Product Info

Platform

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Publisher

Bandai Namco

Developer

Spike Chunsoft, Chunsoft

Series

One Punch Man

Genre

Fighting

Players

1-2

File Size (Minimum)

6.49 GB

Release Date (NA)

Feb 27, 2020

Purchase From

Amazon

Best Buy

Target

GameStop

PSN Store

Microsoft Store

Steam

One Punch Man first launched in 2009 as a manga series and quickly became popular enough to be adapted into an anime. With two anime seasons complete and the manga still going, it’s a surprise that a video game hasn’t surfaced until now. Despite some flaws, One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is an entertaining game that retells the story of Saitama and the world of One Punch Man but in a different way when compared to the anime.

In the Eyes of a Hero

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows takes place in the first season of the anime series, but you won’t play as the protagonist Saitama. Instead, after creating your avatar, you are saved by Saitama. From your near-death experience, you yearn to become a hero. You’ll be signed up and ranked as a C-Class Hero. Heroes can go up to S-Class but doing so takes some hard work. You’ll have to earn enough points from quests within the city and from missions given by the Hero Association Assessment.

The game doesn’t give you many options to start, since you’ll be required to play the story mode if you want to unlock all the fightable characters. As such, don’t expect to pull out the game with friends if you haven’t played enough of it.

It Just Takes One Punch

While you can’t play as Saitama through the entire story mode in One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, he’ll show up once in awhile in the story and in versus mode. For those who are not familiar with One Punch Man, Saitama has become so powerful that it only takes one punch to finish a fight. This still holds true in the game. When you do play as Saitama, it is like turning on God Mode. No one can hurt you and you just need to land one attack to have an instant K.O.

Bandai Namco’s decision to steer away from playing as Saitama, focusing more on having your avatar becoming a hero, was a smart move. However, you and your avatar will witness and battle in the same scenes from One Punch Man. It’s a refreshing view of what makes One Punch Man so entertaining.

That said, there is one way for Saitama to take damage: Saitama vs Saitama. If you plan on playing as Saitama against your friend or online, you are just mean.

More Than Just Side Quests

Becoming a hero isn’t just about the large-scale missions. As you progress, you’ll need to take on simple side quests from random people in the city. Some are pretty basic, from delivering documents to another person around the corner to helping find the magician’s missing rabbit. While taking side gigs can be repetitive and a chore, some of these little missions are comical.

For example, after taking on the mission with the magician, you’ll find the magician’s rabbit as a humanoid figure with rabbit features, standing around. The rabbit explains how he’s tired of being treated as a show object and that’s how he turned into a monster. After defeating the monster and reporting back to the magician, the magician learns his lesson and hangs up his hat for good.

Doing these small missions help your contribution to the city. With enough contribution, bigger missions from the Hero Association Assessment will open up and progress the story. An additional way of gaining contribution points is by taking on special missions from higher profile heroes. They’ll appear on the game’s map after certain events are completed in the story.

Sure, the work can become repetitive but with how ridiculous and over-the-top the anime series is, it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal. Plus, it’s entertaining. Fans will want to take on as much as possible to advance the game’s story and unlock characters and items. It’s unfortunate that you have to go through the game’s story mode to unlock everything the game has hidden, though.

Heroes in Many Shapes and Forms

With your avatar, you are able to swap many different fighting styles based on some of the popular characters in the game. You’ll be able to pull off Saitama’s “normal punches” and Genos’s android moves but not at the same time. Your avatar can only use a specific fighting style and then equip a set of moves based on that style. For example, you can’t use weapon attacks if your fighting style is with fists.

Additionally, you have to earn those styles and moves. To do so, you have to complete special character quests and large-scale missions with those characters. Doing so will improve your relationship with them and earn their moves. To unlock move capacities, you’ll have to level up your fighting style. To unlock the special killer moves called ultimate attacks, you will need to max them out at level 5. Leveling up your move set is much simpler than leveling up your hero class.

The moves are entertaining and over-the-top. Using them in battle requires you to save up your energy levels. For your ultimate attack, for instance, you will need five energy levels. The aggravating part is that if you miss your attack on any move that requires energy, you don’t keep your energy. You’ll have to start saving it back up. Luckily, the energy replenishes automatically.

Controlling your fighter is not too difficult. The controls are simple, but it’s fun to pull off moves. Simple combos are easy to initiate. The computer-controlled character you play against is hit and miss when it comes to fighting, however. Most fights are predictable and let up on blocking. Once in a while, though, they go all out and initiate combos that make it cumbersome to block. In this situation, you’ll have to hit the counter button on the controller at just the right time to dodge, leaving the enemy open for a counterattack.

Restricted City

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows’s gameplay takes place mostly in a city. Unfortunately, the city’s open world is limited. Lots of areas are blocked off or gated off. While you can unlock some of its areas, it still feels restrictive. Also, while playing, there’s some performance lag, as well as the occasional weird camera angles when visiting shops. This is happening while playing in offline mode, where one would think there shouldn’t be any hiccups when simply running through the city. As a side note, character shadows on the models look a bit jaggy and are more noticeable when animated. It could’ve used a bit more polish.

Playing online provides some enjoyment but not much. You can leave messages for others, but you are limited and can only really battle against each other. That’s about it. A Hero Nobody Knows feels more like a one-player game than a full-fledged fighter such as BlazBlue, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Super Smash Bros.

Pardon Our Interruption

Unlike many fighting games but like the ridiculousness and charm of One Punch Man, your battles will be interrupted in many ways. Either meteors from a battle far away will land in your battle area, affecting you and your enemy, or a hero will show up after a short countdown to land a quick attack. It’s unexpected and humorous in its unique way.

Before battle, you’ll have opportunities to have backup heroes join you in battle. These can be either well-known heroes or avatar-like heroes. You’re not given an option as they are set to random. Up to two additional heroes can join you in battle and can quickly give you the advantage. There’s a catch, though; your backup hasn’t arrived yet. Instead, you’ll have to hold your ground till help arrives. A nice feature the game offers in this regard is a small “live” broadcast screen with a countdown. Also, your backup can get there quicker by either using a special item before battle or by performing a four-or-more hit combo on your enemy.

However, the same goes for your foe. They, too, can have backup enter the field and disrupt your flow of attack. It works the same way as heroes racing to battle, countdown and all.

One Final Punch

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows takes on the highly popular anime from a different perspective and pulls it off pretty well. With its unique fighting, over-the-top moves and charm from the show, fans can enjoy watching Saitama all over again. Newcomers will have some difficulty following along, but it may be enough to interest them in the show afterward (or in doing 100 push-ups, sit-ups, and squats and a 10K run every single day). After all, it’s just a hobby.