One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is a game from the anime and manga series, One Punch Man. The manga and anime revolve around a superhero, Saitama, who literally defeats enemies in one punch.
You do not have to know anything about the One Punch Man series to play this game. It uses characters from the show as supporting characters and makes your custom created character the main focus of the game. You fight enemies, upgrade abilities, and unlock characters to further enhance the playing experience.
Creating a character allows for complete customization, along with a variety of clothing options you can buy later in the game with in-game currency you receive from missions. You will also be able to upgrade and learn new fighting techniques that can change the way you want to battle enemies. You can follow the main questline or spend time doing side quests which sometimes gives out different rewards upon completion.
The cutscenes aren’t visually interesting and I found myself skipping a lot of them to progress faster throughout the story. Compared to other anime-fighting games, this game lacks a lot of elements that make other games shine. The backgrounds and overall colors of the game are boring. The in-game characters and enemies look unfinished, rushed and the fighting isn’t even enjoyable.
The fighting elements of the game were a huge issue with me. A lot of the controls felt unresponsive. For example, trying to block or dodge attacks was annoying, and this simple mechanic made me frustrated for a large portion of the game.
Although the fighting wasn’t fun, the controls weren’t difficult to master. Button-mashing can work in this game, although you have a set number of moves for a reason. You are supposed to use them together to defeat opponents, and unlike other fighting games where learning combos is essential, it is not in this one.
You can powerup your character, allowing for more damage to be dealt towards opponents. When you unlock other characters, you can call them in for support during fights. They each have their own different support attacks, allowing for a wide variety of options to choose from when you need help in a battle.
With unresponsive controls and stiff movements, the difficulty felt harder than usual. I found myself dying very early to easy enemies due to a lack of dodging or blocking. Every time I attack, the enemy would easily dodge or block my attack. Whenever I tried to counter the enemies’ attacks, it would never work for me. This resulted in me getting punished or defeated by the enemy, making me restart the fight, or eventually quitting the mission I was currently on.
In the game, you are tasked with climbing through the superhero ranks to become a great hero. You unlock a variety of moves and powers that allow you to achieve this goal. You can unlock these naturally through progressing through the game and you get better abilities the longer you grind.
Fans of the anime or manga may like this game, due to a list of specific characters you can unlock, such as Saitama and Genos. You can use these characters and a wide variety of others in a 3v3 battle mode where you fight against other online players or CPUs in tag-team matches.
The game has a lot of small issues that make it look poorly made. Certain clothing articles wouldn’t flow well when in combat or when your character is moving. For example, wearing a turtleneck or jacket would cause the clothing to go through the character’s chin and body while moving or even standing still. Albeit, a small graphical issue, it was still annoying to see.
The gameplay is not fun at all and the visuals aren’t that good either. Fans of the series may find some redeeming qualities within the game but if you are unfamiliar with the One Punch Man series, I would stay away from this game.
