Review #769: My Hero One's Justice 2(Switch)

 Slightly more Plus Ultra than the previous game.

 Last year's My Hero Academia game was, I felt, a fairly decent base for future MHA games to expand upon. My Hero One's Justice 2 is more of the same, but in this case, it just might be a good thing.

 The game offers a passable amount of modes: Story, Mission(Based on clearing maps made out of different fights, as well as 'recruiting' characters and leveling them up), Arcade(Three routes per character, although you can select the order of the fights), Training and Customization. I'm sad to report that the story mode is just as bland as it used to be, it covers the story from where the last game dropped off(rescuing Bakugo) up to the fight against Chisaki. Once again, finishing the story mode unlocks the Villain Side. What makes the Story Mode so awful? Well, the fact that it's told through static comic-style panels, and I'm pretty sure it won't make much sense if you aren't familiar with the storyline. The previous game had about three cutscenes, this game has 6 or 7, and they are pretty good, so good that I hate it that we don't get more cutscenes instead of the boring comic panels. Weirdly enough, most cutscenes only play on the Villain Side, which makes no sense considering the actual storyline is the Hero Side. Oh, and they also filled the story with filler fights. Oh, and the credits go on and on and on and on and you can't skip them. Remember when Bakugo beat up Hideki for money? Well, it's a full-fledged story fight now because why not.

 Well, the game plays pretty much exactly the same. You've got a basic combo string, two Quirk buttons that can be altered by flicking the analog stick in any direction before pressing either button, which means about 4 different Quirks(Special moves), dash and dash cancelling, which consumes energy, two super moves and the ability to summon Sidekicks to come in for an attack or to push back an enemy that's comboing you. The game looks slow on videos, but it's anything but, although the Switch version caps at 30 fps, so it doesn't look as smooth as the PS4 version. I thought the gameplay was pretty fun back then, and it still is. Zipping through the air, fighting on walls, knocking enemies around and causing destruction all around you looks and feels fantastic. That said, this is pretty much the same exact game, although I'm pretty sure it has been tweaked to flow a bit better, in the previous game sometimes I had trouble connecting with Deku(Shoot Style) attacks, but it seems like they tightened the tracking on his moves or something, regardless, the combat does feel better, but I'm not sure exactly how they made it better.

 Still, what makes this game so much better is the fact that it doubled the game's roster. The first game had 20 character(23 if you count the DLC), and this one has 40, which means you get at least 17 new characters to play with, even if three of them are alternate versions(Deku 100%, Shigaraki v2 and an alternate version of Chisaki). There's actually a 21rst character if you preordered, like I did, a boring Nomu that doesn't even get a Level 2 Super Move. It's a horrible bonus character, so if you didn't get him, trust me, you ain't missing out. The customization element is still fairly good, there's a good amount of accessories to put on your character, although most of the accessories return from the previous game if I'm not mistaken. What really sucks are the color schemes, I think they added only 1 or 2 new schemes, and schemes are shared between characters, which really sucks, each character should get unique color schemes if only to add more color variety. I'm also not a fan of having to set a customized preset(3 per character) in order to use alternate costumes or colors. What if I really like the many alternate colors of Bakugo and costumes? I need to enter the customization mode and alter a preset in order to pick it, which is rather lame.

 I heard some pretty horrible things about the first game's performance on Switch, but this game runs pretty well all things considered. A few characters like Todoroki are more likely to make the framerate dip, since they have more intense particle effects on their moves, but most of the time it's very playable. I mean, framerate drops are frequent, they really are, but this is an anime fighter, it doesn't really matter. That said, the final boss in Story Mode is a giant monster-thing, and... well, the framerate does sink very, very low during that fight. The loading times are fine, although it feels like this game murders the Switch's battery.

 My Hero One's Justice 2 is what I expected the first game to be. It has a respectable 40-character roster and fun but simple gameplay that makes it very easy and fun to play. Considering it's not a competitive fighter, it's surprising how fun cancelling attacks into each other and making long combos by dash-cancelling feels. All the chaos and destruction you can cause on the environment is just the cherry on top. Hopefully we can start getting proper storymodes on future games.
 7.0 out of 10