TL;DR: If you are a Tsubasa anime fan and want to play for the story, I recommend buying for around ~20$, otherwise stay away from this.

-- EDIT: Patch 1.10 --
A new patch was released a few days ago with 3 new DLC characters and a new story route (3 months after the games release), which are always welcome additions. But it also included a brand new feature not written in the games patch notes: MICROTRANSACTIONS!

That's right! Microtransactions on top of a 60€ incomplete game filled with bugs, softlocks and hackers!

No, but seriously, go f*ck yourself Tamsoft & Bandai.

-- END EDIT --

Please take this review with a pinch of salt, it is more of a vent than a review but it still holds truth and represents my experience with this game.

This game is a very mixed bag for me. I am in a love-hate relationship with it.

The good : The story mode is great. There are 2 modes for the story, one where you play as the young Tsubasa and his team for the national junior championship. And the "New Hero" mode where you create your own character and play for Japan for the World Cup.

As a nostalgic Tsubasa fan, this game truly shines in Story mode. The in-game animations are fun to watch and faithful to the manga/anime. The story plays itself in a nice 3D visual novel style with some dialogue choices for the player.

In the "New Hero" mode, you play with your custom player. The better your performance is, during the game, the better stats the custom player receives. You can select original players (Tsubasa, Hyugga, etc...) to make friendships with and learn their moves/skills. This makes for some really cool movesets combos and allows for your creativity to flow into the game.

It's a really fun mode to make new character builds and do some re-runs to see new events/story development with players or learn new hidden moves. This is the mode where I spent most of my time playing this game.

Mixed : Play Point(PP) shop. There is a in-game currency in Captain Tsubasa called PP. You gain these points by completing overall challenges, doing story challenges and increasing Friendships. With PP, you can unlock new cosmetic items for your player and buy card packs. The cosmetic item shop is fine but the card packs are terrible.

The card packs include player cards, that increase the level at which you gain Friendship with that player, and consumable items that increase the stat growth of your custom player during "New Hero". I have a real problem with this because there is a real discrepancy between the amount of PP you get for each run and the amount of items you use in that run. Once your overall challenges are done, there is a real lack of gain for PP points without any place to really grind/play for it.

And i hate the fact that you share the same currency between cosmetic items and packs. After 100 hours, I barely have any cosmetics for my custom players. That's because if I want to grow the best stats for my character, I have to spend everything in card packs just to get a few decent items. I think cosmetic items should be unlocked on challenges or friendship goals, so you can use all your PP in card packs freely.

The bad : The online. It's unplayable. I don't even know where to start with this one. You spend 15-30 minutes searching for a match so it can be ruined by terrible latency, lack of any collision register, miracle goals or straight-out softlocks. For brevity sakes, I'm just gonna give some examples that happened to me:
- There is a very good chance for the ball to jump randomly in the air into oblivion, during any long pass or corner kick.
- The game can freeze during a goal celebration and either player must leave to end the game. Whoever leaves, loses the game and receives penalties for quitting mid-game.
- Miracle Goals. Some shots have a slight chance to be instant goals, bypassing the goalkeeper and defenders health. So no matter how much character stats or how well you play, there is a chance of you drawing or losing the game.
- Once, the ball got stuck under the ground and neither team could reach it, making that half-time unplayable.
- Sometimes, the game makes it impossible for you to select your own players, making it impossible to make them move or pass. The game comes to a dead-end because the goalkeeper cannot pass without him selected.
- The run animations can straight out crash making it impossible to steal the ball from that player.
- It is impossible to pause mid-game, making substitutions only possible in half-time.
- It is possible to greatly stall for time after your first goal without any consequence or punishment.

It is no wonder most people never play again after their first match.

The Terrible:: Predatory gameplay incentives and marketing schemes. This last patch introduced the CC shop. A new currency that allows to buy better items than the PP shop. This currency can only be gained with the new dailes/ weeklies mechanics. And this is where I draw the line with this game.

Why is there a second in-game currency in the game? If you want to make items rarer, you could just increase their price or lower their drop chance in the card packs. There is no need for another currency (Although I have my theories on why they put it).

This game never needed dailies or weeklies. Not only is it mostly an offline game but people won't spend 15-30 minutes waiting to play a mode which is riddled with bugs and crashes so they can do their daily for some few useless virtual points. If you want people to play the online mode, you have fix the mess that are the online games and smooth the matchmaking/gameplay. None of these issues were addressed in this patch.

One month after its release, the game goes to 40% which is a spit in their supporter's faces. They still haven't addressed any issues that shouldn't even be in the release of this game. Their priority is to implement some shady currency (which would probably be monetized if there were any online players yet) with dailies/weeklies in hopes that their players will stick a bit longer. After one month, they haven't released any character from the DLC pass, which, at this point, I probably think they aren't even coded yet.

Conclusion: This game was released incomplete and unpolished. What it should be a fun/casual football anime game was ruined by rushed releases, weird game mechanics, predatory rewards systems and greed. I was hopeful for many things to be fixed in this patch (1.07), but now I have no doubts that this game was a shamless attempt to install a 60$ predatory micro-transaction online system inside the Captain Tsubasa fandom.

The offline story is still pretty great though. So if you are a Tsubasa fan, I still recommend buying this game when it goes to 20€, which shouldn't take too long considering its current development.

Thank you for reading my review. I would appreciate any criticism you have for it.

Regards, ThunderEye