Dodgeball Academia

Hope there will be a sequel to the Inter-School Tournament with Otto and the Gang. Dodgeball-tastic fun indeed! ૮ ˶´ ᵕˋ ˶ა ૮ ˶´ ᵕˋ ˶ა

The fact that no one has pointed out the parralells to pokemon yet is weird to me. it feels like pokemon except its dodgeball instead of rpgs battles. seems fun so far but the game is also very very chatty which kinda is a damper for me. get it on sale and you probably will be happy with it

A game that you should not dodge!
Dodgeball Academia is a solid little game that follows Otto as he attends a school for dodgeball where students are granted special dodgeball powers and attend dodgeball lessons as well as competing with one another in a tournament. The game breaks up into eight days with the days playing out as their own individual episodes where some issue occurs and the characters need to resolve it. As you progress you play tournament matches, explore the school and its grounds, level up and gather numerous interchangeable team members.
First and foremost the game is an RPG. It plays like a mix of Pokemon in regards to team management, RPG elements and overworld with the dodgeball battles feeling akin to that of the Mario RPG series with timed inputs and special moves and such. Both of these work well within the game with the controls feeling generally satisfying across the board. Each of the characters play differently in regards to their charges, throws and special moves. Some characters catch balls whereas others counter. This allows you to figure out how you prefer to play and what works for your three player team.
In terms of story, as stated earlier each day is an episode with these generally lasting an hour each. Each day feels unique and stands out overall with some days introducing new areas of the school to explore. The writing is generally cheesy but is fun overall. with tonnes of dodgepall puns and wordplay. Most of the characters are engaging though rather one note overall.
One striking thing about the game that is impossible to miss is the style. Everything just pops. All of the characters are charming and identifiable. All of the animations and effects are all polished and solid. The visual detail that went into this game is amazing. Additionally the sfx bolster the visuals perfectly for every ball thrown, for every effect that triggers and for every action made. It's solid across the board. The soundtrack, whilst repetitive, is quite energetic and engaging with all of the tracks fitting the areas and themes well. It's definitely something that sticks out the second you boot up the game.
One of the main gripes the game has is that overall it is repetitive in nature as you generally go from area to area battling folks and progressing the story or side quests and whilst that is true overall there is a decent variety of content overall. As you progress different effects, balls and characters are brought into the mix which mix up parts of the battles as well as arena hazards such as dodging cars in the middle of battles. You can also mix up your play style and team if you want to engage with combat in different ways. One flaw for me personally is that whilst there are a variety of areas, I would have liked to have explored the same areas a little less and instead had more varied areas as you do typically explore the same areas numerous times throughout the different episodes.
Overall the game is great. Aside from being a tad repetitive the gameplay is fun, the character and world is charming and everything is well polished. A solid game through and through!

Please see my curator page for more games that are well worth your time
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 10h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10 With accessibility difficulty options, 7+ without
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, You can find one here or here
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the one for getting all the equipment, for more info check out the review below
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play with only 5% damage and doing 400% damage and unlock all the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Dodgeball Academia is a fun RPG/ sport type of game. The game is clearly an RPG, but the battles are in the form of a dodgeball mini-game. You play as Otto who takes fate into his own hands and decides to sneak into the biggest dodgeball school. He is the new kid in school, gets bullied, and doesn't know the relationships between people but will figure them out during the course of the game. The most important thing is playing in the upcoming dodgeball championship and the steaks of winning that tournament get higher during the game.
The game has 8 episodes, aka 8 days you will play through. Each day has its own main quest, side quests, and duels to get through. You'll be allowed in more areas around the school in later days, which will be led by the main quests of each day, which has multiple stages.
That Dodgeball Academia feels mostly like an RPG comes because you earn experience and equipment, but also because it took inspiration from the sounds in a pokemon game. Like when a dual starts or when you heal your team. I do like the music and sound design, but the art style is my favorite part of this game.
The achievements in Dodgeball Academia are for the most part very straightforward but can be so difficult if you don't use the accessibility difficulty options. I don't know how anybody can beat the challenges the teachers will give you with an S ranking without using those options. The are also achievements for getting a character to level 50, but that is quite easy. If you do all the quests during each day (which you should do) and do as many duals as possible, you will already be around level 45 or higher. There is a shop underground where you can buy a drink to level up, so you don't have to grind those last levels.
After finishing a day, it becomes available through a new game to start on that day, so if you missed out on some achievements, it is easy to go back to a specific day, but there is one achievement for which this doesn't work. The achievements for getting all the equipment will not work through chapter selection, so that is the only missable achievement. And to probably make things a bit harder, there are guides that say that your last equipment must come from a chest to make sure the game calculates if you have all the equipment and that it doesn't work with rewards you get from battles. I'm not sure if that is the case because my last one ended up being from a chest because there are some sneaky hidden chests. If you want to make sure you have everything on each day, this guide might be useful . I hadn't found that list while playing but I made sure I did every side quest each day, did every duel, and also bought as many from the shop as possible each day. The duels and sidequests are visible on the map, which is very helpful.

Great graphics. Cool new take on the rpg genre.

this game is shonen as ♥♥♥♥ and i like it (also the gameplay is real solid)

Bought on a whim and ended up having alot of fun.
Its a videogame where you play dodgeball at an academy, with rpg elements that lead to developing the party members on your team over the course of it (stats increase, skills are gained and you can equip various pieces of equipment with special traits but in the action your skills and reactions still matter).
Beyond the fun of the gameplay is also pretty amusing generally in terms of story and the characters.
Is on sale for a few more days yet as of the time of this review and if you happen to see it discounted then would heavily recommend jumping on it.