Victory Road hits rare "overwhelmingly positive" review on Steam

Similar to what we experienced in 2024 when things like Astro Bot, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and Final Fantasy 7:Rebirth were released, 2025 was also a banner year for video games. Thanks to the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Donkey Kong Bananza, Silent Hill and Hollow Knight: Silksong, it's hit after hit for gamers.

That said, there might be a quiet underdog to beat all the other games, at least when it comes to Steam user reviews, and it's called Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. Level 5's hybrid sports/RPG title currently holds the elusive “Overwhelmingly Positive” status on Steam, with 96 percent of the available 774 reviews being “positive.”

Here is a sample of one of the reviews based on someone with over 30 hours logged.

I don't like soccer and yet this game is absolutely amazing. It's like playing a really good rpg, watching a really good anime, watching a really interesting story, and competing in a really cool online match system with a really deep and unique team building mechanic.

This game literally has everything and does it all really well. It even has a damn gacha system that's completely free. Of course, it's better to look at the price of the game, but still… it's worth it.

You don't need to have played Inazuma Eleven before or like the sport. Anyway, this is a perfect game.

The remaining reviews echo similar sentiments, making Victory Road one of the best-rated titles of 2025, despite centering on a franchise that hasn't seen any real news since at least 2013, and an anime series that's gone nearly a decade without new content.

Inazuma Eleven: The Road to Victory took years

Inazuma Eleven fans have been going on for nearly a decade since the game was first announced, making it as long-awaited a title as something like Silksong, believe it or not. It was originally revealed in 2016 during an event and was announced at the time as Inazuma Eleven Ares, with the game coinciding with the anime of the same name. It was supposed to be released in 2018. Keyword: Supposedly.

It was pushed back to 2019 before being completely renamed Inazuma Eleven: Heroes' Great Road and given a 2020 release date. That apparently didn't happen, and things were pushed back to 2021 before finally getting a 2023 release, seven years after it was announced.

The story doesn't end here as it got a final rebrand at Victory Road, then next-gen console support was added before we finally ended up with a 2025 release, and even then things were pushed back one last time before the game launched on November 13th. And now here we are with a game that has extremely positive fanfare after all these years.