The first cross-platform One Punch Man 3D action game One Punch Man: World showed up at Perfect World Games’ booth during Chinajoy 2023, and during its time at the exhibition even had playable demos on PC for fans to check out the game for themselves. We got to try out the on-site demo for the game, experiencing its rich features, and fast-paced combat, and got a peak at how it handles combat with four characters.
▍One Punch Man: World Hands-On Preview
▍The World of One Punch Man Lovingly Re-created
One Punch Man: World follows the same worldview and design as Yusuke Murata and ONE’s manga and anime series, spending every effort in recreating its environments and characters perfectly.
Like with any hero in the OPM universe, players can take on missions assigned by the Hero Association and create a party of up to four characters. During the battle, you only control one leader character, while the rest are left to the AI to control automatically. Players can explore the hero association building with their chosen avatar before selecting missions from various types, building their team, and then heading out.
One Punch Man: World has multiple areas for you to select your challenges and missions, in the center is where most of the game’s main missions and story mode takes place, but towards the one end of the floor was the hero mission counter where players can take on jobs like fighting difficult and challenging boss encounters, using 5x the normal amount of energy needed compared to normal stages for a plethora of valuable rewards. These included upgrade materials, equipment, EXP, and more depending on the stage you were fighting.
Accepting these stages also came with a timer lasting for approximately 24 hours, which felt rather appropriate because naturally you wouldn’t be leaving dangerous monsters out in the open for long, and someone will eventually deal with it if not you. Each boss had multiple variables to them, and it seems like different versions of the encounter will have special variables and challenges with different rewards available.
The real meat and potatoes of One Punch Man: World is its combat which is a real-time 3D action game. Each character has 3 abilities, a dodge button, and a basic attack combo chain. During certain combos a QTE may also pop up that has your allies quickly follow-up to pursue the enemy, performing combo attacks with you as you work together to take down the boss. On PC this was as simple as hitting the V button on the keyboard, though on mobile it may require tapping the middle of the screen whenever the prompt appears.
One Punch Man: World also has an interesting way of letting you use a character’s ultimate ability, as it’s gained through a combo meter on the left side of the screen. Each hit you and your allies deal to the opponent builds the combo meter up, and when it reaches its maximum value you can unleash your character’s signature attack.
The developers managed to capture the look of the signature attack from the anime, with incredibly flashy effects and makes for quite a spectacle that would have been seen more often in the anime, if most side characters didn’t have their moves shrugged off by powerful opponents.
Being that this is an action game, the developers made it so that you can’t simply rely on your levels and stats to get the job done, as getting used to the boss’ attack patterns and the composition of your team will be important in taking down bosses, lest you get sent back to the stage prep screen. Each character has multiple typings associated with colors, and multiple versions of them give you the incentive to grind out and collect these different versions of Genos, Speed of Sound Sonic, and more.
The PC demo of the game didn’t include the option to play as Saitama, partly due to the omission of the game’s tutorial so players couldn’t experience his One Punch Kill in the exhibit. The PC version of the game felt incredibly smooth running at a stable 60fps, though, amidst the action of the screen, the UI prompts were definitely on the smaller side, and during hectic moments it was difficult to see which button you were supposed to hit to perform certain actions without having been introduced to them properly.
Certain actions like QTE prompts, and combo follow-ups are just things you need to get used to after some play, though it’s a minor gripe and likely the settings will have options to turn up the size of the UI. Another issue was some visual bugs were happening on-screen with characters being covered in large pink visual effects during combat, though that’s likely due to this demo being an earlier version of the game.
If you want to experience One Punch Man: World for yourself make sure to pre-register for the game on its official website, and pre-register for the game’s upcoming Open Beta Test in the South East Asia region.
