With this Dodgeball Academia review we take you to Brazil, where the idea of a journey of sympathy, reflections and colors that deserves to be completed is born. The approach of Pocket Trap is that of a small studio that evidently became passionate about My Hero Academia: the school where Otto and his companions find themselves throwing balls between the teeth, for cast and humor, refers so much to the manga of Horikoshi.
There are no superheroes or bad guys, but the common thread between academia, characterization of characters and challenges with superpowers draws a palette capable of transmitting lots of fun and summer freshness. There is something about this captive ball developed by Brazilians that works damn well: it mixes match duration, match frequency, speed and dynamism with balance, tells an enjoyable story, creates a small ecosystem that works and somehow refers to style and gameplay to some sacred monsters like Paper Mario and Windjammers.
At prison ball school
Otto was supposed to be a referee, but his passion for the Prisoner ball (or poison ball, or dodge ball) leads him to try his luck in the best school in discipline. Here he meets friends and enemies, but above all he begins an adventure that in its dozen hours takes for a walk on campus with different things to do. We have just translated the tutorial that allows you to discover casts and game streams into synopsis: as per RPG tradition, the emphasis has been on playing games, turning between buildings, improving equipment and wandering around the map, even if the exploration is certainly the weakest aspect of the title.
Perhaps it is the result of a lack of ambition or perhaps a precise design choice: having set the game in a few areas leads to immediately familiarize yourself with geography, simplifying orientation and fast forwarding, but the map unfortunately runs out with some speed its offer.
The gameplay of the Dodgeball Academia newspaper is relatively simple: a tournament as a macro-event in which to advance day by day, a main quest connected to it to mark the days, scattered missions, improvements to be developed and some bins with surprises to break. . It is a choice of progression that is assimilated quickly and keeps the pace high, without disorienting the player and accompanying him thanks to a simple management of points of interest: the map provides indications of progress, of quests and of challengers ready to launch balls.
Protagonist and supporting actors work, the dialogues are a brilliant indie game on average light-hearted, the school has its own routines and the progression is natural, it has the right distances, correct times and pleasantly pleasant situations. Too bad for some frame drops here and there, but it's a minor thing; even the equipment didn't galvanize us as we hoped.
Role playing dodgeball
We come now to the central point, the dodgeball: simple as a concept, intelligent as an implementation, the sport around which the work of Pocket Trap revolves is functional to a dynamic gameplay made of reflexes, dodges, timing and release, capable of not tiring and Not to exaggerate. The rule is nothing more than playing team against team to throw balls to others, with many variables: there are loaded shots, special shots, dodges, the possibility of sending an ally to the other side of the small field to annoy you. behind the opponents, crazy balloons, elemental balloons, skill challenges.
There is good variety, it must be said: you can pass the ball, block it, send it back there with a kick or a baseball bat and so on. Each character has its own feature, of values that can be increased with the use of consumable objects, a sequence of ability and improvements unlockable leveling up. Dodgeball Academia is a Role playing game small but complete that certainly shines in the most interesting phase, just the dodgeball: the gameplay is fun and balanced, capable of increasing difficulty gradually. It must be said that, in the face of a balanced advancement between main and secondary quests, in Dodgeball Academia you lose very, very little. It's a shame? Not necessarily, but it would not have been bad, at times, a higher difficulty coefficient.
As it was logical, the depth is unfortunately not sufficient to prevent the game from being carried on practically always using the protagonist, going to the remaining characters only in case of Otto's defeat. There is, it is a prerogative of differentiation that is not trivial to manage and that involves a lot of work on the part of a team in providing enough obstacles and ideas capable of forcing a change of main player, but it would have been an excellent incentive to vary.
The artistic side, the characters well, the environments not very well: in the face of a good direction regarding the 2D character design, the detachment with the rest of the 3D production is quite evident, but it is also the result of the production level with obvious limits. Complete the lotto a versus mode - even multiplayer - with all the options to customize the fight and a soundtrack that accompanies discreetly.
Comment
Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop Price 24.99 € Resources4Gaming.com7.8
Readers (2)9.0
Your voteWith just over 20 euros you can take home a fun and frenetic summer product, capable of mixing with unexpected ability many RPG aspects that denote a great passion on the part of the team for the genre. Everything's perfect? No, but that's okay too: the title flows well, fulfills its function as a sport-rpg union with nonchalanche, niching here and there between Inazuma Eleven and manga on the genre. Despite a map that soon ends to amaze and an unfortunately balanced difficulty downwards, if you are looking for a fresh and carefree product, Dodgeball Academia may surprise you.
PRO
- Successful setting and characters
- Great dodgeball
- Good balance of progress
- A certain simplicity holds back some mechanics
- The map is quite bare
