Eleven is getting a new game in Europe after 9 years
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For us, the game will be called Inazuma Eleven: Heroes of Victory Road and will be released on the Nintendo Switch, but will later follow on the PS4 and PS5 as well as mobile devices.
When does the demo start? It has now been confirmed on the official website that you can download the demo from March 28, 2024 to take part in the beta test. However, this will only be available for the Nintendo Switch and will be around 5 GB.
The demo should give you around 30 hours of play.
What lies behind the eight years of development? In Japan, Inazuma Eleven is a fairly popular football RPG that was later followed by a manga and an anime.
Nine years ago there was already a game from the franchise in Europe. The next game, which was announced in 2016, should follow quite quickly in 2018. Back then under the name “Inazuma Eleven: Ares no Tenbin”. However, according to the developers, there were some difficulties due to the changes in the game engine.
So the game was postponed first to 2019 and then to 2020. Nevertheless, the developers remained confident until the Covid-19 crisis slowed everything down. In April 2020 it was said that there should be a drastic change of direction and a completely new name.
But in September 2020, the studio head reported that they wanted to initially concentrate on “Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y”.
In fact, the football RPG was quiet for a few years and fans had to wait a long time until there was news. For the time being it was said that Inazuma Eleven: Heroes of Victory Road should appear at the end of 2023. This too has been postponed.
Now the release seems to be getting closer and closer. The March demo is certainly a good sign for this.
What awaits you in Inazuma Eleven? Inazuma Eleven is a football RPG, but offers you strategic gameplay during the games played.
This is how you control your team across the field and every encounter with an opponent creates a confrontation in which you have to choose from different options: blocking or tackling, dribbling or feinting, lobbing, powerful hitting or special techniques. Your decision then allows you to overtake or stop your opponent, for example. However, you can also lose these duels.
In the new part, the gameplay should not only be more dynamic, but also take place from a third-person perspective. The random factor is said to have been adjusted, which often made the duels in the predecessors seem a bit unfair.
4,500 characters have been announced from which you can then put together your dream team. So you can expect a number of characters from previous parts, DLCs and all seasons of the anime.
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