Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions arrived in August 2020, ten years after the last console game in the series, and it carries a strange burden for a sports title. It has to work as a soccer game and as an adaptation of a manga and anime about soccer that treats a shot on goal like a boss fight. Tamsoft built it, Bandai Namco published it for PlayStation 4, PC and Nintendo Switch, and the result sits in an odd, appealing place between the two.
Trailer, via IGN.
Episode Tsubasa and Episode New Hero
The single-player side splits into Episode Tsubasa and Episode New Hero, and the split is the smartest thing in the game.
Episode Tsubasa follows Tsubasa Oozora’s run at a three-peat in the 16th National School Tournament. It is the original storyline, played straight, and it works because the game never pretends the stakes are ordinary. You already know where the story goes if you watched the 2018 anime this is based on. The pleasure is in watching the machinery turn.
Episode New Hero does something different. You create a character, pick a middle school, and level up in a structure that will feel familiar to anyone who has played FIFA’s Player Career mode or Pro Evolution Soccer’s Become A Legend mode. The schools on offer are Nankatsu Middle School, Furano Middle School, Toho Academy, Musashi Middle School, Otomo Middle School and Hanawa Middle School. From there you push into the Junior Youth World Challenge, an international U-16 tournament, and eventually form the All-Japan national soccer team.
That is a lot of structure for a licensed sports game, and it mostly holds.
Nankatsu, Furano and Toho Academy
The choice of school is not cosmetic, and it is the clearest place where Rise of New Champions shows ambition beyond a roster update.
- Nankatsu Middle School — the home of the source material’s central cast and the most direct route into the story the anime tells.
- Furano Middle School — a different starting point with a different set of teammates to build around.
- Toho Academy — the rival school, and the pick that puts you closest to the series’ established antagonism.
- Musashi Middle School, Otomo Middle School and Hanawa Middle School — the remaining options, each giving a separate path into the Junior Youth World Challenge.
The order matters less than the fact that the game asks you to commit before it tells you what you are committing to. That is a real design decision and it pays off.
Two Modes, Two Different Games
Rise of New Champions is not trying to be a simulation, and the comparison table below is the honest way to frame it.
| Feature | Episode Tsubasa | Episode New Hero |
|---|---|---|
| Protagonist | Tsubasa Oozora | Player-created avatar |
| Goal | Three-peat at the 16th National School Tournament | Win the Junior Youth World Challenge |
| Structure | Follows the original storyline | Build a character, level up, join a school |
| Comparison | Closest to the 2018 anime | FIFA Player Career, PES Become A Legend |
| Endpoint | Tournament conclusion | All-Japan national team |
Read that table and the game’s identity becomes clear. It is two products sharing a disc. One is a faithful adaptation, the other is a career mode with an anime skin. Neither is a full soccer sim, and the game does not appear to want to be one.
Signature Shots and Accessible Play
The gameplay leans into the anime rather than away from it. Signature shots are exaggerated, the action is fast, and the whole thing is built to be picked up without a manual. The source material describes it as an action-packed soccer game with exhilarating gameplay and accessible controls, and that framing is accurate.
The modes are broad. There is offline and online multiplayer, plus co-operative play and a single-player campaign. That is a full spread for a licensed title, and it means the game does not live or die on whether you have friends online.
The third-person and side-view perspectives do real work here. A side view makes a long pass read like a panel. A third-person view makes the shot mechanics legible. Switching between them is not a gimmick; it is how the game translates a comic’s sense of motion into something you can actually control.
Tamsoft and the Ten-Year Gap
Tamsoft developed this, and Bandai Namco published it across three platforms and three regional labels — Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bandai Namco Entertainment America and Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe. That is a lot of infrastructure behind a game based on a 2018 anime, and it signals that the publisher saw a real audience.
The ten-year gap since the previous console game is the number that matters most. A decade is long enough that the audience for Captain Tsubasa has turned over, and Rise of New Champions has to serve people who grew up on the original and people who found the series through the 2018 anime. Episode Tsubasa handles the first group. Episode New Hero handles the second. That is a deliberate split, not an accident.
What 7.8 Out of 10 Means
The published critical score is 7.8 out of 10, drawn from five outlets in the IGDB critic aggregate. That number is a fair summary of what this is: a well-made licensed game that does not transcend its category.
The strongest argument for it is Episode New Hero. A career mode built around a fictional middle school tournament, with a custom avatar and a leveling curve borrowed from FIFA and PES, is a genuinely interesting piece of design. It gives the game a reason to exist beyond nostalgia, and it is the mode that will keep people playing after the story beats run out.
The weaker argument is that the game never quite commits to being great at any one thing. It is not a deep soccer sim. It is not a full anime adaptation with every arc included. It is a solid, accessible, occasionally thrilling middle ground, and the score reflects that middle ground honestly.
Where Rise of New Champions Lands
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is a good game with a clear identity problem, and the identity problem is also its charm. It knows it cannot compete with FIFA or PES on simulation, so it does not try. It puts Tsubasa Oozora on one side and your own created player on the other, and it lets you pick which story you want.
The ten-year wait was worth it, but not because the game is a masterpiece. It was worth it because Tamsoft and Bandai Namco found a way to make a manga about impossible shots into a playable career mode without stripping out what makes the manga fun.
If you came for the anime, Episode Tsubasa delivers. If you came for a career mode, Episode New Hero is the reason to stay. If you came for a soccer sim, this is not that, and it never claimed to be.
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