This game holds a ton of memories for me, and thanks to it, I still love the inazuma eleven franchise to this day. I had never played the first entry, so at first I was kind of lost, but thankfully it worked rather well as a standalone story too. A bunch of ‘aliens’ destroying your school by kicking a football around was such a wild moment, I was instantly hooked. This is one of the first games which had some anime cutscenes included at critical moments, and I would always sit on the edge of my seat whenever one of those would pop up. Suffice to say, I was never disappointed. The crazy special moves that keep ramping up in spectacle throughout the entire game and the frankly excellent character designs never let up, with an oddly dramatic plot that that kept me hooked all the way through. Though the gameplay is nothing to be scoffed at, it’s the rather insane story and hype character moments that really made this something special.

Speaking of the gameplay, it’s essentially a bunch of smaller battles against four man teams, with then big matches where it just comes down to passing the ball along and using your special moves whenever possible to get past the opponent or score goals. Though the gameplay is quite fun and getting new special moves was always a treat, it does get repetitive quite quickly. What helps is that matches throughout the story have a bunch of plot happening as you go, which keeps things fresh and unexpected, though if you fail to win then you’ll often have to sit through all of the same story beats to get another shot at actually winning the match.

Though the series would only get more insane in the following entries, I’m definitely still very nostalgic towards this one, and I think they never quite hit the same in terms of having such a central antagonist that kept me interested and engaged the entire time. It got me to play all the following games and even check out the anime, and as the game where it all started, I definitely got one of the best.