My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero is Not a Good Game

Recently, we announced A-Plus Japan will release My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero in the west on Android and iOS. And well, of course, I had to try it because it seemed compelling…and what in the name of the Seven Gods did I just waste time playing?

Before I get to dissecting the content of My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero, yes, the 3D models look decent. The game begins by retelling the first few episodes of the anime, flashing individual frames of the first episodes of Season 1, and some scenes featuring full-motion 3D. with a copy-paste of the English dub subtitles scrolling by on the bottom.

Oh, and no, you cannot enable Japanese voiceovers. The game doesn’t have any sort of options for that, at least, from what I’ve seen. I could look further, but the UI is a nightmare to navigate.

Okay. Maybe I’m criticizing it too hard, but well, after spending time playing, it really feels like this should’ve been released on the PC instead of mobile. Many elements would have worked better on PC, with the most glaring being the special abilities you use on the PvE combat part. Strangely they all have these weird “Q,” “W,” “E” key bindings on them.

My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero plays itself, most of the time. (The tutorial has you do everything manually). Just tap on a Mission, and then your character will move on their own to the place you need to go, as you sip on a drink or something. And when you unlock AUTO mode on the PvE skirmishes, then well…the game requires no input from the player aside from a few button presses.

The bigger setback is that this game is pretty adamant about making you spend real money. There are value packs galore, blocking off-mission rewards unless you fork up the cash to acquire them. And let’s not get started on the gacha, where there’s a meager chance of getting an “S-class Hero.” You’re actually more likely to get a fragment (represented by a puzzle piece) of the Hero rather than the actual thing.

My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero has the benefits of a popular IP and some decent 3D character models that could have made this a decent mobile RPG. However, nothing about it is fun, and the ties to the source material are loosely based on a narrative that long-time fans already know too well.

Those who are fans of RPGs on this platform will find a watered-down auto RPG with a few fun characters that don’t provide enough to warrant continuous play. Users are incentivized to spend money early, which is a shame because it greatly affected my first impressions of the game. The biggest issue is there’s nothing really here. It’s an average mobile RPG with My Hero Academia characters in it. I’ll just wait for a My Hero Academia Musou game or something.