Bandai Namco is about to launch his new football title inspired by the well-known manga and anime of Youichi Takahashi, or Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions. This intriguing product will be released on August 28th, and is the first game inspired by the legendary series ten years after the release of Captain Tsubasa: New Kick Off for Nintendo DS, as well as the first for home consoles to come out of Japan. With this distinctive football title, the developers have promised to revolutionize the world of arcade football games, with solid gameplay and amazing action. After showing an important depth of background, we truly believe that this new game - not only because it is inspired by the adventures of Holly and Benji - can really have its say in the panorama of arcade titles that exist right now.
Between incredible shots, portentous slips and endless fields
Thanks to the trailers and small playtrought sessions posted by Bandai Namco, we were able to discover, day after day, this new football arcade title. Eliminated the first impressions, which saw us immediately with "bright" eyes during the films, and set aside the amarcord moment that immediately grew in our minds, we decided to understand if the title was not all "Smoke" . With time and with some small tests, we tried to dig as far as we were allowed to understand how deep and engaging the game could actually be. The response was certainly very positive (we will wait for the review to give an overall and definitive judgment), also thanks to a gameplay that is not as obvious as that of any other arcade football title. The developers have studied thoroughly before launching such a well-known brand on the world of consoles, giving a very high depth of play.
Although from the very first steps the title may seem like any other football product with a strong arcade imprint, once we have made the first dribling, we understand that things are not like that. To dictate our opponents not only will we have to be good at pressing the button at the right time, but we will also have to understand what kind of defense our opponent is implementing. Yes, that's right, with the R1 and R2 keys we can drip our opponent, but if he in the defensive phase understands which key we pressed to pass over, he will interrupt our attack phase. This game system turns out to be really fun, because it will mean knowing and studying our opponents, to surprise them at the right time.
To add charm to the experience we find the introduction of the "Spirit" bar. This bar is used for everything from sprinting to dribling and is an indicator to always keep in mind when implementing winning strategies. Each time we perform an action the bar will drop, and it will take some time or pauses to restore it. The even better thing is that our goalkeepers also have it and it will be consumed every time they make a save. Unfortunately, the ways of recovering the goalkeeper's Spirit bar are different from the players on the field, because it will reset at the end of the time or after a goal conceded. This dynamic opens us up to a very interesting scenario, because before consuming all our resources for a shot of the "Tiger" it will be better to start to tire the opposing goalkeeper.
Obviously the spectacular nature of the title is not overshadowed by these factors, but rather it becomes a pleasure to search for it, after all imagine how boring it would be to repeat the same actions over and over with the same players. What really stands out in this regard is the existence of various combinations that allow you to replicate the moments that made the manga famous like the combined shot, or the amazing actions of the Derrick twins. These strategies are beautiful to implement and are even more beautiful to stop; imagine the pleasure of understanding your opponent's intentions and interrupting the action he was dreaming of replicating? You need perfect timing, and the defensive phase (the one that might have seemed more useless) is the one that needs to be studied with particular attention. In-game it will therefore also be very important to understand and discover all compatible players, who will thus be able to unlock fantastic game combinations. How many do you remember in Holly and Benji? Well, know that this title contains all or almost all of them.
Is Captain Tsubasa what we needed?
Given that the dynamics of the title are not exclusively those described above (we have not yet introduced the concept of Zone V), but there are really many other dynamics to discover, we believe that the release of Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions can only benefit the recreational-football market. The trend of large companies for many years now has been to create real football simulators, studying every single movement and every single game situation so as to bring them back into their own videogame. Imagine that FIFA continue with the rhythms of realism of recent years; we can hypothesize that from now on we will really feel like we are inside a game. The comparison, however, in the last two years between FIFA e PES discipline it was won by the latter, always criticized for his more arcade imprint to the detriment of realism.
This market situation, in my opinion, means the desire of the players to take themselves less seriously, and to find a title that can be as competitive as it is fun. Just following this philosophy, Bandai Namco took inspiration from one of the most important football cult manga ever to transpose it into our consoles. In my opinion, but we will only know this after the release, Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is the title we have been waiting for for a long time, a fun, exciting football game, with so much imagination and flair that we can take and make us smile together with our friends from all over the world.
The company seems to have created a fun and profound game system, capable of satisfying even the needs of the finest palates. The various modes present will teach us to really discover the title in depth, they will help us understand how to apply patterns in certain game sessions, how to make the team turn according to our preferences, without limiting ourselves to experiencing a simple pass the ball stronger to score. The title seems perfectly balanced, between imaginative and real playful dynamics. We will have to be well prepared to face the other players, we will have to have created a very specific scheme and it will be our task to understand the moves of the opponents in advance in order to win our battles.
This will make the gaming experience deep, much more than you can imagine today without actually having it in your hands. But the dream of a lifetime could now finally be realized, we will be able to choose our dream team, we will be able to choose a formation with the players we loved most of the anime and take them with us, facing players from all over the world, between amazing challenges. and flashes of pure strategy. Currently your desire to compete can sleep peacefully, because the realization of this title seems exactly what we hoped for and I am sure that once it is released, Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions it will be a game from which it will be difficult to break away, because for the first time perhaps we have a valid alternative to the two REs that dominate the football videogame market. I can't wait to be able to play it; and you?
