Perhaps I like the Inazuma Eleven series more than I should, but the mix of wacky anime characters, football, and JRPG elements have had me hooked ever since the first game finally made it to European DS systems in 2011—three years after it debuted in Japan—thanks to Nintendo and Level-5’s joined effort. The third chapters of the series, though, were definitely a step down from a story, characters, and pacing perspective compared to the first two. Their lack of energy and freshness made me slightly more cautious about my enthusiasm for the announcement of the European release of Inazuma Eleven Go.

But it turns out I was being cautious for nothing. Inazuma Eleven GO (released in two versions, Shadow and Light, I played the latter) is not just another sequel with prettier graphics, but rather a true step forward for the series. The game not only delivers a smoother and better optimized user experience (for instance by allowing fast travel between locations, partially removing those pesky random encounters and streamlining the extra characters acquisition system), but adds new gameplay tweaks features that make the “soccer battles” even more engaging and rich with unpredictable variables.

Inazuma Eleven GO is set 10 years after the events of Inazuma Eleven 3, and features a renewed cast of young soccer enthusiasts led by Arion Sherwind. The new protagonist is just like Mark Evans, another footie nut whose enthusiasm helps glue together the dissolute Raimon Team with his contagious love for the sport. Arion is a talented midfielder; he is immediately thrown right in the middle of the action, and in the middle of another football-based pseudo-political conspiracy.

The main difference with the “old” Inazuma Eleven games, and in particular with the first one, is that the story now centers around Arion. Mark Evans, the main character of the first trilogy, was a goalkeeper, and this meant the narration focused on the Raimon Team as a whole, using the defensive role of Mark as an excuse to explore other characters and provide the player with deep story arcs about the growth of most of the 11 main players. As a result this time around the cast feels crowded with filler characters, and fails to immediately introduce as many memorable teammates during the slow, tutorial-ish, first few chapters in the game.

Fortunately the only other protagonists besides Arion, Captain Riccardo Di Rigo and the villainous rival Victor Blade are more than enough to keep the player entertained in the first acts of a tale that’s ultimately built to gently introduce newcomers to the weird setting and gameplay of the series. After a couple of hours, when Arion gains access to his first special techniques, the pacing of the story picks up, new locations open up leading to more customization options for the team, and old cameos and new characters with unpredictable ties to the first trilogy slowly start showing up, which will certainly please old fans.

Inazuma Eleven GO’s “battle system” is a natural evolution of its predecessors. It’s still a simple touch-based RTS at heart, but the control of the ball now requires a bit more finesse, and passing requires more precision. The biggest introduction of this sequel is playable Fighting Spirits. These gargantuan spiritual projections based on mythological creatures simply spiced up the visuals of the old games, but they now play a fundamental role on the pitch, adding a new layer of offensive and defensive abilities to specific characters. Only a maximum of three per match can be summoned, though, and they can only stay active until a special meter tied to every one of their actions runs out. This adds a lot of strategy to the usual parade of spectacular Dragon Ball-style shots and impossible clone-based dribbles the game is known for.

The gameplay of Inazuma Eleven GO just feels right, and I’ve spent a huge amount of time playing both story-related and optional matches just to make my team of high school champions stronger and stronger. With more than a thousand characters to recruit and dozens of special moves to learn, addiction is just around the corner. The game is still not perfect—it DOES feel like a new start for the series, but begin a match and you’ll forget about all the rough edges, such as the occasional useless random encounters, the hamfisted localization and the terrible dub. Perhaps the heavy use of accents and goofy foreign idioms will be appreciated more by younger fans of the anime.

GO was almost a launch title when it came out in Japan in the December of 2011, but even after all these years it’s still one of the better looking RPGs on the handheld, and in many ways puts even Pokemon XY to shame. Too bad the in-game world feels a little bit limited, especially after seeing how expansive they were in Inazuma 2 and 3.

However, there’s a lot to do in this game, not even counting all the little touches, such as StreetPass and SpotPass support or the multiplayer features, it can keep you busy for weeks and weeks. As a new beginning, Inazuma Eleven GO is just fantastic, and it nails all the important aspects that make this RPG a winner, staying true to the formula of its predecessors and at the same time expanding it and giving it a damn pretty new coat of paint.