REVIEW: ‘Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters’ Is Full Of Exciting Action

Captain Tsubasa has shaped real-world soccer in ways most sports franchises never come close to. Yoichi Takahashi’s manga has sold over 90 million copies since 1981, and players around the world have all pointed to the series as the reason they pursued the sport. Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters marks the franchise’s 45th anniversary and its first console release in six years. Having written about the franchise’s cultural impact on real-world athletics but never actually played a Captain Tsubasa game, seeing the story play out in video game form was an interesting experience.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters is an action soccer game from Tamsoft Corporation and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment. A sequel to 2020’s Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions, its story adapts the World Youth arc of the manga, set four years after the Junior Youth World Challenge.

Tsubasa Ozora and the Japanese national youth team are chasing the World Youth Championship, and players join through the New Stars Route by creating their own character. Original creator Yoichi Takahashi, who stepped back from drawing the manga in 2024, oversaw the story, and the roster has grown from the first game to include 22 national teams and over 110 playable characters.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters has a wide variety of characters to choose from. 

Base controls on the pitch will feel instantly familiar to anyone grinding seasons in EA Sports FC: pass, tackle, dribble, shoot. But that realistic foundation dies the moment a midfielder launches a spinning bicycle kick from 30 yards out and blasts the keeper into the back of the net. While Rise of New Champions left players to figure out the chaos alone, this sequel relies on a gradual tutorial to translate the anime spectacle into digestible mechanics.

Super moves have expanded beyond shots this time around. Special dribbles, passes, tackles, and blocks all get their own flashy animations, so every position on the pitch has its moment. It feels like an anime-inspired arena fighter, but with soccer moves instead of kicks and punches. Real flashes of soccer thinking live inside the chaos, though. Reading an opponent’s approach and choosing the right response in a split second feels like real soccer, even if it is wrapped in an anime package.

The Chain System gives Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters a possession game that Rise of New Champions lacked. Every successful dribble or special move raises the Chain Level, which boosts shot power and charge speed. Lose the ball, and that chain transfers straight to the opponent. If you get too cocky, like I often did, you can easily hand your opponent an easy goal.

The game finds its best moments in tension-fueled standoffs between striker and keeper.

That system builds momentum, but the one-on-one goalkeeper battles are the real highlight. Firing a shot triggers a direct showdown: the striker picks a trajectory, the keeper commits, and a BREAK mechanic steadily chips away at their maximum stamina. These standoffs strip away the anime fluff, capturing the actual psychological tension between a striker and a keeper better than most arcade sports titles manage.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters‘ campaign shows its priorities immediately in the New Stars Route. Building a custom field player or goalkeeper and harvesting rival moves across the World Youth arc offers a solid mechanical loop. But Tsubasa and the original cast still own the narrative.

Your created player largely watches from the margins during cutscenes while the established stars drive the action. If you grew up with the series, watching from the sidelines feels like a front-row seat to history; if you walk in cold, you just feel benched.

The classic sports anime pacing doesn’t always add to the fun.

The cutscenes start strong but wear thin over the course of the campaign. Mid-match story breaks pull you out of the action to explore character backstories, and early on, the added drama works. When a flashback fires for a character you haven’t connected with, though, and the game drops you straight back into play afterward, the transition is jarring. It’s classic sports anime pacing: when it hits, the emotion is real, and when it misses, you’re waiting for the whistle.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters has 110-plus characters and 22 national teams on paper, but the reality is uneven. A handful of squads stand out with signature moves and distinct star players, but not every team feels as unique as their real-life counterparts would. Most teams and modes are gated behind story progression, too, so the game can feel surprisingly thin at first boot. Side scenarios and link stories pad out the runtime without adding much, and how good the online play is will depend on how active the community is after launch.

Visually, the on-pitch action completely sells the anime spectacle. Cel-shaded art pops during super moves, and dynamic camera work carries the impact of every tackle. The out-of-match cutscenes, however, land closer to a static visual novel. It creates a jarring disconnect: the matches themselves carry immense momentum, but the narrative interludes drag the pacing down while you wait for the next whistle.

Despite a padded runtime, Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters is a step up from its predecessor.

Composer Tadayoshi Makino, whose credits include Monster Hunter World and Dragon’s Dogma, scored over 100 tracks that keep matches tense without ever stealing the spotlight. Voice acting is entirely in Japanese with English reserved for in-game moments. Performance on PS5 Pro held steady outside of minor drops in the heaviest scenes.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters delivers a much sharper, more tactical experience than its predecessor and is built for the series faithful. The tense goalkeeper showdowns alone justify the price of admission for franchise veterans. But while the arcade mechanics are universally fun, the 30-hour campaign expects decades of attachment to its roster. It is an action-packed soccer game wrapped in a narrative that leaves outsiders sitting in the nosebleeds.

Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.