I’ve said it a hundred times before, but 2025 was a truly exceptional year for video games. Despite everything incredibly wrong with the industry right now, passionate developers are still delivering mesmerizingly good experiences that continue to define genres, innovate where others have stagnated, and showcase best-in-class design that will surely inspire generations to come. We’re exceptionally lucky to be spoiled with so many phenomenal games, but such luck ultimately comes at a cost, and said cost, among many others, is the criminal overlooking of genuinely great games lost in the shuffle.
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Among 2025’s best video games, hidden deep in the recesses of Steam’s never-ending library and the AI-slop-filled console storefronts lie a handful of amazing games that, any other year, would likely have thrived. Unfortunately, they remain underrated, awaiting their inevitable cult classic status and dozens of YouTube video essays lamenting how overlooked they truly were. One such game is the legendarily good and ridiculously generous Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, a game which, at first glance, has seemingly limited appeal to a broader audience, but that, in actuality, is so good I’m honestly surprised more people haven’t played it.
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Is Far Better Than It Needs To Be
I’d hazard a guess that most people have likely never heard of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road or the underrated anime it is adapting. While the source material certainly has its fans, myself proudly included amongst their ranks, and Victory Road likely sold enough copies to warrant more games in the series, it is, on a surface level, certainly not one of Level-5’s more accessible titles. If I had to guess, I’d assume this is what led to it becoming one of 2025’s most underrated games. However, despite its status as an anime adaptation, perhaps limiting its audience, this football (that’s soccer to you Americans) focused RPG is a legitimately wonderful experience that out-classes anything in its genre by quite a wide margin.
This is largely because the game’s many varied modes are all excellently made, crafted with far more passion and care than the majority of half-baked anime adaptations. Where most fighters, even the biggest Dragon Ball Z games, release with a handful of characters and lock the rest behind DLC, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road features 5,400 characters for free in its Chronicles mode alone, which sees players replay the matches from each season of the anime in a unique time-hopping adventure with its own original characters.
This mode is bolstered by incredibly unique tactical football gameplay, heightened by the larger-than-life abilities of each character. It requires strategic placement, clever maneuvers, and a strong team of the best players, each of whom has their own level and stats to improve. It is ostensibly a football-themed JRPG, albeit not turn-based but active time, adding to the fluid and often frantic nature of matches and better replicating the sport it is adapting.
This is all without even mentioning the game’s 30-hour story mode that tells a brand-new and immensely emotional story set within the Inazuma Eleven universe featuring animated cutscenes by Studio MAPPA. It adds a world to explore, characters to meet, a bizarrely enjoyable dialogue minigame, side quests, and so much more. There is also a multiplayer mode featuring customizable characters, a town-building mechanic, and, naturally, online matches. It’s frankly ridiculous just how generous Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is, although that’s perhaps not that surprising considering it is developed by Level-5, the same studio behind the enormous Fantasy Life i, Dragon Quest IX, Yo-kai Watch, and many more excellent games.
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Should Be The Gold Standard For JRPGs & Anime Adaptations
It is rather rare to find a developer so committed to both an IP and its fanbase that it delivers not just an amazing base experience, but continues to build upon it with massive free updates. Level-5’s level of dedication is extraordinarily admirable and, were I a cynical man, I would have said it could and should never be considered the blueprint for future developers, especially within the JRPG and anime-adaptation space. However, after years of genuinely mediocre games in both genres, I feel as if the type of experience Level-5 is offering with Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road should be the rule, not the exception.
We, rather sadly, live in an era of nickel and diming, where Nintendo charges for what should be free updates, where live service games dominate the industry with their predatory gambling-adjacent monetization methods, and where games release unfinished, buggy, and missing core content. It is a sorry state of affairs, one only exposed more when games like Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road are released. Level-5’s magnum opus isn’t just doing the bare minimum; it truly elevates its genre and offers an experience unlike anything before it, rendering it easily one of the greatest sports games of all time.
The industry should be delivering games like Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road at a significantly more consistent rate. It obviously goes without saying that there are plenty of amazing games, and some just as generous as Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. After all, as aforementioned, 2025 was a great year for games and a hopeful indication that things are moving in the right direction. I’m also not trying to say that every game needs 5,400 characters or a million different modes, all of which are completely unique, feature-rich, and could frankly sustain their own game. Rather, it just feels as if it’s time for the majority of developers to start delivering games that feel worthwhile, that feel finished, that at least attempt to go above and beyond the expected.
Even if the industry never changes, if we continue to get mostly dull, uninspired drivel for the rest of time, at least we’ll have Level-5 and the few developers like it putting in the hard work to deliver genre-defining experiences that promise to push the industry in a positive direction. I cannot recommend Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road enough and sincerely hope this cry into the endless void manages to reach someone eager to try something new. Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is the ultimate adaptation of the anime, a truly great JRPG, an innovative football game, and, above all else, a content-rich experience that’ll keep you entertained for hours. It truly is one of 2025’s most overlooked gems and well-worth a try, if only to hear the utterly phenomenal original Inazuma Eleven theme song.
Will you be trying out Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
A photo of the Retrovolt Arcade taken in 2017, showing several classic arcade cabinets and stools. -
Courtesy of TOHO Animation
