Soccer Story Review

Soccer Story, developed by Panic Barn, unabashedly takes inspiration from the critically successful sports RPG, Golf Story. Their similarities are undeniable, but the quality of each is separated by more than just the difference in sports. While Soccer Story delivers on presentation, it lacks the challenge and comical tone it strives so hard for, and players looking for more than tedious quests and surface level commentary will be disappointed.

The game begins with the downfall of soccer as the world knows it. After the most popular soccer tournament concludes with an explosive ending that damages the field and the players' spirits, an evil soccer corporation known as Soccer Inc. Takes the sport over. And thus, the player's journey to bring back the love and care for the sport initiates, and the game’s issues become more apparent.

The biggest problem the sports RPG Soccer Story faces is its core game loop. The story is split into two main sections: exploring the open-world and competing in soccer matches. However, the open-world dominates most of the playtime. In this, the player will collect and complete missions to convince residents to go back to playing their favorite sport.

A majority of these quests, whether they be side quests or mainline quests, involve running from one location to another to find or kick the ball into something. Once completing that, the player will then be told to go do the same thing, but in another location. It's a rinse-and-repeat formula that not only stains the granular moments of the game, but the main narrative and competitive soccer matches as well.

There are brief moments where the RPG brings some creative ideas to its puzzle designs, such as beating up mushrooms with specific combos found from billboards around a town, but they are too spread out to justify the amount of mindless content that surrounds it. A potential solution to this problem is to reward or incentivize the player to keep completing quests with a compelling narrative or endearing characters. But Soccer Story only offers one-dimensional dialogue with a whimsical tone that is found in every single character, which distorts any possibility of individuality in the story.

However, the blend of pixel 2D and voxel 3D art styles across the open-world creates a compelling tone that the story never does. It's a vibrant world split into different regions, with most having a distinct feel to them. The beautiful backdrop can, at times, ease the growing frustration of the repeated mission structure.

Player playing volleyball in Soccer Story

Outside the open-world exploration is where Soccer Story shines the best. There are four main tournaments each consisting of two to three matches. The mechanics of matches are extremely simple, but the physics of the soccer ball allows for the creation of a sandbox-like atmosphere. After each shot, the ball can be drastically curved in different directions and, since the field is rather small, the player is able to use the game’s flexible physics to score a goal from any point on the field. This detail makes the introduction to soccer matches refreshing and genuinely fun.

There are also unlockables to purchase with coins or specific quests to complete that boost individual stats for players. Most of the upgrades are small enhancements that can’t truly be felt until stacking several onto one player. But, outside the somewhat limited upgrades, there isn’t any other way to manage or customize your team.

After several hours, the lack of interactivity with the team starts to reinforce the tedious nature of the game. Another small downside is that the actual opponents in each tournament are simple to beat, and it's quite easy to find loopholes in the AI players and goalkeepers. It only took two to three matches to find a way to spam the other goalkeepers until scoring a goal every 15 seconds was a usual occurrence. Like most elements in the game, the lack of any challenge eventually weighs down the overall experience.

The last major problem Soccer Story faces is the frequent bugs and hard crashes. It wasn’t uncommon for character models to clip around objects, get stuck in doorways, or display a text box with wild proportions. None of these were more than small annoyances, but the game has a tendency to hard crash when displaying short cutscenes. There were more than a handful of times that the application would completely close and a small amount of progress would be lost. It wasn’t the end of the world, but add that onto the monotonous quests, and eventually letting Soccer Inc. Completely control the sport with its pocketbook doesn’t sound so awful.

Soccer Story is a valiant attempt at a Sports RPG, but it falls victim to a repetitive story and quest structure. Its light narrative quickly falls to the side, with annoying bugs taking its place. Perhaps a player can find value in the endless amount of running and collectible items to be found but, for the most part, its lively world and polished soccer ball physics aren’t enough to make this an enjoyable experience.

Soccer Story launches November 29 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series. The Best War Games was provided with a Nintendo Switch code for this review.

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