With the eighth and final season in the books, the My Hero Academia anime is finally over, but fans of the series who want more of it can look forward to next month for more of their favorite heroes.

Ahead of its February 5 release, we played nearly 5 hours of My Hero Academia: All’s Justice, spanning select chapters of its story mode, the Team Up Mission mode, Hero’s Diary Mode, and the vs CPU mode. With its expanded roster and improved fighting mechanics, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice is looking promising for fans of the anime and the game.

My Hero Academia: All’s Justice Final Preview

Story Mode

As expected, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice covers the latest season of the anime, showcasing scenes and events until the battle with One For All. Our story mode playthrough featured specific sections that featured two spoiler-filled cinematics reliving events involving Bakugo, along with two playable levels that let us take control of Bakugo to go face-to-face with All for One Rewind.

As with anime games, you can expect a faithful retelling of the events seen in the anime series. The audio and visuals are spot on, with various effects and flashes filling the screen, especially since we’re talking about Bakugo and his explosions.

Of course, this assumes you have already seen the latest seasons; we do not recommend playing it if you haven’t yet, to avoid spoilers.

The entirety of My Hero Academia: All’s Justice’s story mode is divided into several chapters and offers an interactive way to experience the anime’s story again, which is not a bad idea since these final seasons are especially fantastic.

The story mode, along with all other modes listed below, can be accessed through Deku’s phone anytime while roaming through a sandbox of sorts, which is basically a city hub where players can wander about, customize their characters, access various modes, and more.

Hero’s Diary

One of these modes in My Hero Academia: All’s Justice is called Hero’s Diary (under the Character Memory mode), which features small episodes from Class 1-A. These “never-before-seen” side stories range from battles to trivial quests, such as locating missing cats or scaling buildings, with fun conversations in the form of text messages between the characters, allowing players to live through the daily lives of all 20 students.

Our time in Hero’s Diary was spent playing as Minoru Mineta, Eijiro Kirishima, and Mina Ashido. Mineta is obviously up to his mischievous ways again, and Kirishima’s events revolved around multiple combat scenarios against Tetsutetsu and Fatgum. Ashido also featured a battle scenario against Nomu.

My Hero Academia: All’s Justice’s Hero’s Diary mode is quite interesting if you’re looking to learn more about Class 1-A, and it is a fun distraction in between bouts and the other modes.

Team Up Mission

Another mode, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice’s Team Up Mission, is a more substantial mode that offers players a look at an original script created for the game. Players will complete training exercises set in a virtual environment, choosing characters or using those assigned to the current level.

The first Team Up Mission will put players in the shoes of Deku, Koji, and Fumikage/Tsukuyomi. Led by Aizawa, players will relive the attack on Jaku Hospital as a training mission, moving from location to location and exploring the city to complete objectives that advance the mission. One of the challenges will have the trio go face-to-face with a High End Nomu, some lackeys, and complete other tasks, such as parkour missions.

While some battles are challenging, such as a confrontation with Shigaraki, there are facilities where players can replenish their health, making these missions manageable.

Another Team Up Mission involved finding Class 1-A Students across the map and included activities such as battles and other challenges. Based on these two Team Up Missions, it would be interesting to see whether there are other activities that could provide more variety and mix things up.

Battle 1P vs CPU

As mentioned during an earlier preview, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice expands the format from 2v2 to 3v3 battles, allowing for more characters, combos, and strategic synergies. Each fighter has their own life bar, and tagging in and out mid-combat enables extended survival and flashy combo chains.

A “modern” control scheme makes the game approachable to newcomers, letting players execute complex attacks and ultimate moves with simplified inputs, while still offering customization for those who want more manual control. Modern controls also offer auto-combos, so there’s a chance that players will simply mash on one button to string together attacks, and with a full gauge, even chain special moves and tag-ins.

Interestingly, the game offers some customization of control types: players can choose between Modern and Normal controls per character and toggle auto-combos and Plus Ultra attacks on or off.

Speaking of gauges, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice has two gauges: Rising and Plus Ultra. Rising lets players enter Rising mode, which enhances attacks and allows certain maneuvers that are only available in this mode. When down to one character in the team, activating this will enable Ultimate Rising, serving as a sort of comeback mechanic and enhancing the power of the character even more.

Plus Ultra is basically the “Super” gauge, and players can build this up throughout the match to perform super moves that are unique per character. A cool feature is that if you have two or more levels of Plus Ultra and a teammate is still alive, players can chain Plus Ultra combos together for even more damage.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the preview was getting the chance to choose from the full playable roster of My Hero Academia: All’s Justice, which rounds up to a total of 68 characters that range from the students of Class 1-A, the league of villains, pro heroes, and many more. Players will get to choose from the likes of Dabi, All for One, All Might, Endeavor, Hawks, Sir Nighteye, Kurogiri, Mr. Compress, and even some variants and forms like Dabi Flame of Death, Shoot Style Midoriya, Shigaraki All For One, and more.

Additionally, instead of choosing from individual heroes and villains to mix and match, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice also offers players 9 pre-set teams, such as Deku, Todoroki, and Bakugo as Class 1-A, Nomu, Shigaraki, and Kurogiri as the Villain League, Mr. Compress, Toga, and Twice as Cute Besties, and more.

Characters such as Izuku Midoriya Rising, One For All Chaos, and One For All Rewind are unlocked based on story progress.

My Hero Academia: All’s Justice controls are surprisingly deeper than the average anime fighting game. Players will have access to a combo button (Square), two Quirk Specials (Triangle and Circle) that can turn into a different attack when combined with the left analog stick, jump, guard, dash, and change characters. More complex inputs, such as counter and unblockable attacks, require button combinations like R1 + Triangle.

Battles can get pretty hectic and can sometimes be hard to read due to the effects and some finicky camera issues, especially near walls. Although these are minor issues, combos and attacks are fun to execute and are exciting to watch, especially since the moves and characters are ultimately faithful to the anime.

With less than a month left until launch, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice could fill the gap left behind by the end of the anime. While some of its content may feel like filler, the main course, which are the battles, are surprisingly fun and can turn out to be interesting. There are a lot of characters to choose from, and it’s definitely fun seeing Deku and the gang take back the fight to the villains once again, with possibly different outcomes this time around.

My Hero Academia: All’s Justice is launching on February 5, 2025, for PS5 and Xbox Series, and February 6 for PC via Steam.