How do you make a video game based on a franchise where the main character can defeat anyone in a single punch? This was the question that Spike Chunsoft had to face when it made a video game based on the One-Punch Man anime/manga/webcomic, which has resulted in a game that captures the spirit of its source material, but has a number of issues that prevent it from being a must-have title.
In One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, the player creates their own character and has to start from the bottom as a C-rank hero. The character creation options are limited from the start and the player won’t have many choices outside of punching powers/hobo clothes. This is very much keeping with the spirit of the series, with the player having to unlock new powers/outfits as they complete different tasks.
Hero For Hire
In order to raise their rank, the player must fight against monsters and hoodlums around the city. It’s clear that the developers wanted to make the most of their character creation engine, as the bulk of the enemies in the game look like someone hit the random button in the “Create-A-Wrestler” mode in a WWE game. There are a number of different combat styles in the game, but they are based on established characters from the franchise, so everyone feels like an inferior copy of someone else.
The player character is a silent witness to the events of the series, as they hang out during the adventures of Saitama and the S-Class heroes. The player gets to make a hero, but their avatar is little more than a dress-up doll that is bashed against ridiculous looking monsters and have some cordial conversations with familiar characters.
Netflix’s Xenoverse
The combat system in One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is 3 versus 3, though it doesn’t have to be straightforward, thanks to the Arrival system. It’s possible for a hero or villain to have to wait for their allies to arrive, causing them to lose if they are knocked out before the cavalry shows up. This is how Saitama is incorporated into the game, as the player has to hang on for three minutes for his arrival, but he’s indestructible and can KO anyone with one punch when he appears.
The single biggest issue with One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is that the combat just isn’t fun. Attacks feel imprecise, with punches seemingly being able to interrupt other blows at random. Characters spend way too long on the floor when knocked down and are easy to trap in combos as they stand. The 3D nature of the arena means that it’s easy for attacks to miss. A lot of the enemies in story mode are challenging only because they barely take any damage and fights turn into a grind, which isn’t helped by the slow speed of the gameplay. The random elements feel fun at first, but the chaos grows wearisome over time. The combat system just isn’t as fun as it could be and especially not when the player is forced to battle tons of random enemies to progress through the story and unlock everything.
The free combat modes outside of the story mode are a little better, as the player gets to use the established characters from the game. It’s here that One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows feels most like the game it should be and it’s a shame that it takes so long for the player to unlock all of the usable elements in this mode. The combat system still isn’t great here, but at least it feels like the franchise.
There are also problems that exist outside of the combat system. There is a lot of loading in the game and the player is never too far away from a load screen. The overworld might be small, but the game really needs a menu that lets them access the facilities without needing to run around all the time. There is also a persistent issue involving pop-in, as sprites for quest-givers take time to load and the player cannot interact with them till they do.
One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows feels like a street-level version of Dragon Ball Xenoverse, with its hub world and poorly designed fan-fiction characters, but Xenoverse managed to pull off this concept with its wealth of source material and intergalactic setting. One-Punch Man isn’t as good of a fit for this kind of game and it might be better served as the basis for a regular 2D fighting game… if it wasn’t for the Saitama issue.
One-Gimmick Game
The developers of One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows did a valiant job of translating the franchise into a video game, but the final product just isn’t fun. One-Punch: Man: A Hero Nobody Knows makes the player feel like the world’s mightiest janitor, who must complete monotonous and frustrating tasks in order to reach the end of a story in which they aren’t even the main star. Diehard fans of the anime & manga will probably find something to enjoy in One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, but even that won’t last for long.
A PlayStation 4 copy of One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows was provided to TheGamer for this review. One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
