This presents a somewhat steep learning curve as you learn to juggle these moves all at once. This flies in the face of the game’s title - quite apart from there being just one punch, there are a great many to learn. Your character has an array of light and heavy attacks they can use right away. Consecutive normal punchesĬombat, on the other hand, is the most detailed and satisfying aspect of the whole experience. As a result, the city doesn’t feel lived in, but more a series of set paths leading you to the next battle. Indeed, the only remaining people are quest givers. While the city is detailed and quite large once unlocked, it’s curiously devoid of civilian life. Overall story progression expands the size of the local city, opening new avenues for exploration. Gameplay is divided into exploration and combat. Further customisation options present themselves throughout the story, allowing you to create the loudest wallflower in video game history. What makes this approach even stranger is that the game’s many customisation options allow you to make your character stand out in a crowd. The downside to this approach is that your character never interferes with established canon, and it leaves you feeling like a bystander rather than a key player. Throughout, your hero builds their reputation by fighting alongside many well-known franchise characters. The game uses set pieces from the show’s two current seasons to tell its story. They have just entered the ranks of The Hero Association, a band of talented individuals tasked with keeping the streets clean and crime-free. So if One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows isn’t a montage of hero Saitama destroying his enemies in a single punch then what is it? A Hero Nobody Knows casts players as their own custom character. “If the heroes run and hide, who will stay and fight?”

That alone may be enough to please OPM fans, but I wonder if it has much more pull than that. Developer Spike Chunksoft’s return to the fighting genre is content with being a competent brawler with a self-aware sense of humour.

One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is certainly more than one hit KO’s - but not much more. Surely a game that features a hero able to defeat any enemy with a single punch would make for a pretty boring game.

How is this ever going to work as a video game? I thought. I remember the first time I saw the trailer for One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows.

One punch man fighting games