Ganbare! Super Strikers from Ratalaika Games and Rese Games is a fun tactical take on soccer. Learn more in our Ganbare! Super Strikers review!
In Ganbare! Super Strikers from Ratalaika Games and Rese Games, you’ll get to take a team through a season as you try to make the most of the skills and abilities of all its players to win the championship. It’s a turn-based tactical on the sport, and that means it’s not going to be as fast-paced as a game like those from the long-running FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer (a.k.a. PES) franchises, but that means that it can be more accessible to players of all skill levels.
The first step will be to create a team. For this, you can select between the different hair options, as well as pick the hair color you want for your character by moving around the red, green, and blue color options. You can also pick a face option, and even select a name and last name for your character. After this, you can create your team by selecting its name, kit option, as well as the color for the kit by once again moving around the options for the red, green and blue color parameters. The last step will be to create your team’s logo, and then you’re set!
Before you take on any match or go into making changes to your team’s equipment or formation, I suggest you take a moment to review the tutorial for Ganbare! Super Strikers so that you can learn the basics and get the hang of things. To move a player, you will first need to place the cursor on top of it and press the X button to select it. After this, just move the cursor to one of the available squares to which a player can move, and confirm by pressing the A button.
If you want to pass the ball, then select the player with the ball with the X button, and then press the R1 button to select the Pass ability. Your player’s stats will be taken into consideration as the game rolls your overall pass power for that particular turn. As the ball moves from one spot to its final destination, the number will go down. Members of the opposing team can then try to block the pass by rolling their defense stat to see if it’s lower or higher than the current value for the pass. Some players will also have special abilities that you can use to gain the upper hand. Take, for example, the Ice Pass. By using this, you can make a more secure pass to one of your players while also making sure that your opponent is frozen into place for a turn.
When you have the ball in your possession, you can also try to dribble past an opponent. Your stats and your opponent’s stats will once again be rolled by the game to see if you’ll succeed or fail at your attempt. The same will happen when you’re playing defense and want to try and tackle your opponent to gain possession of the ball. This is why it’s very important that you rotate your players’ positions, and that you move them to spots where you think your opponent will be taking the ball.
The objective for all matches will, of course, be to score more goals than your opponent in order to win the game. To do this, you will need to get closer to your opponent’s goal before shooting the ball by selecting the player with the ball and pressing the R1 button to select the shoot option. As is the case for all other actions in Ganbare! Super Strikers, a stats roll will take place, and as long as your shot’s value is bigger than the goalie’s save value, you will get to score a goal. The closer you are to your opponent’s goal, the bigger your odds of scoring since, as is the case with a pass, your shot’s stats will go down with every square it travels.
Something to keep in mind while playing Ganbare! Super Strikers is the offside rule. For those of you not familiar with soccer, the offside rule states that one player cannot pass the ball to another player down the field toward its opponent’s goal if there’s not at least one player from the opposing team standing in line with the player that will receive the ball. In real life, this is harder to judge sometimes due to the referee’s position, or if an assistant referee is having an off day, but in Ganbare! Super Strikers, this is not hard to understand since you will be moving from square to square, and it’s easy to see if any of your players are in offside.
Depending on each of your player’s performance on the field, they will gain experience points (XP), and they will also gain some training points (TP). Once they gain enough XP, they will level up, receiving a boost to their stats. As for TP, it’s used for learning new abilities, allowing you to improve and diversify your team. Something to consider is that a player won’t be earning any XP when playing against a team of its same level – or of a lower level -, but at least it will still earn TP.
For each match you play, there will be a set of objectives you can complete. There’s obviously, one for completing a match and winning it, but there are other things you can aim to do, such as scoring three or more goals in a match or not conceding a single goal. Completing objectives will reward you with items that you can then use to outfit your players. These will either award them with special abilities they can learn, or they will boost one of their stats. A player can use an item’s special ability while he learns it, but once the ability has been learned, you can switch out the item and try on something new.
I do have to mention that I ran into a couple of issues when playing. I got one bug when trying to check the objectives for one of the matches. After pausing the game and selecting the objectives option from the menu, and after trying to close the list of objectives, the game tried to remove the list from the screen but was stuck in a never-ending loop that forced me to reset the game. The second bug was during one of the world cup matches, and it happened to me twice while playing against South Korea. Whenever South Korea managed to take a shot to try and score, the game would pause when I was given the option to use a skill for my goalkeeper, again forcing me to reset the game.
A short Platinum this is not, since you’ll be spending around 5-7 hours – give or take – playing Ganbare! Super Strikers to add a new Platinum to your collection. There’s a trophy for completing all of the tutorial’s lessons, but the majority of the other trophies in Ganbare! Super Strikers will be awarded for beating each of the opposing teams in the game. The final two remaining trophies are for earning 10 and 20 stars during your time with the game, with stars being awarded for completing the different objectives for each particular match.
Ganbare! Super Strikers is a fun tactical take on soccer with a more cartoony and colorful presentation than, say, Soccer, Tactics & Glory – which I got to review on the Nintendo Switch. It might not be your cup of tea if you’re more into the fast-paced action of the FIFA or PES series, but if you’re looking for a different take on soccer, then this one will certainly scratch that itch.
Disclaimer
This Ganbare! Super Strikers review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Ratalaika Games.
