After the 2026 FIFA World Cup concluded, there was a brief moment when I suffered from a bit of football fatigue. But the beautiful game being what it is, I was already glad to see my domestic league kick off again just a few weeks later. That football itch extends to gaming as well, and the release of Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters could be just the game to scratch it.

Rise of the World Fighters…

Captain Tsubasa has been around since the eighties and has grown into one of the most popular manga and anime series in the world. The series focuses on Tsubasa Ozora and uses football as the backdrop for the rivalries and friendships he forms along the way. There have been plenty of Captain Tsubasa games over the years, but Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters is a direct sequel to 2020’s Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions.

Unlike the previous game, you now create your own character and interact with Captain Tsubasa and his many friends and rivals. You take on the role of a young football prodigy who rises through the ranks while following Tsubasa’s journey to perfect his game and face new and improved rivals. Familiar players like Pepe, Luciano Leo and Carlos Santana all make an appearance along the way.

Finally kick-off

Although being in the game with a character you created sounds great, the story still focuses mostly on Tsubasa while your own character remains in the background. Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters essentially feels like a few episodes of the anime, written and drawn exactly like you’d expect from the series. You’ll need to sit through a lot of animations and press a button to advance to the next line of dialogue before you’re actually asked for some personal input. Every now and then, you’ll get to choose between a few different dialogue options, but these seemingly have no real impact on the outcome of what happens next.

After what feels like half an actual episode of the anime, you finally get to play some football. As you’d expect, this is not your ordinary football match. Instead, Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters uses over-the-top dribbles and super moves that perfectly fit the original source material. You control the whole team and need to choose wisely when to go for a pass, perform a dribble or eventually take a shot at goal. Just like its predecessor, you need to wear down the keeper in order to score. Shooting at him lowers his HP bar, and once you’ve depleted enough of it, you’ve essentially primed him for your next shot to find the back of the net.

In the previous game, this idea became a bit silly since all you really did was try to shoot as much as possible in order to lower the keeper’s HP bar. Playing actual good football with passing and dribbling was mostly redundant because a great run followed by a well-placed shot or a silly shot from far out were equally likely to take away similar amounts of HP. In Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters, you can now get a “chain” going by performing perfect dribbles and tackles. Building a higher chain lets you power up shots more quickly and helps give you a bigger edge over the keeper.

Super moves

Another addition to the game is the expanded use of super moves. Super shots were already part of the previous game and allowed players to unleash special moves to blast the ball past the keeper. These trigger a classic anime-style cutscene before unleashing an original, physics-defying shot that is almost guaranteed to fluster the keeper.

This time, these super moves are also available to your non-striker players. A defender can use a super tackle to come flying in from afar with laser-sharp precision, while a midfielder can perform a perfect pass that takes out a few opponents along the way and creates the perfect opening for a shot. You also have more control over the keeper this time around, allowing you to perform bad, normal or perfect saves, with each having a different effect on the HP bar.

Too much stop, not enough go

While all these super moves look great and perfectly fit the Captain Tsubasa style, they also add to one of the biggest issues I have with the game. Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters just doesn’t have a great flow to it. Just when you’re getting into a match and enjoying the football, another animation or piece of story comes along to interrupt the action. Of course, the story is an important part of Captain Tsubasa and I wouldn’t want the game to get rid of it. Football has always been used to tell the stories of Tsubasa and the players around him, and the game does a great job of recreating that feeling. The problem is that it sometimes seems more interested in showing you the next part of the story than letting you play through it yourself.

This results in matches that never really get the chance to become exciting. You play for a bit, trigger another animation, get some dialogue, press a button to continue and eventually get control back. Add the lengthy animations for all the super moves on top of that and there’s simply a lot of waiting between the moments where you’re actually playing football. It also doesn’t help that the football itself isn’t particularly deep. The new chain system and expanded super moves give you more options than before, but after a few matches you’ve pretty much seen what Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters has to offer. The spectacular animations are fun to watch the first few times, but they quickly lose some of their appeal when they’re constantly stopping the match. In the end, I often felt like I was watching an episode of Captain Tsubasa with short bursts of gameplay in between, rather than actually playing through a football match.

Conclusion

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters will probably find its audience with fans of the series who want a different way to experience another Captain Tsubasa story arc. The game does a great job of recreating the look, characters and over-the-top football the series is known for. If you’re coming in hoping to actually play exciting matches inspired by Captain Tsubasa, however, there’s a lot less to enjoy. The constant interruptions and fairly shallow gameplay make it feel more like an interactive episode of the anime than a proper football game.

6.5/10

Tested on PlayStation 5