You find yourself developing tactics on the fly, actually based on real football: a neat ball over the top causes your top scorer to peel off his marker and slam one into the onion bag past the stunned goalie. It looks fabulous, and sounds better (though the quality of the voice acting varies wildly).

In short, the game gently nudges you into being a better player by the time you really need to be on top of things - and you will, because the final match is a doozy. The in-game hero has a chat with the player at the end of a chapter about tactics and the advantages of elements you may have just unlocked. The only other drawback is that the number of mechanics to juggle can be overwhelming - and that's coming from an Inazuma veteran! To combat that, the game plays its ace-in-the-hole: Arion's Football Corner. There's also a mite of slowdown when certain special moves are activated and the characters are conversing (as above). Chew on that, FIFA 16 - boys and girls play alongside each other here. Even better, as in the original Inazuma Eleven GO, you can recruit female players. The default team is rather sharp, of course, but some of the more experimental formations might require more defenders than you have, for example. Furthermore, you can recruit opponents to join your squad. This helps to decide the outcome of challenges for the ball, how your shots will fare and whether or not you'll pull off that fingertip save. Special moves level up through repeated use, and kit can be upgraded to help give you an extra edge.

Each player has one of four elements, Pokémon style, and there is a loose rock-paper-scissors affair going on, which is constantly depicted on match screens. The game's RPG elements are in full effect throughout. It's a surprisingly smooth system, though the defensive AI is a bit lax at times. The player in possession will naturally run forward but everything else is up to you: tap a teammate for a pass, or to assign someone to run towards an opponent in possession. The latter splits into 5-a-side first-goal-wins knockabouts - almost like random battles - and 11-a-side matches, both of which are controlled with the stylus. Play divides into two halves (there was a joke in that somewhere): running round the overworld and games of football. This causes a race through history to recruit the essence of various historical figures to imbue your team with them and win the day.

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