So, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, my friend Andrew from work started talking up My Hero Academia to me, and I decided to start watching the anime. Now I'm right here with the best of them, wearing the merchandise and subscribed to Funimation to watch the current season unfold in its subtitled goodness.
A couple days ago I heard about the launch of a new mobile game title for My Hero Academia that actually got me pretty excited. My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero is a free to play mobile game that bills itself as an Action MMORPG. That's a perfect storm for me, so I naturally downloaded the game.
You know you're in trouble when you start to screenshot the loading screen.
So, just to be clear, you know how these games work, right? It's free to play to get you in and they shower you with tons of currency and get you solidly hooked on the game, then the faucet begins to dry up right when you start to feel committed to the game. It's also a gacha game, so you'll want to summon heroes constantly. Once you get over that mental hurdle and know that those things are eventually going to stop you, you'll be fine.
When you pull that S rank Todoroki though . . .
I'm two days in and so far, it's been absolutely worth the free download, so let's talk core gameplay. Everything revolves around completing quests. Quests lead to combat. Combat leads to rewards, rewards lead to gearing up and leveling. Gearing up and leveling allows you to go further into completing quests. Per typical mobile game loop fashion, as you spin around this loop a few times, new modes begin to unlock to give you more depth in the game.
The game slowly unlocks pvp, guilds, co-op modes, daily quests, gear progression, and a ton of reward tracks. If you've played a 4x game like Rise of Kingdoms, you'll know what I'm talking about with reward tracks. Basically, you play follow the red dot around the UI menu collecting reward after reward for simply playing the game. These rewards are the fuel you'll need to level your characters and progress in the game.
The main quests are mostly to do with combat, but be on the lookout for side quests, which seem to have a bit more variety and flair to them. My favorite side quest so far had me running an investigation into a robbery at a local restaurant.
The clerk got busted for stealing a recipe from the owner -- THE SHAME!
Another side quest had me helping a store owner who lost his cat mascot. A daily quest had me picking up trash. All in all those are pretty standard fare, but they do break up the combat.
Not that breaking up the combat is necessarily needed. I have to say that the combat in this game is actually quite good. If you like button mashing and combo building as you work your way up to launching ultimate moves, you're going to like the way combat feels in MHA Strongest Hero.
Ultimate moves are so much fun
The villains that you fight come in waves and eventually you'll be bringing three of your favorite heroes into combat to take out several waves of combat that culminate in a boss fight. The great thing here is that the enemies are everything you've come to expect from My Hero Academia. They are goofy and cool at the same time. I love the absurdity and charm of this universe and it all carries over nicely from the anime.
Punch him after he charges . . . got it . . .
One of the layers you unlock has to do with playing through highlights from the story of the anime itself. Currently I'm helping Midoriya clean up the beach so he can convince All Might to give him his quirk.
Running through the junk
This involves a fun little mini-game of swiping and timing taps, which helps to break up the main game progression.
Is it an MMO though? Well, I suppose you can see other players in the city section and do a nice co-op mode to play with other heroes, but for the most part this feels like a solo player's game. I guess it'd be hailing back to some of the old arguments we all had back when the first Guild Wars game was being debated as an MMO. There definitely is global chat, guilds, and you see other player's avatars around in game, so . . . there's that at least.
All in all, I'm enjoying myself so far. I never played any of the One's Justice console fighting games for the Anime, so this is my first "game" experience with the franchise. If you're playing the game or have some additional insights to share, feel free to leave me a comment and say hello.
Happy Dueling!
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