Sometime back in June, Bandai Namco announced a One Punch Man game. Dubbed as One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, the game will feature intense 3v3 action featuring the characters of the widely popular anime series. During Tokyo Game Show 2019, our friends from Banda Namco invited us to a hands on session with the game and we’ve got some answers for the questions we know you’ve been wanting to ask!
If by any chance you don’t know how the game plays, it’s pretty much your standard 3v3 fighting game. Think Jump Force or the previous Naruto games, you get the drift. One thing I noticed here is that even though they probably used the same engine as the other similar games, they seem to have fixed some problems. Throughout my playthrough session, I did not notice any of the clipping issues that the My Hero Academia game had. It might be an unfair comparison because the levels in One Punch Man are more open, but at the very least the camera angles have been improved.
Another thing is that the game currently has quite a healthy list of characters to choose from. During the session we had only 6 fighters were available – Saitama, Genos, Speed-O’-Sound Sonic, Mumen Rider, Silverfang, and Terrible Tornado but you can expect more to come when the game releases like Boros, Atomic Samurai, and Bang among others.
Character controls are quite simple too. You have a strong and normal attack, jump, guard, dash, dedicated shoulder buttons to switch characters, and a killer move button. The killer move button does not do anything on its own, instead you’ll have to press another attack button while holding down the killer move button to execute a special attack. The control scheme is very easy to pick up and learn and combos are very fun and flashy to do. One thing about it is that I personally feel that the game is not deep enough, so hardcore players looking for tournament and e-sports level gameplay would need to look elsewhere. That said, One Punch Man is a fun game to pop in with friends looking for a chill and enjoyable session.
So… What about Saitama? Does he live up to the “One Punch” moniker in the game? Check out the gameplay video below:
Ok so there are a few things here:
- You can choose Saitama from the character select screen as one of your three characters.
- As Saitama is ALWAYS late, you will have a handicap during the battle, trying to fend off your opponent until he arrives.
- Saitama arriving is based on a timer that will decrease as you perform certain moves. Perfect dodges will take off 5 seconds from the timer, and so on.
- Once Saitama arrives, he will immediately destroy the opposing character in play.
- If your opponent has another character alive after that, he will jump in to face Saitama.
- Saitama takes NO DAMAGE from any attack by anyone.
- Consequently, he will only need One Punch to kill any character.
The name of the game is simple, buy time until Saitama arrives and “win” the game. It’s a hilarious mechanic that solves him being overpowered but it absolutely works.
“So, do I always have to pick Saitama?” Well, you can if you want an unbeatable security blanket but the trade off is that you’ll only have 2 characters to use until he comes along.
“What if I don’t pick Saitama?” Well, you now have 3 characters you can use to beat the opponent before he arrives.
“What if both of our Saitama’s come along and fight each other?” This is where it gets interesting. No other character can damage Saitama except Saitama. So if both of your Saitama’s get into the battle, the it commences as a regular fight would do. You can expect Saitama to have the same moves and expressions he has in the anime, take a peek below:
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Funny thing about it is that if you do manage to beat the opposing Saitama with your own, you don’t really “kill” him. Being technically invincible, he simply runs away!
Overall, One Punch Man is looking to be like a fun game to play with your friends. The visuals are spot on and faithful to the anime and the action is as fast paced as I would have wanted it to be. I found My Hero a bit too slow but this feels just right. No word on a release date yet so stay tuned for that!
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Videogame Content Editor. A father and gamer. Would gladly trade what’s left of his soul to witness a Final Fantasy 6 and Xenogears remake done during his lifetime.
