I had never watched My Hero Academia until a few weeks ago, but I now see why it’s one of the most popular anime out there — it’s larger than life. Bigger heroes, bigger villains, bigger drama, bigger stakes. It’s explosive, with huge characters ripped straight out of a modern superhero drama, then turned up to 11.
With the final story arc in the My Hero Academia gaming world fast approaching, my crash course paid off, dubbing me a new fan and ready to play. Thanks to Bandai Namco, I spent a few hours with MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice, a cool, flashy, explosive spectacle fighter that has you reliving moments from the anime. From what I’ve seen so far, it does it all with plenty of style.
Super-Powered Lessons
If you’re jumping into the series for the first time, My Hero Academia is pretty close to the real world, with one big exception. Overnight, 80 per cent of the population got superpowers called Quirks. Some of them are big, like being able to control shadows or run really fast. While others are less so, like have frog-powers or growing adhesive balls on your body. As you’d expect, there are now superhero agencies, superhero sponsors, superhero competitions and superhero academies. The story follows the students of one of these academies, and the main character, Izuku Midoriya (Deku), who is learning his powers while studying to be a hero.
The game itself focuses on the tail end of Deku’s story, with the two previous games in the series focused on earlier moments. I am pleased to see, though, that MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice allows you to play through big moments from across the series and relive fights from multiple perspectives. There’s some great voice acting on show, and the story beats blend animated and more stylised comic book scenes.
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Landing Big Punches
The main crux of MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice is combat. It’s third-person fighting combat, which is very fast and fluid. If you’ve played any of the Naruto or Dragon Ball fighting games, you’ll have a pretty good idea. You’ll chain melee attacks with Quirk attacks that are unique to each fighter. They all have their own style, which is cool to see translated into the game. Midoria uses One for All (basically super strength) as well as grappling attacks to get in close.
Some of the more flashy characters, like Todoroki, are a lot of fun — his Quirk lets him control fire and ice. It all makes for some very explosive abilities, as well as cool movement skills like sliding on ice and throwing huge fireballs.
Combat is often 1v1, but throughout the missions in the preview, there were also times when you had to fight a group of weaker enemies. These made me think about combat quite differently, and favour mobility over single-target damage.
You also have two tag-team partners for each fight, which made me think about who I would bring to missions and test out new combos. When it comes to online play, I can see this being a big draw-card for lots of folks. Building your team and changing it based on who you’re fighting feels like a great mind game. There are also great little switching animations where one character can tag in mid-combo to take over.
Taking Big Swings
Unsurprisingly, MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice is geared towards existing fans of the anime and manga. The piece of the story I played through was set in the show’s final season. So, for anyone not caught up, better start watching.
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Outside of battles, you have some slimmed-down versions of the city to run and jump around. The scale of these segments is akin to a map in Yakuza, and Deku can swing around the buildings like Spider-Man. During these segments, you complete side missions and smaller one-off fights with heroes in this area. Completing side quests rewards with items and customisations.
It’s a bit of fun to run, jump and swing throughout the city. And trying out different heroes’ mobility skills is a cool, unique factor. There’s clearly been a lot of attention paid to how each hero feels both in and out of combat.
From what I can see, these segments between big fights offer a decent amount of content, from story beats to unlockable content.
This preview included a select few missions and side-missions from the later section of the game.
MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice‘s is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on February 6th and retails starting at AUD $85.
Quest Daily was invited to play this early preview of MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice by the publisher.
