My Hero One’s Justice 2 Review – Slightly Quirky

My Hero One’s Justice 2 greatly expands on the first game’s roster while offering a variety of new modes to enjoy. The gameplay’s simplicity can wear thin after a while, but One’s Justice 2 is an overall fun party fighter for fans of My Hero Academia.

My Hero One’s Justice 2
Developer: Byking and Bandai Namco
Price: $60
Platform: PS4 (reviewed), Xbox One, and PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 code for review.

In the last few years, My Hero Academia has skyrocketed in popularity here in the West. Both of its films have been screened in theaters across North America multiple times, and you can find merchandise in essentially any store that has video game or pop culture merch. It makes sense that One’s Justice would receive a sequel to cover the recently concluded Overhaul arc, as it’s the most action-packed and fighting game-friendly storyline to date. Though the gameplay is still simplistic and a bit repetitive, the expanded roster, customization, and copious fanservice make this a worthwhile Endeavor for My Hero fans.

The story picks up right at the start of the Rise of Villains Saga of My Hero Academia. All-Might has used up the last of his remaining powers to defeat All-for-One and has had to publicly retire as a result. Villains are taking advantage of the loss of the world’s #1 hero and ramping up their activities, motivating the main characters at U.A. Academy to earn Provisional Hero Licenses in this new era of Superhuman Society. The story mode of One’s Justice 2 covers the Provisional Hero License Exam arc as well as the Overhaul arc, ending right before the School Festival arc. After finishing the story, you get to play it from the villains’ point of view. The events of the story are succinctly covered with voice-acting and images, and you get customization items for beating each chapter. Overall, the story mode can take up a decent amount of your time while giving you plenty of items to deck out your characters with.

Outside of the story, there’s an arcade mode that gives you various challenges throughout a series of fights, and a mission mode that has you traverse a number of battles using your own “Hero Agency”, which is more or less your team plus any playable characters you buy for this mode using in-game currency. They’re fun distractions that provide some neat interactions between your Agency members, but it all really boils down to the same battles as every other mode. You can also customize each character’s costume by unlocking or purchasing various items from across the series. The outfits range from alternate costumes to goofy backpacks, masks, and color schemes. There’s a lot of freedom in how cool or awful you make the characters look, which I appreciate if only for how silly you can be with it.

“The main issue is that One’s Justice 2 is a pretty simple game. You have a few different attacks and two super moves, but you quickly fall into using the same few attacks with little variation.“

The gameplay of One’s Justice 2 is largely identical to that of the first One’s Justice. You pick a character to fight as, and two “sidekick” characters who serve as assists. You battle an opponent in a 3D arena, where you can freely run around as you fight off your foe. The environments are completely destructible, which really adds to the “super-hero” feeling of the gameplay. Smacking your opponent through numerous walls and having the ceiling fall from the damage really sells you on the impact of each attack, especially when using a particularly flashy character like Bakugo or Nomu. The characters all feel very different, with movesets that fit their individual Quirks quite nicely. The freedom of movement given to you in battle is fun to mess with, as you can perform ridiculous jumps and speedy dashes at any point. 

The main issue is that One’s Justice 2 is a pretty simple game. You have a few different attacks and two super moves, but you quickly fall into using the same few attacks with little variation. There aren’t any particularly deep mechanics or combos to learn, leaving you with a pretty basic, though still fun, arena fighter. There’s a bit more variety this time around though, thanks to the largely expanded roster. We finally got Mineta in One’s Justice 2, as well as a number of missing 1-A and League of Villains characters in addition to major players from the Overhaul arc.

Using certain teams will give you special intros depending on the character’s relationships, which serves as excellent fanservice. Seeing the Fat Gum crew toasting takoyaki together or the Sir Nighteye team messing around may seem like small additions, but I enjoyed searching out which different teams all had their own interactions.

\

Visually, One’s Justice 2 looks great for the most part. The models on the main menu have very little shading, which makes them look a bit eerie, but in gameplay, they look much better and are quite expressive. The destructible environments look straight out of the show, as do the comic book-esque sound effect textboxes and attack effects.

The Final Word
My Hero: One’s Justice 2 is a very simple and familiar 3D arena fighter. The core gameplay is fun and accurate to the source material, and the variety of characters and gameplay modes makes it so there’s a lot to do for franchise fans. The combat wears a bit thin after a short while due to its simplicity, especially since there’s little variety to it in the various different modes. I’d say One’s Justice 2 is worthwhile for My Hero Academia superfans, but others may find it to be too repetitive for a fighter.

MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair