Level-5 has revealed new information about the next game in the Inazuma Eleven franchise, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road of Hero, including a video showcasing the gameplay on the Nintendo Switch platform and a new artwork featuring Unmei Sasanami, the game’s protagonist, alongside a new nameless character.
The game is planned for release sometime in 2023 for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android in Japan. The game will be the first main title in the franchise to be non-exclusive to Nintendo consoles.
The revealed video presents the different game modes and the system that will use the matches on Nintendo Switch, allowing to play in different ways in portable mode and tabletop mode, presenting systems similar to those seen in the Inazuma Eleven games for Nintendo DS and 3DS.
More information about the new story, characters, settings, music, non-match game systems, animations, techniques, and more will be revealed in February 2023.
▍Inazuma Eleven Victory Road of Heroes Gameplay Video
▍Inazuma Eleven Victory Road of Heroes Development Video
▍About Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road of Heroes
In April 2020, current Level-5 president Akihiro Hino announced plans for a new game in the franchise, instead of following the story of Inazuma Eleven: Ares as originally planned, the game was going to have a completely new story, which was a remake of the first season including characters from older sagas, with Unmei Sasanami as the new protagonist.
On July 21, 2022, Akihiro Hino made a big update on his blog where he informed that the story of the Unmei Saga would change a lot compared to his initial idea. That big change would come as a completely original setting and new characters, instead of a parallel world or being directly connected to any of the characters from the previous three sagas.
Unmei’s story is now about a boy who, for unknown reasons, is unable to play soccer and who, together with his classmates from Nagumohara High School, opens a new path to victory quite intense, when Umnei decides to create a new soccer club, recruiting players from his high school. This time, the process of completing the soccer team has been much more complex than in past games.
A new interface is being implemented in this game called Free Football, in which the player will be able to modify at any time the way to play the matches, either in a tactile way taking advantage of the Nintendo Switch functionalities, as in the main games released for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS, or in a similar style to the Inazuma Eleven Strikers Saga games released for the Nintendo Wii and to what was seen in the cancelled Inazuma Eleven Ares game.
There will also be a separate mode called Chronicle Mode where players can play and recruit characters from the three previous sagas.
