Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is built around collecting and developing players as much as it is about winning matches. On top of fixed story teammates like South Cirrus Junior High and Raimon Junior High, the game leans heavily on “scout” characters and a huge legacy roster that spans the entire series.
That creates a simple problem: there are thousands of potential recruits and only a limited number of matches in a season. Understanding how scouting is structured – and which systems exist purely to help you track recruits – is what keeps team building from turning into guesswork.
Story Mode vs. Chronicle Mode scouting
Victory Road splits recruitment across two major pillars.
- Story Mode (Nagumohara/South Cirrus Junior High arc): you build up South Cirrus (Nagumohara) from almost nothing, recruit classmates with the new Scout System, and pick five “Selectable Characters” out of a pool of fifteen to permanently join your core eleven.
- Chronicle Mode: you dive into the full 4,500+ legacy roster from across the Inazuma Eleven games and anime, replaying series matches and building composite dream teams that mix eras and teams freely.
Both modes are connected – training and roster depth from Story Mode feeds naturally into Chronicle – but they treat scouting very differently. Story Mode scouting is local and narrative-driven; Chronicle scouting is database-driven and leans on tools to manage sheer scale.
Story Mode: South Cirrus and the new Scout System
Story Mode focuses on Sasanami Unmei and South Cirrus Junior High, a small Nagasaki school trying to assemble a competitive team long after the original Raimon era. South Cirrus has a defined core and then two layers of recruits: classmates you bring in via the Scout System and the “Selectable Characters” that reshape your starting eleven.
South Cirrus main squad and support staff
South Cirrus’ fixed cast covers the spine of your team and support roles:
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Alix La Fontaine | Goalkeeper |
| Briar Bloomhurst | Forward |
| Cade Shelby | Defender |
| Cedric Feud | Midfielder |
| Raika Shinohara | Forward |
| Lilac Tausend | Support / N/A |
| Elaine Sereno | Support / N/A |
| Juno Hundertmark | Support / N/A |
| Edwin Groove | Support / N/A |
| Destin Billows | Support / N/A |
| Thierry Reyes | Support / N/A |
These characters anchor the narrative and tactical identity of South Cirrus. Scouting during Story Mode is about rounding out what they can’t cover alone.
Selectable Characters: the five you choose reshape the story
On top of the core South Cirrus squad, Victory Road introduces a Selectable Character System. At specific story beats, you choose five out of fifteen candidates to join the South Cirrus Eleven. These characters have full voice work, unique personalities, and explicit impact on scenes and dialogue.
| Selectable character | Notable detail |
|---|---|
| Tai Richter | Selectable striker; voiced by Sango Suo |
| Winsor Compete | High-energy player; voiced by Hikakin |
| Meridia Althoff | Midfield‑leaning; voiced by Lisa Hanabusa |
| Marisol Cavallo | All‑rounder; voiced by Maika Sasaki |
| Maine Alsop | Technical role; voiced by Takushi Izawa |
| Lycus Foxworth | Defensive or support role; voiced by Toshiya Miyata |
| Davin Bullock | Physical profile; voiced by Masai |
| Dario Highton | Playmaker‑type; voiced by Rai Inama |
| Amelia Rainwalker | Attacking role; voiced by Ichijou Ririka |
| Charis Benzaie | Creative midfielder; voiced by Michaela Wako Sato |
| Florent Shorleigh | Selectable, unvoiced |
| Antonia Felicier | Selectable, unvoiced |
| Kelvin Steelborne | Selectable, unvoiced |
| Lemmy Stretchen | Selectable, unvoiced |
| Starla Thorn | Selectable, unvoiced |
The key constraint is simple: only five of these fifteen can join a given Story Mode run. The remaining ten are locked out until you complete the story and start a new run with RE: Story.
Strategically, that means scouting in Story Mode isn’t about raw numbers – it’s about long‑term commitment. A choice like Winsor Compete or Amelia Rainwalker is not just filling a position; it’s deciding whose arc you want threaded through cutscenes and tactical meetings.
Everyday scouts vs. story recruits
Beyond the Selectable Characters, Story Mode lets you bring in regular students through the in‑game Scout System. These recruits sit much closer to the classic “scout character” concept familiar from earlier Inazuma titles:
- They usually do not belong to a famous team.
- They are not central to the main plot, though a few may later become important in other modes or future games.
- They are defined as much by quirks and one‑off lines as by their stats.
Structurally, they are the glue that fills out positions, elemental coverage, and depth behind your stars. The game encourages you to use them as experiments – a place to try out different roles, Abilearn Board builds, and Kizuna Link combinations without the narrative weight of the main cast.
Chronicle Mode: legacy scout characters at full scale
Chronicle Mode drops any sense of scarcity. It exposes the broader Inazuma Eleven universe as a giant recruiting pool – more than 4,500 characters at launch, expanding toward 5,200 with updates.
In this context, “scout characters” are essentially every non‑storyline player the series has ever used, organized by debut game (Inazuma Eleven, Inazuma Eleven 2, Inazuma Eleven 3, GO, Chrono Stone, GO Galaxy). Classic examples include Aikata, Aiki, Aikou, Aizome, Aen, Akagi, Akane, Akutagawa, Ashura, Asuka, Ataru, Atsui, Arai, Araki, Araya, and hundreds more.
The key traits remain the same:
- They debut outside the main narrative team of their original game.
- They often have simple hooks – a name pun, a visual gag, a single special move – rather than elaborate arcs.
- Chronicle Mode now gives them a concrete place in modern builds through rarity upgrades and Hyperdimensional Strengthening systems.
Because every character can eventually reach all rarities through training, a previously throwaway scout defender can be reshaped into a cornerstone of a themed squad, as long as you’re willing to invest time and Secret Stones into their board.
How scouting works in Chronicle Mode matches
Chronicle Mode is structured around replaying signature matches from across the anime and earlier games. Scouting flows through those matches rather than through random encounters:
- You select a route (for example, Football Frontier, FF International, or GO era tournaments) and fight teams along that ladder.
- Defeating or replaying a team adds its players to your recruitable pool or drops Hero Tokens and other items used to unlock them.
- Many heroes and legacy captains appear across multiple routes, giving multiple chances to stack copies or roll for better drops.
Not every character appears naturally in a single Chronicle route run. Some adult variants, crossover versions, or obscure scouts only show up in specific constellations or as Free Match opponents in Competition Mode. That’s where dedicated tools step in.
Inazugle (Inagle): the official player codex with “how to obtain”
To keep 5,000‑plus characters manageable, Level‑5 runs an official web database called Inazugle (also referred to as Inagle), accessible from the game’s own website. Each player entry has a “how to obtain” section that lists every way that specific version can be scouted in Victory Road.
You navigate to the codex from the official Player Codex page at https://zukan.inazuma.jp/en/. Once there, the flow is straightforward:
- Set the language and game naming convention you prefer (English dub or Japanese names) so searches match what you see in‑game.
- Search a character by name; the database shows their 3D model, profile, element, position, and team history.
- Open the “how to obtain” tab to see exact locations and modes.
Typical entries list options like:
- Specific constellations in the Play Universe summoning system.
- Chronicle competition routes (for example, FF International Route, The Sacred Knights, Apostles From the Sky).
- Free Match fixtures against particular teams (for example, a legacy national team or a spin‑off tournament squad).
In other words, if a player exists in Victory Road at all, Inazugle tells you where they live.
Filtering by position, element, and role
Inazugle is not just a reference for known favorites like Gouenji, Fubuki, Fei Rune, or Endou Haru. It is a discovery engine for unknown scout characters that fit specific tactical needs.
The filter set is particularly useful when you’re chasing niche roles:
- Choose Victory Road as the target game.
- Filter by element (for example, Wind) and primary position (Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder, Forward).
- Optionally filter by character type (player, manager, coordinator, coach) if you need back‑room staff rather than on‑pitch starters.
The result is a curated list of every character that matches those conditions. You can then click into each entry and check “how to obtain” to see whether it’s more realistic to summon them via a constellation or farm them by replaying a specific Free Match.
For example, if you need a Wind‑element goalkeeper but want an alternative to the default story keeper, filters will surface lesser‑known options and their exact acquisition routes.
Understanding seasonal players and long‑term scouting
Victory Road’s online Competition Mode uses a seasonal structure for its Football Frontier‑style tournaments. Each team must field at least a set number of “Seasonal Players” alongside “Eternal Players” that you can use indefinitely.
- Seasonal Players are highlighted variants and scouts that are only directly obtainable during a specific season window and can be used for a limited number of seasons before aging into Eternal status.
- Eternal Players are everyone else – story recruits, Chronicle pickups, and former Seasonal Players whose exclusivity period has expired.
This matters for scouting because some characters are markedly easier to get, or get better drop rates, during particular seasons and platform rotations. Platform‑specific boost rotations temporarily raise summon odds for named teams (Zeus, Little Gigant, Dragonlink, Ogre, and so on), encouraging you to time big recruitment pushes around those windows.
While these boosts do not lock content away forever, they change how efficient it feels to target certain squads during a given month.
Free Match and Play Universe as scout engines
Outside of Story and Chronicle, two other systems quietly double as recruitment tools:
- Free Match lets you replay specific fixtures against CPU‑controlled versions of teams you’ve already encountered. Many rare variants, adult versions of classic characters, or crossover squads are only available as Free Match opponents.
- Play Universe uses constellations as a summoning layer. You spend premium stars to roll on specific constellations themed around teams, eras, or elements. Many legacy scouts can be obtained faster here than by grinding matches.
Inazugle’s “how to obtain” entries consistently mention whether a character appears in Play Universe, and if so, which constellation banner hosts them, or whether they’re limited to rerunning matches against a certain team.
For a focused scouting session, the pattern is simple: look up the player, note whether they’re easier to grab from a constellation or a match, and aim your time or currency accordingly.
Using heroes and legendaries to unlock story‑locked characters
Not every character’s route is exposed in Inazugle immediately. A small number remain deliberately obscured, with their “how to obtain” field marked with placeholder information until players are expected to reach that point in the story.
Even then, there are consistent patterns:
- Hero versions of key protagonists, such as Endou Haru, can act as gateways; acquiring a Hero variant can cause standard copies to start dropping from matches you already play.
- Legendary variants often require retiring other legendaries into “spirits”. For example, a legendary Haru‑type character can require you to raise specific veterans (such as Mark and Nelly‑line characters) to Legendary, retire them, and fuse their spirits into a new hero.
- Once you have a legendary or hero version in your squad, normal copies of the base character become available as match drops, turning what looked like a one‑off reward into a repeatable scout.
These recipes stay consistent with the game’s broader Abilearn and Kizuna Link philosophy: nothing is truly locked if you are willing to invest time into training old favorites and looping them back into the system as spirits.
Scouting in Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road looks intimidating from a distance – thousands of names, multiple eras, and a web of routes. In practice, it coheres into a set of predictable patterns: Story Mode uses a constrained class roster and Selectable Characters to make choices meaningful; Chronicle Mode and Competition lean on Inazugle, Free Match, and Play Universe to turn the entire series back catalogue into a structured recruitment game.
Once you treat Scouting as its own layer – not a side feature – the rest of Victory Road’s systems fall into place. Training, rarity upgrades, Hyperdimensional Strengthening, and seasonal line‑ups all become more powerful when you know exactly which player fits where, and precisely how to bring them onto the pitch.
