
Hoping against hope to sweep the award for most cumbersomely titled game in the eShop, Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D is here, and it's brought with it a slew of impressive options for customisation. Unfortunately, the gameplay seems to have been sacrificed on their behalf.
As with just about any sports game, Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D's multiplayer experience is far superior to its single player. Local Download Play allows you to pit your team head to head against others... and we do mean your team.
Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D allows you to customise just about everything you could imagine. You start with a team name, and then design a uniform component by component, choose a logo and then name and construct your individual players. The players are Mii-like in their options, and creating them is a blast: you can name them after your friends or famous people, and build them to match, assigning them to different positions and granting them special abilities. You can even use the inner camera to snap pictures of your face — or the face of your friends — to paste directly onto the character. It's a misleadingly fun option, and it's a bit of a shame that the rest of the game isn't as fun or inventive as the team creation mode.

There are two options for players who wish to face the AI: Exhibition, and World Tournament. Exhibition is a single game while World Tournament finds you squaring off against many computer-controlled teams in sequence. Unfortunately this mode doesn't have the option to save your progress, so you either complete it in one sitting or you start fresh the next time.
The controls, oddly, don't use the touch screen at all. Even navigating menus and selecting customisation options is handled with the buttons, which is somewhat counter-intuitive and much more cumbersome. During the actual matches, though, the buttons work great, and it won't take long to familiarise yourself with the deliberately simple control scheme. You can pass, tackle, dash and shoot, and that's about it. Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D aims to be accessible, and it absolutely is. Die-hard soccer strategists might be left cold by the simplicity of this game's design, but for young players or casual fans, it controls perfectly.

Unfortunately the game is rather dull in its presentation. The 3D effect is nice enough, but won't be missed if you turn the slider down. In fact, if anything the 3D is obtrusive in the team creation mode, as you'll be flicking your eyes back and forth between the top and bottom screens and needing to readjust every time. The 3D looks nice when the game is in motion, but at other times it really calls out for better implementation.
The matches are quick and will likely only last a few minutes each, but the game often feels sluggish and without purpose. This is down mainly to the AI which doesn't seem to care how exciting the match is, and would rather pass endlessly to itself and run out the clock.
The fun picks up when you compete against another human player. In fact, if you do manage to find a friend with this game, and both of you have taken the time to tailor a team to your personal whims, there can be a great deal of fun to be found in pitting them against each other, and discovering weaknesses in the lineup that you may not have realised during customisation. Unfortunately both players will need to own the game, and at this price — and for the small amount on offer — that might be tricky.

Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D gets very close to earning our recommendation for its truly impressive customisation options alone, but customisation does not make a game, and the core experience here really needed the care and attention that its team building options received. The option to build teams with the touch screen and the ability to save your progress during the World Tournament would have helped as well, but the fact remains that the game itself just fails to be engaging, and offers only a small glimpse of what it should have been.
Conclusion
Arc Style: Soccer!! 3D has its share of bizarre design choices, but the appeal of creating your own team from scratch, player by player, and pitting them against teams designed by your friends is undeniable. Unfortunately this requires you to have friends who own the game, and the single player experience doesn't measure up nearly as well. It's by no means a bad game, but at its price — and considering the fact that you'll need two copies in order to get the most out of it — it does feel somewhat uncooked and overpriced.
Comments 27
"Like real soccer, it's better with friends"
How can you play real soccer without friends?
Has the flood gate for sub-par 3DSWare been opened?
I hope not. However the customization options sound great!
Great review by the way.
@Jamouse Slowly.
What @JarvanZheitk said.
This scored better than i thought though. If you've watched the European Nintendo Connect and are anything like me you'll very much hope that the featured eShop football game will come to the West soon. It looks like it will give hell to this and all other arcady eShop football games still coming.
It just won't have such an intriguing characater customization though i'm afraid.
I expected worse
@Koops3 Same
@Jamouse: Opposing sports teams are very rarely made up of your friends!
"even navigating menus and selecting customisation options is handled with the buttons"
That is simply unforgivable on any game on a DS system. I've never been able to comprehend why some developers expect me to browse menus using buttons when the ideal interface is already built in via touch.
Not a mention about "Arc Style" sounding very similar to another series of games? Though I suppose the subject has been talked about before in the previous comments section.
The only thing this game does for me is it makes me want some Art Style games to come out for 3DS.
This actually got a better score than I thought. If one of my friends get this, then I will. But first I have to get Sakura Samarai, Dillon's Rolling West, Mutants Mudds, and Zen Pinball. Yeah, I'm behind on the eShop.
I was thinking of getting this but if the single player mode is meh, then never mind. Nobody I know in the city has a 3DS.
aw me wuz gonna get this game
oh well i has no cash
gamermii's left brain
Ugh. I wish Arc Style would have improved their AI with this game. Oh well, I save my Ninty cash for something worth while.
There's nothing like raw under-done and overpriced Soccer with pink still in the middle!
Well I really like Fun Fun Minigolf so this seems to be the first sub par 3DSware game. Not for me.
Yeah, it also threw me off when I read Arc Style and thought Art Style. It even has the same title structure:
Art Style: Cubello
Arc Style: Soccer
But I guess after playing the game, the gameplay should tell you the big difference.
Yeah, I thought of Art Style too. I wish that series would revive (again) in a big way. Maybe a compilation?
Am I the only one who instantly thought about Nintendo's own Art-style series?! So yes, this is a confusing title!
The Arc Style series has been going for years in Japan, we just always got the games under a different name. Now we've got the same treatment as Japan everyone should be happy!
this game looks horrible, i'll just stick to fifa soccer 12 3ds
This looks terrible and the gameplay is slow why buy this when i can get fifa on 3ds?
"The Arc Style series has been going for years in Japan, we just always got the games under a different name"
Oh, I didn't know that!
Another perfect Candidate for online Multiplayer play slips through the Cracks
Wow, I like the look of this game.
It takes me back to the MagaDrive except they are not 2D's that get squashed flat. And they help Nintendo's vision for characters to come true in that. And we get to call it "Football3D"?!
@Windy wow...just wow. im pretty sure your trolling at this point. FIFA has online. PES has online. im sure there are others im forgetting. why in gods name would we need online on another soccer title, especially a crappy kids shovelware that NOBODYS PLAYING. wouldent it be better to just buy PES and call it a day. heck. add mario kart and RE, and you have your online fix right there.
$7... I hope the baseball game coming out in a few weeks costs less. That's asking for a lot for a simple looking game.
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