As an anime fan, My Hero Academia was on my list to watch but I never got around to it. When I saw this game was coming out I decided to check out at least the first season before playing it, which got me hooked and I actually ended up watching the first two and half seasons before I played My Hero One’s Justice 2 by Bandai Namco. With a fresh understanding of the anime and the characters, I was ready to hop into this game and go Plus Ultra with my favorite fighters, but what I found this title offered killed my excitement pretty quickly.

Story

Being told in a manga slide style, the story picks up after the big fight against All For One and moves forward with the anime storyline from there. There are slight alterations in the story, but this could be the same kind of alterations made when an anime is changed from being a Sub to a Dub version, where the story is ultimately the same. The difference is that this game takes every little opportunity that could have been a fight, even if it wasn’t in the actual manga/anime, and makes it a playable fight in the storyline.

Gameplay

Starting with the story mode, you will go through various scenes from the actual anime and use a pre-determined character to fight within each mission. This is a good way to try out all the characters while progressing further into the game. It also shows you the initial tutorials for the game so you can get used to the controls, despite them being rather simplistic. As you complete missions, you will find that each one has its own challenges to meet for each one and by completing these challengings you will unlock various goodies to be used in the game, such as customizable gear.

The fighting itself is pretty straight forward with all the main combo’s being done by pressing the same button over and over until the flashy sequence is complete. Very seldom is there a fighter or move set that can be combined to make a longer combo, but they are there with some characters. The main way you will do damage though is by building up your Plus Ultra meter to do supers, where the max meter level is 3 and there is a different move to use up 1, 2, and 3 bars worth.

You also get sidekicks for the fights but keep in mind that they are nothing more than that. They can only be used to provide an assist attack in the fights, use their Plus Ultra instead of your main characters, or let it build up and use the 3 bars Plus Ultra which is your character and both sidekicks doing their supers all at the same time. This means you need to make sure that the character’s attacks are compatible with each other and your own otherwise it will be slightly going to waste.

Dodging is a big part of the game as well as it lets you evade attacks and move around the room quickly. It is best used to continue a combo once you have completed the first one so that you can get a second set of damage on the opponent before they hit the ground.

There are other modes that you can utilize such as arcade mode, which interestingly is set up where you put together your team and then pick a route. Once a route is chosen, you will see a bunch of cards on the screen and you can pick these cards in any order you want making your decision the randomizer for your opponent. Then there is mission mode which is essentially a rescue mission set up on a board. You can only attack the characters near you and it takes one turn to move on to a spot. Each turn costs some health to the characters remaining and once they hit 0hp, the mission is a fail. Finally, we have the online mode which will allow you to go against other players in either ranked or unranked matches.

The last thing to mention is the customization menu. This is where you can equip the various things you unlock from the story mode. You can dress up your favorite characters in alternate outfits and put on a variety of accessories, but don’t be surprised to find the options for these items to be pretty limiting currently.

Visuals

While the game has an art style that is closer to the manga rather than the anime itself, it is pretty well done with each character and setting given proper details. They could have done better on the boundary limitations so that the screen doesn’t show the blank out-of-bounds view or maybe even filled that area in with scenery for when it does poke through, but the chunk you are supposed to see is good.

Audio

Music variety is pretty good and matches well with what you hear through the anime as well. Not to mention the voice work and sound effects are also well matching to what we get in the anime.

Replayability

Mission and story modes are both pretty long, but once completed there isn’t much to go back for. The replayability for this game lies in the Arcade mode for offline play and the Online mode for those who like to challenge their abilities against others.

What It Could Have Done Better

As I mentioned, I freshly watched the show to prepare myself for this game and the gameplay was such a let down once I began. All of the characters have a floating feeling and there is even the option to run up the side of a building and fight like that in at least one of the levels, but all I have to ask for this is: Where do you see this in the manga or anime? I literally just watched it and for the most part, the fights take place on the ground and don’t defy gravity, so why is this in the game at all? This aspect of the gameplay completely ruins the fighting moments for me and to make matters worse, the game is nothing but fighting so it was rather hard to enjoy many of my fights and would have preferred the gameplay relay closer to the way the fights go in the anime.

Next, we have the different arenas in the game. Where most games that have a 3D arena with multiple items in the arena, such as pillars and fencing, are breakable but they also provide some kind of resistance or blocking in the fight. Unfortunately, everything just kind of falls away easily and doesn’t actually play a role other than aesthetics. This tells me that we just got a bunch of empty arenas dressed up to be more than the blank spaces that they are. I would have liked to have seen the different arenas actually affect the way the fights go down.

Overall, the fighting itself is very plain and straight forward leaving little to no room for actual strategy to be involved. Aside from dodging and properly landing your combo’s, the game is a properly made button masher.

Verdict

My Hero One’s Justice 2 doesn’t live up to what I was hoping for and I wish they kept everything closer to how it is in the anime. It simply feels like a separate reality of what is shown in the anime and what we get in the game. Great game for those looking for a simple-to-play fighting game, but an awful game for those looking for a proper My Hero Academia title.