After a drawn-out development cycle that’s lasted seven years, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road finally has a release date, to the joy of both the series’ fans and its devs. Currently, however, the inclusion of platform-specific bonuses has Japanese players questioning Level-5’s approach to recruiting characters for your in-game team.
In this instance, platform-specific bonuses refer to the rate at which certain characters appear on a particular version of the game For example, Team Ogre, Eternal Light, and Ancient Darkness characters have a higher chance of appearing on the Steam version of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road than they do on console versions (this doesn’t mean that they are exclusive to the platform, however.)
The main complaints fans have with the platform-specific bonuses are the uneven distribution of characters among platforms and the need to play on different versions of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road to get simultaneous drop rate boosts.
Some fans are caught between purchasing a new console for their favorite characters or buying the version of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road for their current platform. Others are criticizing Level-5 for subtly encouraging fans to buy multiple versions of the game to get more bonus effects. While game franchises like Pokémon and Yokai Watch have included platform-specific bonuses in the past, missing out on the full gameplay experience because you bought only one copy of a game doesn’t sit well with many people nowadays.
Despite the criticism platform-specific bonuses are getting, things could be worse. All the characters can be obtained no matter what version of the game you buy, and some fans are advocating for a trading system that would allow players to swap characters with those on different platforms (think Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue’s exclusive Pokémon trade system). Level-5 also notes that platform-specific bonuses are subject to change, and the bonuses might become available as either free or paid content later down the road.
Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is set to release on August 21 for the PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
