This review contains spoilers
The story is simple and effective, I especially like the story concept of having to recruit members to form the football club and having that act as the base for the game is really well done and it gives so much freedom to create your own Raimon, and the game encourages you to go out and scout new faces to build your team and this feature gets unlocked really quickly into the story I think it’s either chapter 2 or 3 but that’s really early given new Inazuma standards now and the whole theme of building up Raimon from nothing to legendary club is again simple but really effective, straight to the point stories and themes are something I really enjoy. Having that plus not having the story impact any of the matches like you're not required to have anyone on the field except Endou in which fair enough main character moment. (There is a moment where you must have Kurimatsu and Kabeyama on during the Kidokawa Seishuu match but other than that you didn't need anyone specific on.) But the main concept being you can create your own team and challenge Japan’s toughest teams is fantastic. They also balance the story and gameplay well as well, they don’t overload the player with story at the start, giving them little bits of story then gameplay works well as it keeps the player engaged. This doesn’t last the entire game though as in Chapter 6 you get a lot of story at the beginning with little gameplay in-between while to some it might be a bad thing but in my eyes it makes the most sense doing this as the story really sets up a lot of backstory regarding Teikoku and how they are linked to Raimon it only makes sense to give the amount of story shown.
Overall, the story was pretty decent, and it was a solid opener to the series, it’s not too wacky or crazy with its plot it’s nice and simple and really sets the standard going forward.
Focusing on gameplay now and it’s really unique and amazing, to describe the game to friends I would say it’s Pokémon but what if instead of battles it’s football which is fun comparison to make because on paper, sport games and role-playing games just should not mix but Level 5 added their own secret sauce to the Krabby patty secret formula, and it works wonderfully. Typically, with JRPGs you usually find that people say “Oh this is just a [Insert game title here] clone” but with Inazuma it has its own identity which really makes it stand out. There’s a few complaints I have with gameplay and the primary one being that the encounter rate is abhorrent, you encounter teams far to frequently and that really annoys me, more so when I’m trying to go through a door or move on to the next area I would get caught on like the frame of the door or a post or even an NPC and because of that 9/10 I would get an encounter. It just annoyed me slightly I’m happy there’s a end game item that prevents the whole encounters from happening. The type of battles that you can get keeps the player on their toes as they’re not just trying to score goals, but they’re trying to win possession or they’re trying to not concede or not lose possession, this on paper is a good idea but in execution along with the high encounter rate it just annoyed me more than anything else. The last thing that I had issue with was the time in that it took to get your Scout reports from Natsumi, they were far too long, given that it’s tracked by how many steps you take the most optimal thing to do is to just run around in a circle inside on of the Raimon buildings but every time I went from the club room to 1 of the buildings I would get an encounter and you already know my thoughts on that. Point is they can really drag on especially when you really want to get a player from the club you just beat and have to wait for a good while before you finally get the call, you get back to the club room and see the report only to find that the report doesn’t have your player that you hoped for, not having control over who’s on the scout report makes sense however it can cause players issue when they can’t get the player they want and have to keep rerolling the scout report and waiting that awful time, it’s not a pleasant experience and can be a mood killer.
Overall, though the gameplay really sets the bar high for future games and I hope that Level 5 can continue to improve their craft and make the next games absolute bangers. My score of Inazuma Eleven is a 4/5 with a highly recommended tag.
Overall, the story was pretty decent, and it was a solid opener to the series, it’s not too wacky or crazy with its plot it’s nice and simple and really sets the standard going forward.
Focusing on gameplay now and it’s really unique and amazing, to describe the game to friends I would say it’s Pokémon but what if instead of battles it’s football which is fun comparison to make because on paper, sport games and role-playing games just should not mix but Level 5 added their own secret sauce to the Krabby patty secret formula, and it works wonderfully. Typically, with JRPGs you usually find that people say “Oh this is just a [Insert game title here] clone” but with Inazuma it has its own identity which really makes it stand out. There’s a few complaints I have with gameplay and the primary one being that the encounter rate is abhorrent, you encounter teams far to frequently and that really annoys me, more so when I’m trying to go through a door or move on to the next area I would get caught on like the frame of the door or a post or even an NPC and because of that 9/10 I would get an encounter. It just annoyed me slightly I’m happy there’s a end game item that prevents the whole encounters from happening. The type of battles that you can get keeps the player on their toes as they’re not just trying to score goals, but they’re trying to win possession or they’re trying to not concede or not lose possession, this on paper is a good idea but in execution along with the high encounter rate it just annoyed me more than anything else. The last thing that I had issue with was the time in that it took to get your Scout reports from Natsumi, they were far too long, given that it’s tracked by how many steps you take the most optimal thing to do is to just run around in a circle inside on of the Raimon buildings but every time I went from the club room to 1 of the buildings I would get an encounter and you already know my thoughts on that. Point is they can really drag on especially when you really want to get a player from the club you just beat and have to wait for a good while before you finally get the call, you get back to the club room and see the report only to find that the report doesn’t have your player that you hoped for, not having control over who’s on the scout report makes sense however it can cause players issue when they can’t get the player they want and have to keep rerolling the scout report and waiting that awful time, it’s not a pleasant experience and can be a mood killer.
Overall, though the gameplay really sets the bar high for future games and I hope that Level 5 can continue to improve their craft and make the next games absolute bangers. My score of Inazuma Eleven is a 4/5 with a highly recommended tag.