A Brief History of Inazuma Eleven
With Level-5’s Inazuma Eleven soccer — hereafter referred to by its correct name of football — RPG series set for a worldwide revival with the launch of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road this August, it seems like an ideal time to revisit the series and its history. While Europe did end up receiving most of the series’ mainline entries, North America only ended up eventually getting the first game, so it wouldn’t be surprising if many RPGamers were not familiar with it. Like many other of Level-5’s franchises, the series is part of a cross-media project, with numerous anime series and manga also released.
Inazuma Eleven is based on the world of junior football, following the exploits of Raimon Academy. As with a lot of media geared towards younger viewers, the story is pretty overblown and all about the fun and drama regardless of how realistic it is. The storytelling very much has that Saturday morning cartoon feel to it, and while that side of things may be very by-the-numbers and it doesn’t layer in any subtlety, it exudes the same charm that makes the best series so popular. The series definitely goes full-bore with crazy plot ideas, especially the second trilogy as players find themselves going back in time as well as into space. Like many franchises aimed at younger players, character names are changed to match up with localised language. This provides its own fun, as once its sequels appear, the fact of the series actually being set in Japan is unavoidable, and the games just have to roll with all of the characters sticking with names of those languages. Though given the craziness of what goes on in most of the plots, this is hardly the most realism-breaking thing in the series.
Up until its revival, the mainline entries were all on Nintendo’s dual screen handhelds and specifically designed for them. All six of those games use the bottom touchscreen for most of the controls, including moving players and choosing when and where to kick the ball. Players are always given a story-connected team of players who can be used to kick their way to glory but, based on their overall body weight, there are literal tons of players able to be recruited. The games feature plenty of exploration where players can go to the next story events, recruit characters, get new equipment, find training spots, and participate in small-scale football battles before they take on the full scale 11-a-side football matches. Football battles are effectively a mini-game using the same systems, but with much fewer players and a quicker victory condition like scoring the first goal, winning possession, or keeping the ball for a certain length on time.
One of the series’s most fascinating aspects is how it blends RPG and sports, and in particular how it used the Nintendo DS/3DS’s form factor to do so. Some very basic comparisons can be drawn the Final Fantasy X’s Blitzball, but Inazuma Eleven goes much deeper. Player development has a distinct RPG feel, with attributes, levels, experience points, and a representation of hit and skill points all making an appearance. This means matches end up being decided by a mixture of both the squad attributes and the ability of the player to use some good tactics. The mainline DS and 3DS entries are all controlled primarily using the stylus on the bottom screen to move players and select where to kick the ball from a top-down view, and it works very effectively. The RPG elements come in whenever a player with the ball encounters a defender (or shoots). This sees players and opponents able to use special abilities that include summoning a virtual wall to stop a player advancing or firing a flaming shot on goal. As the series advances, additional special abilities or tactics come into play, giving players plenty of fun ways to unleash powerful moves while still managing to retain proper semblance to the game of football.
In terms of where any newcomers should start, honestly just about anywhere in the main series is fine. The games are all fully self-contained, and there’s very little catching up needing to be done. If one wants a simpler introduction without the full set of power-up mechanics — or wants to ease themselves in a bit before going fully bonkers with the plot — then the starts of the two trilogies would make sense, but quite honestly most of the games are very similar to each other. However, it’s not clear how easy the games are to get hold of — with physical being the only option at this point — and the frustrating region-locked nature of the Nintendo 3DS also makes playing them more of a challenge. To that end, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road and an upcoming remake of the first game will be the strongest opportunities for newcomers to get involved.
Inazuma Eleven
Released on: Nintendo DS (Japan/Europe), Nintendo 3DS (North America)
With the European English release being incredibly British, Nintendo actually opted to fully relocalise the game when it did finally launch in North America on Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately for North American players, this ended up being the only title released in the region. The game follows football-mad goalkeeper Mark Evans, grandson of famed goalkeeper David Evans. Unfortunately, he is the only one at Raimon Junior High School who seems interested. None of his teammates are interested in training, and the team doesn’t even have enough players. Mark’s — and the player’s — first task is to round-up some extra recruits and get the team excited about the prospect of playing in the prestigious Football Frontier tournament, where new rivalries and obstacles will need to be overcome.
As an introduction to the series, Inazuma Eleven does a fine job. The controls are surprisingly intuitive and easy to master, while the special abilities add a welcome extra level of excitement. The one downside, which is carried on throughout the series, is that the game will become very easy for experienced players and lacks much of a difficulty curve. Most story matches will end up being heavy wins for the player, despite the supposed challenge that they are supposed to possess. Story progression is also heavily sign-posted and it’s impossible to get lost trying to find where to go next, so exploration is primarily there for the completionists who want to recruit as many players as they can.
Inazuma Eleven 2: Firestorm / Blizzard
Released on: Nintendo DS (Japan/Europe), Nintendo 3DS (Japan)
The first game soon received a sequel, with Inazuma Eleven 2 taking players across Japan, creating some mild amusement of the English localisation having to just stick with the entire cast having English names, which the series has just continued with even into its revival. Although the first game certainly placed an abundance of importance on youth football, Inazuma Eleven 2 swiftly marks the series’s transition into larger-than-life plots. This entry sees the Raimon team accosted by an “alien academy” using football to destroy other schools. Given access to their own caravan, the team sets out across Japan to find new allies and put a stop to the threat, with the previous cast joined by new members who bring their own charm to proceedings.
Inazuma Eleven 2 is the first entry to feature multiple versions, much akin to the Pokémon series. The different versions have a number of players exclusive to them, plus an exclusive team for Raimon to play against. It also introduces a new ability for certain characters, where they can change personality to gain different abilities. Other enhancements include recruitable female players and some small improvements on the game’s football systems, such as dedicated long shot abilities and the ability for defenders to block shots if they are in the right position.
Inazuma Eleven 3: Lightning Bolt / Bomb Blast
Released on: Nintendo DS (Japan), Nintendo 3DS (Japan/Europe)
Inazuma Eleven 3 sees the series go international. After their success in the Football Frontier tournament, the team is picked to represent Japan in the upcoming Football Frontier International tournament, but must also make room for some new members picked from other schools. This leads to some initial intra-squad rivalry to overcome as the team first navigates the initial qualifying tournament to reach the finals. This is all resolved quite quickly, with the meat of the game devoted to the final tournament, where the series’ traditional melodrama and the bizarre importance of junior football on world events resurfaces. Despite the different premise, there is definitely a sense that Inazuma Eleven 3 is doing much of what the series has done before. It also suffers from a bit of a wasted potential story arc, which is hinted at during various points but apparently relegated to a single, easily missed post-game match.
The version differences are some minor story focuses on a couple of different characters as well as similar exclusive recruitable characters and opponent team in the previous game. Gameplay changes are again light. It does away with the personality switches of the previous game, but instead introduces new special team moves that can be activated in certain situations. Again, the game starts off with a similar lack of challenge as in the previous entries, but the main tournament is notable for providing a stronger challenge thanks to the computer-controlled teams being a bit more aggressive in their skill usage. In addition, the game includes a few more slightly frustrating cases of scripted matches that aren’t really communicated to the player.
Inazuma Eleven 3: Team Ogre Attacks
Released on: Nintendo DS (Japan), Nintendo 3DS (Japan/Europe)
Following comparisons to Pokémon, Inazuma Eleven 3 also got a later third version of the game, though is the only one to do so. Team Ogre Attacks features some additional story elements based on the series’s first movie. These include the appearance of Mark Evans’s future descendant Canon Evans and of the antagonistic Team Ogre, sent from the future to destroy the Inazuma Japan team. For those who haven’t played Lightning Bolt or Bomb Blast, Team Ogre Attacks can be considered the definitive edition of Inazuma Eleven 3, but there isn’t enough new to it to justify a full replay for those who have already gone through another version.
Inazuma Eleven GO: Light / Shadow
Released on: Nintendo 3DS (Japan/Europe)
Inazuma Eleven GO marks the start of a new trilogy, taking place ten years after the events of Inazuma Eleven 3. It therefore features a brand new main protagonist and cast, though a number of previous characters return as adults, including Mark Evans himself. It introduces new main protagonist Arion Sherwind and a future where youth football is tightly controlled by a group called Fifth Sector. This group, led by the Holy Emperor, acts under the creed that football should be enjoyed by all equally, but exercises its control right down to pre-determining the results for each game. Raimon student Arion looks to spark a revolution within the game and return the sport to its true nature. While the new cast brings welcome freshness, the same underlying storytelling foibles are much the same with zero subtlety twists and immediately overcome plot hurdles. However, there are fun little touches, like an iNattr social media network that provides lots of entertaining comments from the cast.
Inazuma Eleven GO’s main addition to matches are fighting spirits. These summonable spirits provide massive boosts to a player, making them nigh unstoppable for a time, and offer a new tactical element with the primary way of stopping them being to summon another spirit against it. The game also handles story matches a bit better, giving players small goals, such as getting a player with the ball to a specific part of the pitch before the next plot-related event occurs rather than forcing players to figure out nebulous conditions. Other changes include a bit more depth to recruiting characters, with some requiring additional conditions before they join, though other elements from previous games, such as capsule machines are removed.
Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones: Wildfire / Thunderflash
Released on: Nintendo 3DS (Japan/Europe)
With the previous trilogy already having seen the series go international, there was nothing for it but for the second Inazuma Eleven GO to send the cast back in time. This includes the time of the dinosaurs, and yes, players get to play football against them. The story is at its weakest early on, as it tries to play things a bit too seriously in the setup. However, it soon fully embraces the craziness and gets better for it as players go back in time to collect the spirits of various historical figures such as Joan of Arc and Oda Nobunaga (and, yes, dinosaurs) after discovering that all traces of football have mysteriously been wiped from the world.
Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones does further work to improve story matches, replacing the specific tasks with an Advance Gauge that goes up with positive actions from the player’s team, such as dribbling, passing, shooting, and scoring. Chrono Stones is also notable for doing the best job so far of making things challenging and requiring players to make good use of skills, summons, etc. Its new abilities are Miximaxing, which allows players to merge with the spirits of other figures (or even other players) and gain access to extra skills as well as significant attribute boosts, and Armourfying, which gives a significant extra boost to a summoned Fighting Spirit.
Inazuma Eleven GO Galaxy: Big Bang / Supernova
Released on: Nintendo 3DS (Japan only)
The only mainline game so far not to get a European release, Inazuma Eleven GO Galaxy, is the third and final part of the GO trilogy. With national and time borders already crossed, the game saw the series break from the bonds of Earth into the final frontier. It sees Japan invited to the Football Frontier International Vision 2, with Arion first required to help reorganise a severely depleted team. However, after coming through the qualifiers, it is learned that the international tournament is merely a fake and it was created to prepare the team for the Grand Celesta Galaxy, a galactic tournament that will decide the fate of Earth.
Unfortunately, not being released outside Japan means that any other information about the game is much harder to come by, but it’s main addition is its Souls system. Souls are effectively animal spirits (including alien animals) that can be summoned and level up, or even evolve, with extended use. With Level-5 having released annual entries up until this point and the madness of its premise, it’s rather unsurprising that the series needed a much-earned rest after this point as the developer figured out where in the universe it could possibly go next.
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road
Releasing on: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 (worldwide)
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road has undergone a tough development process. The game was originally announced in 2016 — three years after the Japanese release of Inazuma Eleven GO Galaxy — alongside the Inazuma Eleven: Ares animated series and planned to be based upon it, taking the same name. However, Level-5 struggled to translate the series gameplay to single-screen platforms and control systems of contemporary platforms. Majorly delayed as a result, Level-5 has fully reworked the game and made it fully into its own entry in the series with a completely different cast than first planned, but also seemingly used the extra time to pack it full with tons of features.
Based on the game’s demo, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road ends up with the same basics series fans will expect, and the controls successfully translated to gamepad buttons. However, there are some notable changes. Clashes between individual players are now more dynamic; while the option to use special moves to get past a defender is still there, players can now try and avoid them or pass the ball away rather than be forced into a head-to-head clash. Meanwhile, attacks on goal, both offensively and defensively, make use of a special Zone mode. Here time is slowed down, allowing players to set up shots, potentially crossing it to a teammate to increase the rating of the shot. During this time, defenders can also look to head towards positions that might help block the shot. Scoring is much more a case of wearing the keeper down than in the previous games. Level-5 has also stated that the previous power-ups and special abilities from the series — Fighting Spirits, Miximaxing, etc. — will also be present in the game.
The game’s Story Mode features a new story following Destin Billows, a boy who starts out disliking football, but it eventually leads South Cirrus Junior High aiming to become the top team in Japan, with Raimon acting as an opponent this time around. Given its status as a reboot and no apparently direct story connection to the previous entries of the series, we can expect the story to be a bit more grounded (if only by comparison) to the later entries in the previous trilogies. It will still be undoubtedly melodramatic and the importance of youth football will be unnaturally high, but aliens seem unlikely. In addition to updated football battles, the game will introduce new event battles called Focus Squabbles through the game’s story, which provide non-football contests for players to use the team’s abilities in.
Victory Road’s other main mode is Chronicle Mode. This sees players trying to create the strongest team they can, using the Inazuma Victory Caravan to travel through time and observe moments throughout the series’s history. Players will be allowed to relive various moments and meet conditions to advance the story while forming a team from over 5,200 available characters from across the series. It will be interesting to see how much depth it acts, but it certainly comes across as a good celebration of the series overall. Other new elements include an editable town that other players can visit, ensuring the game is not lacking for features. Meanwhile, on the presentational side, Victory Road appears like it will have commentary on matches, including some TV-style introductions to the teams.
Inazuma Eleven RE
Releasing on: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
When unveiling a 2025 release date for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road in September 2024, Level-5 also announced a full remake of the first game, dubbed Inazuma Eleven RE. Understandably focusing on the revival, Level-5 has revealed very little about the remake so far. Based on its teaser trailer, the game looks like it will be a bit more faithful to the gameplay of the original, with its graphics featuring more detailed Victory Road-style models in event conversations and more chibi-fied models during exploration and gameplay. We are stiill awaiting more details, but it will be interesting to see how it ultimately compares to Victory Road.
Inazuma Eleven Strikers
Released on: Nintendo Wii (Japan/first game only in Europe)
Inazuma Eleven Strikers is a spin-off subseries created for the Nintendo Wii, the first game released between Inazuma Eleven 3 and Inazuma Eleven GO in Japan. It features a much more arcade focus in terms of both its implementation of football and gameplay options, lacking anything resembling a story mode. Strikers comes with four main modes: exhibition games, training mini-games, a tournament mode, and clubroom mode. The last of these is the closest to a campaign, as players create their own team and participate in various competitions.
Inazuma Eleven Strikers is considerably more limited in its appeal and doesn’t offer much for those not already series fans. It plays much more like a standard arcade game, and loses a lot of the charm and strategic quirks that give the mainline games their own flavour of football, though those who like the characters may enjoy being able to play with them in a different manner to the main series. While Europe only received the first Strikers game, Japan did receive a couple of annualised subsequent entries adding more teams, players, and other minor features.
We hope you enjoyed reading our retrospective on the Inazuma Eleven series. If you have any memories of the series, or are looking forward to getting into it, we invite you to let us know in the comments or on social media.
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