Kouenji Joshi Soccer 3 – Koisuru Eleven Itsuka wa Heaven

Kouenji Joshi Soccer 3 – Koisuru Eleven Itsuka wa Heaven is a Sports Soccer game developed and published by Starfish SD for the Nintendo 3DS. It was released exclusively in Japan on June 16, 2016. Kouenji Joshi Soccer 3 is the third game in the soccer-themed visual novel focusing on the girls-only soccer team of Kouenji Academy. The story takes place seven years after the events that took place in Koenji Joshi Soccer 2, where the players’ team won the world championship. Now, that team is a legend and talked about in school, but it is becoming the thing of the past, and the soccer team is about to be abolished.

The player takes on the role of a newly transferred coach who has been given an opportunity to assemble a new team and train the girls to win the tournament. While being focused on soccer on training, the game gives you a one-day event that lets you make private memories with each of the heroines. The story unfolds from April to January and is split into monthly events where the soccer practice and interaction with characters take place. While the dialogues and visual novel scenes use typical 2D anime character art over static backgrounds, the soccer practice sessions use 3D terrain and SD character style.

Each of the 11 soccer team member heroines have both school uniforms and soccer uniforms which they switch during practice time. Assembling a team of girls with different personalities is one challenge, making them work as a team furthers the difficulty, but overcoming the obstacles and making them work together is what makes the team strong, and their coordination and tactics are fluid and skilled enough to achieve victory. The soccer part of the game is somewhat turn-based and lets you choose an action after each pass of the ball.

Each of the girls has the parameters that determine the chance of success of performing a certain move. Some girls are better at passing, dribbling, or shooting than others, so it is imperative to rely on that in order to score a goal and win the match. Performing an action depletes part of the stamina, and as the stamina goes down, so does the chance of success of performing an action. All girls will level up after a match. No matter the victory or defeat, their skill parameters will increase.