Skip to main content

Please Help, the My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero Mobile Game Is Sucking up All My Time

My quirk is "cellphone screen tap."

My Hero Academia Mobile Game

It’s no secret that I am certified My Hero Academia trash who absolutely has to check out every bit of media that gets released about best boy Izuku “My Bones Are Breakable but My Spirit Is Not” Midoriya.

Recommended Videos

As you’d expect, I was beyond excited for the release of My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero, a free-to-play mobile game that lets us work at this whole becoming a hero thing.

Full disclosure: I went in thinking I’d get a cute little button masher where I’d hear my favorite characters shout their attacks, but after getting the chance to chat with Paul Joffe, VP of Games at Sony Pictures Television Games, and try the game out for myself, I was surprised with how much this game has to offer.

“We’re incredibly excited to bring fans the first-ever My Hero Academia mobile game available outside Asia,” Paul said back when the game was originally announced. “The game is beautiful, immersive, and filled with action and heroes.”

After I fangirled for an embarrassing amount of time, Paul went on to talk about the game’s story: “It begins at season one from a story standpoint and we’ll progress through season three and, eventually, further.” A lot happens in the first three seasons of the series so I think that’s a great start for the mobile game.

As someone who reads the manga, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting those beginning segments of My Hero Academia and playing through scenes like Deku’s big You Say Run moment from the second episode, and even how OP All Might is when we first meet him in the tunnel.

We’ll be that OP someday. I just know it.

The team also got creative about what you’re playing through, like actually having to angst-walk down the street after All Might tells Deku that he can’t be a hero if he doesn’t have a quirk. You LITERALLY have to WALK down the street, hearing the disparaging comments about being quirkless.

Quirkless Deku

It’s a gut punch I wasn’t expecting.

I’m looking forward to seeing what other details we get to play through. I kinda wanna walk into the stadium for the Sports Festival, you know? Or walk through the woods at the Training Camp. I REALLY wanna get to the eventual part where we unlock season four so I can walk around the School Culture Festival with Eri. As much as I’m into the big action moments, I adore the endearing moments, too, so I can’t wait to get all up in my feels about reaction command Class 1-A Rockband.

The game captures the essence of all of that, offering those quaint moments where the students get to be heroes in training doing random tasks, and offering sizable battles via the story, the missions, and playing with others online. “It pushes the limit of what these devices can do,” Paul said. “However, the team has worked to resolve it to different device capabilities, so it will balance to what your CPU is and what your mobile device capabilities are.”

I was surprised while watching the PvP (player vs player) demonstration, how intense of a fighting game this was on mobile. Characters pull off dazzling combos and get cutscenes for special moves, and what I thought would be a case of frantically tapping the screen to make something work ended up being much more involved than that.

That much is certain when playing on your own.

You get to level up your character(s) as you progress, gaining new moves and figuring out the best way to combine attacks to defeat your opponents. The attacks take time to reload, which means you have to pay attention to what attack you used and how much time you have before the gauge refills. The attacks also differ in how well they work in combat. Some, like Deku’s shoot style, work for close combat, while Kaminari’s electricity can work from much farther away.

You also have to pay attention to what your opponent is doing, figuring out when to dodge or what areas to avoid depending on their move set. I was amazed at the amount of maneuvering around I had to do in battle and how I could string together attacks in order to cause the most damage. You can’t just frantically tap the screen to wail on a villain; it takes more finesse than that.

Deku Mobile Game

The game, as to be expected, has you start out with Deku, but you can unlock more characters as you go. “It’s a Gacha system game, so there will be characters that you’ll begin to unlock,” Paul said. “There’s going to be ongoing live operations with multiple things going on on a weekly basis, and new character drops, generally on a monthly basis.”

This means that the developers plan on having this be a game that continues to dish out content, and really, in the world of hero development, the tasks would be ongoing. It kinda feels like we’re getting the parts that the series doesn’t get to spend too much time on because of the bigger plots at hand. Yes, the bigger story is there, but so are those humble little internship missions where our heroes in training are tasked with legitimately saving a cat from a tree. Not all the villains we encounter are from the League (most of them aren’t, tbh) and their crimes aren’t nearly as grandiose as Shigaraki or All For One, but we’re heroes, damnit, so we gotta stop some bank robbers and purse-snatchers (and, in some cases, protect citizens while doing it).

Also, the ability to recreate battles with folks online is a major plus. Deku Vs Kacchan 3 is in my near future. There’s co-op, too, so you can create your very own “Kacchan of the Bakugos” squad.

Chibi Bakugo

Did I mention the training you get to do? And the dorm room decorating? And the-… it’s a lot, y’all, there’s SO much!

It’s at this point where I blinked and realized I’d spent my entire morning before work on my phone trying to beat an octopus villain. That’s the true danger of this game. It’s satisfying to complete tasks, gain new moves, and get new characters. It’s especially satisfying when it’s a character who you love but they don’t get as much screentime as the major players of the series. Kaminari is sassy AF, proclaiming that it’ll only take two seconds, honey, to win his matches (and yes, he says honey). It’s nice to be able to level up the likes of Uraraka, Kirishima, and Iida, who is an absolute speed demon when he’s fighting.

Iida in battle

All and all, this is a great game to add to your mobile game library, especially since it’s a game that’ll continue to get updates. As My Hero Academia, the series, progresses further, there will be plenty of opportunities to add more to the mobile game. I am BEGGING the developers for a chance to play with The Big 3, Class 1-B, Shinsou, and if they feel so inclined, the villains.

Let me set off some blue fire with Dabi, please and thank you.

My Hero Academia: The Strongest Hero is available now! You can check it out over at the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

(Image: K. Horikoshi / Shueisha, My Hero Academia Project Licensed by Funimation)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Author
Briana Lawrence
Briana (she/her - bisexual) is trying her best to cosplay as a responsible adult. Her writing tends to focus on the importance of representation, whether it’s through her multiple book series or the pieces she writes. After de-transforming from her magical girl state, she indulges in an ever-growing pile of manga, marathons too much anime, and dedicates an embarrassing amount of time to her Animal Crossing pumpkin patch (it's Halloween forever, deal with it Nook)

Filed Under:

Follow The Mary Sue: