Bandai Namco announced via Twitter, that their upcoming My Hero Academia battle royale game will also release in the West, by dropping a new trailer with the English dub voice-work. They also announced an upcoming beta test, for which you can sign up here. However, there are caveats; the beta will only be available for PlayStation 4 players, and specifically only those who reside in US or Canada.
It will be divided into two phases, as reported by Gematsu, which are scheduled as follows:
- Phase 1: From August 17th (10PM ET) to August 18th (6AM ET)
- Phase 2: From August 18th (10PM ET) to August 21st (2PM ET)
My Hero Ultra Rumble is a team-based Battle Royale that will have players step into the shoes of their favorite My Hero Academia characters, both villains and heroes. The players, 24 in total, will be divided into eight teams of three. Different characters will have different set roles; assault, support, and disruption, the intention being that players select one of each in order to balance out their teams with better synergy. Bandai Namco further stated that players will “battle on expansive citywide maps,” and that, “Players can also contribute to their team’s victory by rescuing or intimidating civilians on the field to obtain powerful items that can determine the outcome of the battle.”
Though there has yet to be any official confirmation of how many characters will be available, at least 12 could be seen in the most recent trailer, which includes main characters like Deku, Bakugo, and All Might, but also side-characters like Froppy (Tsuyu Asui), Cementoss, and Mt. Lady. There is, as of yet, no information available about the game’s release date.
The trailer also showed a good number of promising elements. The gameplay seemed to have an interesting mix of melee combat and third-person shooting, and the comic text on attack effects is some fun flavor. Though what stood out the most was character variety. Each character had distinct abilities with unique effects, that seemed to give them all their own particular play style. This could be where this game could stand out, as most other battle royales do not offer such diverse gameplay between their classes/characters. Add in multiple maps, plus the whole civilian system, and this upcoming project does have respectable potential.
My Hero Ultra Rumble had been revealed a while ago in Japan, so even though it’s only recently made a splash in the west, there is a lot of viewable gameplay available from previous beta tests. Videos show that the loot system is based on picking up cards, which enhance your character’s abilities.
Prior in-game footage did also look rough in spots, such as the melee strikes feeling choppy and imprecise, as well as water physics being non-existent (characters just ran through the lake bed as if there was no water at all). This was many months ago, however, so these issues may have been polished away by now.
The battle royale genre is not at the same height as it once was. Just recently, Proletariat’s Spellbreak announced it would have to be shutting down its servers, and soon after, that the studio would be absorbed by Blizzard. This game does have a strong IP behind it, and what appears to be a solid gameplay foundation, so we’ll just have to wait and see if it can squeeze out a spot in such an overpopulated space.
