Let’s be honest. When we saw the One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows launch trailer from Bandai Namco and witnessed Saitama just absorbing damage while living up to his name and ending the fight with one punch, we thought “well that will get boring quick.” Yeah, everybody is aware of this including both the manga/anime creator and the game development team. And that’s why you don’t play as Saitama throughout the game, but rather a hero of your very own!

Story

Imagine being a hero in the One Punch Man universe, just trying to climb the ranks and make a name for yourself like all the other heroes. Meanwhile, a strange guy named Saitama keeps showing up to the hardest foes you face and saves the day. Although his personality is questionable, his strength is nothing to underestimate.

The game takes place during the anime series storyline, but you just take on the role of your own hero instead of Saitama. This gives you the chance to have your own adventure while the iconic moments from the show happen while you are progressing through the Heroes Associations ranking system.

Gameplay

The first thing the game has you do is customize your own hero. Everything is changeable in the future, even if it is something like the gender which would become available to change later in the game once you complete enough of it. There are a lot of options here later on as you purchase more, but at first, the options are pretty basic and limited. Honestly, the accessory section of the customization options doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because it lets you do things like wear sunglasses on your ankle, but I guess more options is better than not enough. Everything else is pretty straight forward and able to be set up to your preferred style, including color choices.

When you first start off, you will be using the fighting style listed as “Standard.” As you progress through the game, more fighting styles will be unlocked for you to use and master. Each one can be maxed out at level 5 with each new level unlocking something for that fighting style. This is usually one of the special attacks slots or even the super move slot itself. However, unlocking moves to fill these slots will be different from just leveling up the fighting style.

To unlock moves, known as “Killer Moves,” for each fighting style, you will have to work with fellow heroes throughout the game. This is where the open-world style gameplay comes in because you will be running around the city to meet up with them in order to start their specific quests. Helping heroes with their quests raises their social status with you and once the bar is full, they will no longer have any quests for you. Every quest of theirs that you help them with unlocks a new move or reward-of-kind for you, typically in relation to the fighting style that specific hero uses.

Once you unlock the super move slot and have a super move to use, this can only be done by maxing out your energy meter. After you have enough energy, you will first have to do a “mode switch” which will increase your attack and defense powers, allow you to use only certain moves from your specials list, and unlock the ability to use your super move which only the first hit has to land. Even if the enemy is blocking, the hit will be enough to break their guard and initiate the super move. This is good to know so that when you are online or versing an enemy that is trying to do this special, you know to dodge rather than block. Note that the outfit you are wearing when you do the mode switch for the first time will be saved as the outfit you change to every time you do a mode switch and the only way to change the outfit for that is in the avatar customization menu.

The questline will only be open-world style about 20% of the game though because the majority of your missions are given to you via the Heroes Association buildings. Whether the missions are more citizen-focused or association-focused, you basically choose the mission from the list and the fight will load up for you. This was a bit of a let down as I was hoping for more of a DBZ: Kakarot style set up, but at the same time, it lets you just stay in the action as long as you want.

As you complete missions and level up your hero, you will be given stat points to use on your hero. I would suggest only put a few levels on both Technique and Appeal while putting more focus into your Attack and Killer Move levels with a secondary focus on HP. The point system for this is a bit strange as you don’t get a single stat or two stat points, but rather a number like 40 or 85 stat points and then each stat costs X amount of stat points where the cost raises the higher the level is. By the time I finished the game, my stats were 18 HP, 20 Attack, 19 Killer Move, 4 Technique, and 4 Appeal. You can purchase power upgrades from the bookstore which can then be equipped to help your stats, which I used one to raise my Technique to make it 5 and one to increase my attack power when at 100% HP. These can be customized as you see fit as well with double and triple point increase options unlocking further into the game.

When it comes to playing online, there are a few modes that can be chosen. Among these modes also includes the option to include or exclude Saitama himself. Even if you include Saitama, he has to be the third hero on the team and so he shows up about 300 seconds into the match, making it so they can’t end immediately. However, if you have Saitama in the “dream version” then he will be weakened to fight at the same level as everybody else - this being a joke from the show where he is dreaming of being in a fight worth participating in.

Graphics

Everything looks mostly how it does in the anime, which I always feel is the most appropriate approach when making a game based off of a show. It’s good to see they tried to have everything match in a 3D arena as best as they could to what we see on the screen and in the manga’s as it maintains an authenticity when pulled off.

Sounds

While I could tell the music was similar, if not the same, like the ones used in the show, it did get a little repetitive. There didn’t seem to be a lot of variations in the music and would rather just have an abrupt repeat of the same songs over and over. The voice acting was done pretty well, although it was a bit odd that the very beginning has very limited voice work in it, but then at a point a few chapters into the storyline every other scene was voiced. Not a big deal, but definitely a consistency error.

Replayability

Anything with a competitive online mode has the ability to be replayed over and over. No matter how much you practice at something, there is always room for improvement and a trick to learn to increase your skills. As for the storyline, it will always be the same so there isn’t much reason to restart in that aspect. There are a lot of missions to complete after the game is done though, so the storyline has continuability while the online mode provides the replayability.

What Could Be Better

The customization menu could have been improved by restricting some of the silly options they included, mainly with the accessories. I get that you want to give players options, but when I tested the limitations I was able to put the same pair of sunglasses on every section of my character all at the same time. Honestly, it just seemed like a lazy way to provide options rather than giving a wider variety of gear to choose from.

I don’t know why you guys chose to have the stat points set up the way you did, but this did not need to be set up in such a strange way. I would have preferred the classic style where you gain 1 or more stat points for each level and then the stat you want to increase will cost 1 or more points. It is easier to follow and understand which would be better than the fact that even after reaching level 40 I couldn’t tell you how many points I got for each level increase.

I would have loved to have seen more of the iconic “Okay…” moments from Saitama. I appreciate them adding one in at the end against Boros, but I don’t think anybody would have complained to have seen that at every one of the big boss fights where Saitama saved us. Although to be fair, the type of humor the game had was very similar and reminiscent of that we saw on the show, so a bit of a give-and-take complaint with this part.

Conclusion

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is a well-made game that lets you play through the timeline of the show. The few times you play as Saitama himself is fun to just let the enemy go all out before throwing the punch, but I am glad that we were our own hero rather than just boringly one-punching our way through the game. Definitely a worthy title for fans of the series!