Everybody was anime fighting.
Back in the days of Toonami, I was a giant Dragon Ball Z fan. I have a little too much knowledge of the Saiyans and their adventures. After around 2007 I started to drop off anime, and aside from a few shows here and there, I haven’t paid much attention to current anime. Needless to say, when I heard of Jump Force, I knew a lot of the characters either extensively or through osmosis of being around gaming and anime culture, and what developer Spike Chunsoft is trying to do here is basically create Injustice: Shonen Jump.
Taking place in the real world, some force has merged the worlds of the Jump characters and allowed both heroes and villains to come through. Naturally, when villains like Frieza get thrust into a new world with no ways of defending themselves, he’s going to try to take over everything. He’s not alone either. There is an unknown person that is using special cubes to turn regular people into powerful bloodthirsty drones called Venoms. They player is attacked by Frieza and almost killed. Luckily, Trunks is there with a special hero cube that restores the player’s life and turns them into a powerful hero who then joins up with the other heroes in Jump Force.
Platforms: PC, PS4, XB1
MSRP: $59.99
Price I’d pay: $40
Jump Force is a fighting game that feels to be in the same vein as the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm games. They play rather similarly, with an open arena and a lot of chase down moves using a basic three button system for light and heavy attacks along with a throw button. Chaining combos together is very simple to do and can even come off as a bit of a button masher, but in the right hands, the combat can get complex and hectic at the same time.
Along with the standard attacks, players can block and dash, and by holding down the right trigger, can pull up a special attack menu that has meter expending powerful attacks on the face buttons. These can be triggered to finish off a combo or to try to interrupt an incoming enemy. It all depends on the attack. These special attacks are all the famous ones from the Jump Force teams. Along with that, players can counter and instant dodge incoming rush attacks using a special meter that fills up over time. There is also an awakening meter that can be used for more powerful special attacks along with awakening that allows the characters to transform and increase their power and speed for a period of time.
The matches are best out of three and feature a three character team. Players can switch out their characters during combat by pulling the left trigger. They can also bring their characters out for a support attack by holding the trigger. Keep in mind, the entire team shares a health bar, so switching out characters isn’t a get out of death card. It does set up some pretty tricky attacks since the switched character appears close to the enemy.
The fighting is flashy, fun, and responsive, and is easy to pick up and play for both the casual fighting game player and the veteran fighter who is looking for some skill challenge. This is the strongest point of Jump Force and luckily, players will be doing this the most.
I say that because the other part of Jump Force is the story mode bits in between the fighting. Here, players will walk around a hub world with their created character and speak to the different teams as well as purchase gear and items that give special buffs and abilities. Doing missions gives experience points and leveling up makes the characters stronger. Players can use earned items to improve their learned abilities as well. The issue is that the hub world feels like a tacked on experience to give off the feeling of a pseudo-MMO . The issue comes when I’m forced to walk around this area with a map that is almost useless trying to figure out where to go. After some time with the game, I got more accustomed to the hub, but I still found it a slog to go from one place to the other just to trigger a cut scene to unlock more missions, and since there is no menu to do any of this, I have to run around this hub world just to play a few matches.
The story is alright. As I said earlier, it’s trying to be a bit like Injustice where the story is throwing all these characters into one place and having to work together to take on the famous villains of their respective worlds. While I get the anime characters look out of place with the real world people, I understand that. What I can’t really excuse is how stiff the animations are in the cut scenes. I have Goku barely animating during a big speech and Luffy having to turn his entire body to look at my character. It feels a bit cheap in that sense.
While the roster is pretty big, I can see which worlds the team really liked. Granted, there’s going to be more Dragon Ball and One Piece characters since they are bigger properties, but only Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star? Some of the roster choices are questionable, but that’s not for me to decide.
The online works decently well. I had a few laggy matches here and there, but for the most part, it was a good time especially taking on someone with the same skill level. Once again, the fighting of this fighting game shines.
Jump Force is not a bad fighting game. In fact, anime and manga fans will have a good time here even if they are a casual player of fighting games. The issue is that it is wrapped around a boring a tedious hub world for pretty much everything you do. The story is decent, but the actual cut scenes can be questionable and make the entire package look low budget, but in the end, it’s a fun flashy fighting game. You’re just going to have to wade through some mediocre stuff to get to it.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
