Inazuma Eleven 3: Lightning Bolt

Skip buying your kid FIFA on 3DS this year, and give your offpsring Inazuma Eleven 3 instead. It's a novel light RPG experience, with all the compulsive collecting of a sticker album. There's also a decent football story at its core.

With its double football/JRPG nature, Inazuma Eleven 3 is another great title in the franchise, even with its story surplus and a non-cutting edge graphics.

There are just a few additions to the original NDS game, so it's aimed at those who missed it the first time. Still, it brings more Inazuma Eleven to its fans, who should be waiting for its proper return to 3DS.

Almost a straight 3DS port of the DS Japanese counterpart. Fun and lengthy, but a bit redundant.

For those that have been with the series for a while, this game does very little to advance the series in any dramatic ways, and they should be warned to expect more of the same. If such fans simply cannot get enough of these games, however, Inazuma Eleven 3 will definitely hit the back of the net.

Despite the adventure being needlessly padded out in between the core matches, the game remains an incredibly fun title for players of all ages.

Inazuma Eleven 3 represents a good football-RPG characterized by a well-designed gameplay and by a plot far more successful than the second episode.

Inazuma Eleven 3 has its fair share of highs and lows. The game will punish you for making mistakes, but at the same time it motivates you to trying again.

The first Inazuma Eleven on the 3DS doesn’t do anything to lift this entertaining franchise to greater heights. The soccer games are fun, but everything around it disappoints a little. Part three keeps its head above the water with its charming and fluent gameplay, but it could’ve been more.

The new things are not exactly plentiful, even if we have more than 2000 players available. The mechanics of this peculiar JRPG, although well achieved, are still very close to the previous version.

Inazuma Eleven 3 is... derivative, to say the least. It's actually a pretty much cut'n'paste of the previous entries in the franchise with just a couple new features and a more grounded plot.

IE3's mantra seems to be 'more is less'. Less: work for devs, learning for fans and interest for the uninitiated. It works, but is it really what an exciting series needs?

In terms of content you’ll get more Inazuma than ever before. But unfortunately it is also more of the same.

It’s good value, nevertheless, and for those willing to invest a lot of hours this is still a charming, light-hearted, over-the-top adventure. It lacks the spark of its predecessors, however, and it’s time for the series to do more than apply the most meagre of superficial upgrades.

A brill battle system vs a load of boring convos. It's only a slim victory for the former. [Dec 2013, p.69]

The biggest problems are found within the game's presentation, which looks dated and needed an update from its original release. Porting it to the Nintendo 3DS was almost pointless, but it’s saved by some clever uses of StreetPass, SpotPass and Local Play.

Inazuma Eleven 3 feels like a fitting end for this set of always absurd but highly entertaining footballing adventures. There still lots of fun, but it's a second case of more of the same without the same level of amusing craziness that the story of the second game compensated with, and it's hard to see where the series can build any further without some substantial overhaul.