Haikyu!! Fly High: Days Need More Than 24 Hours So I Can Keep Playing This Game

Anyone who has been here long enough should know that I am a huge fan of Haikyu!!, both the manga and the anime. So I was thrilled to get the chance to demo the new mobile game Haikyu!! Fly High before its release today.

Haikyu!! Fly High takes you inside the story of Hinata, Kageyama, and the rest of Karasuno. You can go through Story Mode, which follows Hinata’s journey from middle school onwards, his fateful meeting with Kageyama and joining the Karasuno team. Relive iconic moments from the series, faithfully recreated with amazing quality art and visuals as well as dialogue voiced by the original Japanese and English voice actors.

Or you can play Challenge Mode, where you recruit and build your own team using more than 40 characters from various teams from the series. There are multiple avenues to level up your players and earn experience points and other rewards. You can work your way through training camp, where you play against a random assortment of players. Or you can challenge individual teams to a practice match.

On top of Story and Challenge Modes, there is a variety of other content, including base building, trivia, and other mini-games that allow you to earn rewards and unlock other features.

I don’t play a lot of mobile games, so this is my first real experience with one. I was extremely impressed with the art and the gameplay. Going through Story Mode was fantastic. Honestly, it almost felt like I was watching the anime again. I actually sat through every piece of dialogue because I love these characters so much.

The matches operate in a manner similar to a turn-based combat game. You select your team and play to three points. Your team serves first, and the rally begins. You choose first who will block, and then who will take the spike. Certain characters have special skills and abilities. For example, some of the characters – like Kageyama and Sugawara – can spot weaknesses in the defense when serving.

Characters with blocking or spiking skills will need at least one turn to cool down before using them again, so choose carefully! Strategy as a whole is extremely important, as you need to take into account not only your team’s level and specialty, but your opponent’s as well. Your team’s setter determines its specialty. Use Kageyama for quick attacks, or Oikawa and Sugawara for power. Be mindful of your starting rotation, and your players’ stamina levels.

Gameplay was surprisingly smooth, and I mostly only say surprisingly because my phone sucks and I was expecting issues. But there was almost no lag during matches, and my only true technical problems were entirely related to my own phone, which admittedly is a piece of trash.

I do have one minor complaint, which is that pretty much every spike uses a scene from the anime interspersed with actual game footage, which got kind of annoying after a while. Once or twice a match would have been OK, but in a long rally, I found myself wishing I could just see the game.

Building my team was a lot of fun. Granted I wasn’t able to demo for that long, but I was pretty happy with the team I had by the end of the demo period. My first pull of ten players included Iwaizumi, so I was pretty thrilled with that right away. Iwaizumi is one of my favorite characters so that was really exciting for me.

I had a lot of fun playing this game. Truthfully, it was a massive time sink for me, and I mean that as a compliment. I wish that a day had more than 24 hours so that I could keep playing this game. It really was addictive.

I liked experimenting with my team lineup and rotation trying to get the best victory, even if I wasn’t able to win that fourth match against Dateko. I so badly wanted to see Kageyama do a setter dump, but I think that’s either at a level I hadn’t gotten to yet, or if that particular version of Kageyama didn’t have the ability.

And the mini-games were cute, as well! I wasn’t able to unlock that many of them before the end of the demo period, but the ones that I did were nice little detours.

As with other similar games, there are daily and weekly login bonuses and quests. You can join a club for additional rewards. Everything you do unlocks more aspects of the game, like new areas, or special banners and frames.

This game is a must-play for any Haikyu!! fan. You get to relive the series and put yourself in the action by building your dream team.

Haikyu!! Fly High launches globally today on iOS and Android.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

Twitter

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary