I've been playing too many anime games recently, which is only like two, which is more than enough for a lifetime. Not really sure why MHA got a battle royale of all things but now that it's here I was coerced into trying it out. Because nobody on this site actually likes diving into games and instead leaves a one sentence review to get the most amount of likes possible, I will try to provide as much detail as I can about this game while maintaining my sanity.
The menu UI is ungodly clunky. It's something I got used to after a while, but I don't think it's good design for me to have to get used to something this weird. I still sometimes have trouble navigating the main menu to find the roll shop or the special license. In an actual match, you have to open a menu to access your items. Luckily, this typically only ever amounts to healing items and cards you might wanna drop for teammates. I guess the fact that I don't have many problems with it now means it's overall fine, but still unintuitive.
As for the actual gameplay, it's fun. Every character has three attacks that you can level up by getting that character's corresponding color cards, i.e. Bakugo is a red character (meaning he has stronger attack power) so finding red cards will level up his moves. Some characters have special actions that can't be leveled up, and every character has a melee combo which similarly can't be leveled up. Every move has a set amount of times it can be used before going on cooldown. This cooldown meter goes up after every use, not just when it's empty, which means it's overall more useful to space out your attacks rather than spamming. However, in scrambles or melee fights, you'll probably find yourself spamming attacks. The cooldown does give incentive to play smarter, but you still need to find opportunities where it's best to go all out with your attacks.
These moves can range from a projectile, some type of movement option, a lunge punch/kick, etc. Every character is different, which means not every character is created equal. I've tried out most of the characters in the game, and there's two things I discovered that's universal for everyone. Firstly, not having a projectile sucks ass. Even projectiles that aren't super strong are still nice to have so you can engage from a distance. Mt. Lady's projectile is pretty mediocre, but she wants to conserve as much health as she can for when she grows big. Secondly, not having movement sucks even more ass. Too many times have I found myself in a fight I can't win only to be unable to retreat because I have no movement options while my opponents do. This is ESPECIALLY bad for Shigaraki, who is capable of shitting out damage up close, but has no projectile or movement option. I distinctly remember being chased across almost the entire map from a whole team at one point with no way to escape simply because I was playing Shigaraki. That distinct lack of movement and projectiles does play into team composition quite a bit. Although having three red characters will boost your overall attack power decently, you'll struggle leveling up since you'll all need red cards. If someone is Shigaraki, who is only good up close, you might benefit from a teammate playing Iida, another up close brawler, but with the movement speed to get in and out of tight situations in a moment's notice.
The character's themselves are all distinct enough. I say enough because there is a lot of overlap between moves. Many characters have a pretty standard projectile that flies forward incredibly fast, think Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki. A few characters have a pretty similar ground pound area coverage move, like Dabi, Mt. Lady, and Kirishima. There are still enough distinct differences that make it worth playing most characters. Dabi's fireball is much slower than other projectiles and dissipates after traveling a decent distance, however, it tracks the opponent while it's active. This makes it much stronger at midrange, where you can overwhelm an opponent with fireballs that rarely miss up close. Shigaraki's ground pound gets bigger the more you level it up, and once active, it cripples the area affected with poison and does damage over time to opponents who stand in it. It lets him control space despite not having a strong projectile. However, there are some general balance issues that make it less worth playing certain characters. I swear Ochaco just doesn't function correctly. Kirishima is focused on linear, direction attacks that do big damage, but All Might has similar moves that do even more damage plus he has a strong projectile and movement option. This kind of balance is inevitable for any game with distinct character differences, but I would like to see the worse characters get some upgrades in the next seasons. This imbalance is very apparent at the start of each match. While I would say that most characters are on a somewhat level playing field when they max out their attacks, that is far from the case at the start of the match. If you are a Mt. Lady or a Shigaraki and you land next to a Bakugo, run. You probably can't make it far due to lack of mobility, but you're not winning that fight. Bakugo is one of several characters who is already so strong without upgrades that fighting him head on at match start is a death sentence. The upgrades make him stronger for sure, but he doesn't really need them to compete with the rest. Again, I would like to see this imbalance addressed, because waiting three minutes to get into a match just to die immediately with no way to fight back is not how I want to spend my night.
So while the gameplay is fun and team building does involve some nice strategy, the fighting can feel clunky at times. Lots of character movements are very stiff when you get hit by a move. A big thing about team building is the possible combo options you can use to do more damage at once, but sometimes that's not even needed. Sometimes I'll just be vibing and then get immediately robbed of my full health and shield by a random Bakugo in two hits. I don't even know what I got hit by, but I'll be dead. A nice aspect of this game is that teammates who get knocked down will automatically get back up after twenty seconds if they're not killed outright, which makes situations like those a bit less strenuous. If I get killed by a random Bakugo, my teammates can cover me while I hide in a bush and get back up. This doesn't address the problem of why I was two shot in the first place, which happens far too often for me to neglect it.
The last thing I think worth mentioning is all the in game currency. No game has even come close to fortnite in terms of how they handle their monetization. Fortnite has V-Bucks, and with V-Bucks, you can get everything. It's only one currency that is used on the shop items and the battle pass. And guess what, you can get V-Bucks by playing normally for free. It's not a lot, but that can eventually grow into more once you have enough for a battle pass, which will give you a total more amount of V-Bucks. Everything in that game is purely cosmetic, which means you're not missing out on potential top tier characters if you miss a skin in the shop.
MHA battle has gallery pieces, agency points, gold, roll tickets, hero souls, crystals… I think that's all of them. Gallery pieces are just used to unlock new loading screens, very inconsequential. Agency points can be put into your own hero agency to level it up, which then grants you an XP bonus after every match. Gold is used to buy banners and gallery pieces, again, inconsequential. Then you got roll tickets. This is an anime game, which means gacha is inevitable. It takes ten roll tickets to perform one roll, but you could also use a hundred to do ten at once. From these rolls you can get new voice lines, emotes, and costumes for characters. And, unfortunately, this is also the main way of unlocking new characters. Most characters are locked behind the annoying loot box system. Now, to be fair, the characters actually do have a higher drop rate than all the cosmetics. One of my friends got both Kirishima and Izawa early on with only a few ten rolls without spending a dime. Thankfully, not every character is locked behind this luck based method. Some characters are locked behind the special license, which you level up with XP after each match. It is a bit of a grind, but I'm not complaining because free characters are free characters. It's good compensation for playing the game for so long. For those characters that are locked behind roll tickets, well, it sucks, but hey, could be worse.
Hero souls are another currency used to get characters. When you get multiple of the same item through a roll ticket, it gets converted to hero souls. The amount of hero souls you get depends on the rarity of the item. One star items only get you one hero soul, which sucks and should be increased immediately in the next update. Two star items get you ten, which is far better. You can use these hero souls to buy character tickets because for some reason some characters are locked behind these exclusive character tickets. There's only about four, but have fun trying to get enough hero souls for a ticket to unlock them. Then there's crystals. This is kind of just the all encompassing currency. You can use it on almost anything, but you'll mainly want to use it on rolls or to upgrade your login bonus. I don't know why there's so many different currencies, it makes everything far more confusing. Getting characters is super annoying because of gacha mechanics and from rolls you'll more than likely just end up getting voice lines for characters you don't even own.
For a low effort anime battle royale cash grab, this honestly isn't that bad. I've been playing it a lot and enjoying myself. A lot of annoyances I have with the game are made easier with certain workarounds. Don't have enough roll tickets? Get the premium login bonus, it's always worth it, and then stock up. Work on dailies and weeklies for extra tickets, as well. Don't know what character to buy with a character ticket? The game gives you a character rental every four hours, which you can have up to three of, which lets you use any character in the game. That way, you aren't going in blind when purchasing a character. The gameplay is fun and requires enough strategy around getting better yourself and teambuilding to keep it engaging. I think this game could stand much taller as time passes with more characters and (hopefully) new maps. Also, they should fix the consistent crashing method of keeping the emote wheel open while loading into a match. As it is now, it's way better than people claiming it to be who just see "anime battle royale must be bad." It's far from perfect, but it's free and it's fun, which is the perfect combination for anything in life.
The menu UI is ungodly clunky. It's something I got used to after a while, but I don't think it's good design for me to have to get used to something this weird. I still sometimes have trouble navigating the main menu to find the roll shop or the special license. In an actual match, you have to open a menu to access your items. Luckily, this typically only ever amounts to healing items and cards you might wanna drop for teammates. I guess the fact that I don't have many problems with it now means it's overall fine, but still unintuitive.
As for the actual gameplay, it's fun. Every character has three attacks that you can level up by getting that character's corresponding color cards, i.e. Bakugo is a red character (meaning he has stronger attack power) so finding red cards will level up his moves. Some characters have special actions that can't be leveled up, and every character has a melee combo which similarly can't be leveled up. Every move has a set amount of times it can be used before going on cooldown. This cooldown meter goes up after every use, not just when it's empty, which means it's overall more useful to space out your attacks rather than spamming. However, in scrambles or melee fights, you'll probably find yourself spamming attacks. The cooldown does give incentive to play smarter, but you still need to find opportunities where it's best to go all out with your attacks.
These moves can range from a projectile, some type of movement option, a lunge punch/kick, etc. Every character is different, which means not every character is created equal. I've tried out most of the characters in the game, and there's two things I discovered that's universal for everyone. Firstly, not having a projectile sucks ass. Even projectiles that aren't super strong are still nice to have so you can engage from a distance. Mt. Lady's projectile is pretty mediocre, but she wants to conserve as much health as she can for when she grows big. Secondly, not having movement sucks even more ass. Too many times have I found myself in a fight I can't win only to be unable to retreat because I have no movement options while my opponents do. This is ESPECIALLY bad for Shigaraki, who is capable of shitting out damage up close, but has no projectile or movement option. I distinctly remember being chased across almost the entire map from a whole team at one point with no way to escape simply because I was playing Shigaraki. That distinct lack of movement and projectiles does play into team composition quite a bit. Although having three red characters will boost your overall attack power decently, you'll struggle leveling up since you'll all need red cards. If someone is Shigaraki, who is only good up close, you might benefit from a teammate playing Iida, another up close brawler, but with the movement speed to get in and out of tight situations in a moment's notice.
The character's themselves are all distinct enough. I say enough because there is a lot of overlap between moves. Many characters have a pretty standard projectile that flies forward incredibly fast, think Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki. A few characters have a pretty similar ground pound area coverage move, like Dabi, Mt. Lady, and Kirishima. There are still enough distinct differences that make it worth playing most characters. Dabi's fireball is much slower than other projectiles and dissipates after traveling a decent distance, however, it tracks the opponent while it's active. This makes it much stronger at midrange, where you can overwhelm an opponent with fireballs that rarely miss up close. Shigaraki's ground pound gets bigger the more you level it up, and once active, it cripples the area affected with poison and does damage over time to opponents who stand in it. It lets him control space despite not having a strong projectile. However, there are some general balance issues that make it less worth playing certain characters. I swear Ochaco just doesn't function correctly. Kirishima is focused on linear, direction attacks that do big damage, but All Might has similar moves that do even more damage plus he has a strong projectile and movement option. This kind of balance is inevitable for any game with distinct character differences, but I would like to see the worse characters get some upgrades in the next seasons. This imbalance is very apparent at the start of each match. While I would say that most characters are on a somewhat level playing field when they max out their attacks, that is far from the case at the start of the match. If you are a Mt. Lady or a Shigaraki and you land next to a Bakugo, run. You probably can't make it far due to lack of mobility, but you're not winning that fight. Bakugo is one of several characters who is already so strong without upgrades that fighting him head on at match start is a death sentence. The upgrades make him stronger for sure, but he doesn't really need them to compete with the rest. Again, I would like to see this imbalance addressed, because waiting three minutes to get into a match just to die immediately with no way to fight back is not how I want to spend my night.
So while the gameplay is fun and team building does involve some nice strategy, the fighting can feel clunky at times. Lots of character movements are very stiff when you get hit by a move. A big thing about team building is the possible combo options you can use to do more damage at once, but sometimes that's not even needed. Sometimes I'll just be vibing and then get immediately robbed of my full health and shield by a random Bakugo in two hits. I don't even know what I got hit by, but I'll be dead. A nice aspect of this game is that teammates who get knocked down will automatically get back up after twenty seconds if they're not killed outright, which makes situations like those a bit less strenuous. If I get killed by a random Bakugo, my teammates can cover me while I hide in a bush and get back up. This doesn't address the problem of why I was two shot in the first place, which happens far too often for me to neglect it.
The last thing I think worth mentioning is all the in game currency. No game has even come close to fortnite in terms of how they handle their monetization. Fortnite has V-Bucks, and with V-Bucks, you can get everything. It's only one currency that is used on the shop items and the battle pass. And guess what, you can get V-Bucks by playing normally for free. It's not a lot, but that can eventually grow into more once you have enough for a battle pass, which will give you a total more amount of V-Bucks. Everything in that game is purely cosmetic, which means you're not missing out on potential top tier characters if you miss a skin in the shop.
MHA battle has gallery pieces, agency points, gold, roll tickets, hero souls, crystals… I think that's all of them. Gallery pieces are just used to unlock new loading screens, very inconsequential. Agency points can be put into your own hero agency to level it up, which then grants you an XP bonus after every match. Gold is used to buy banners and gallery pieces, again, inconsequential. Then you got roll tickets. This is an anime game, which means gacha is inevitable. It takes ten roll tickets to perform one roll, but you could also use a hundred to do ten at once. From these rolls you can get new voice lines, emotes, and costumes for characters. And, unfortunately, this is also the main way of unlocking new characters. Most characters are locked behind the annoying loot box system. Now, to be fair, the characters actually do have a higher drop rate than all the cosmetics. One of my friends got both Kirishima and Izawa early on with only a few ten rolls without spending a dime. Thankfully, not every character is locked behind this luck based method. Some characters are locked behind the special license, which you level up with XP after each match. It is a bit of a grind, but I'm not complaining because free characters are free characters. It's good compensation for playing the game for so long. For those characters that are locked behind roll tickets, well, it sucks, but hey, could be worse.
Hero souls are another currency used to get characters. When you get multiple of the same item through a roll ticket, it gets converted to hero souls. The amount of hero souls you get depends on the rarity of the item. One star items only get you one hero soul, which sucks and should be increased immediately in the next update. Two star items get you ten, which is far better. You can use these hero souls to buy character tickets because for some reason some characters are locked behind these exclusive character tickets. There's only about four, but have fun trying to get enough hero souls for a ticket to unlock them. Then there's crystals. This is kind of just the all encompassing currency. You can use it on almost anything, but you'll mainly want to use it on rolls or to upgrade your login bonus. I don't know why there's so many different currencies, it makes everything far more confusing. Getting characters is super annoying because of gacha mechanics and from rolls you'll more than likely just end up getting voice lines for characters you don't even own.
For a low effort anime battle royale cash grab, this honestly isn't that bad. I've been playing it a lot and enjoying myself. A lot of annoyances I have with the game are made easier with certain workarounds. Don't have enough roll tickets? Get the premium login bonus, it's always worth it, and then stock up. Work on dailies and weeklies for extra tickets, as well. Don't know what character to buy with a character ticket? The game gives you a character rental every four hours, which you can have up to three of, which lets you use any character in the game. That way, you aren't going in blind when purchasing a character. The gameplay is fun and requires enough strategy around getting better yourself and teambuilding to keep it engaging. I think this game could stand much taller as time passes with more characters and (hopefully) new maps. Also, they should fix the consistent crashing method of keeping the emote wheel open while loading into a match. As it is now, it's way better than people claiming it to be who just see "anime battle royale must be bad." It's far from perfect, but it's free and it's fun, which is the perfect combination for anything in life.