

Finally, the game might remind you of The King of Fighters or Marvel vs. Powering up the meter necessary to pull off the moves can either be done with the sustained pull of a trigger or by landing blows on your opponent. Special moves are initiated by pulling the ZR trigger and using one of the face buttons. You can use a rush move to dart away from an attacking opponent or close the gap between you. The game is presented in a behind-the-shoulder view just like the Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm series, so you have weak and strong attacks, along with a dodge move and a jump. There are indications that the fighting in Jump Force would be deeper than a typical anime fighting game. The campaign may clock in between 12-15 hours, but it'll feel like most of that is spent looking at the loading percentages. It feels like almost every transition between menus to cut scenes to actual playable portions is bookended by loading screens, and even though the game is running off a solid state drive instead of the spinning hard drives of the Xbox One and PS4, the load times seem just as long. Those fights will be punctuated with even more cut scenes before and after each bout, and what kills the excitement the most are the loading screens.

Instead of immediately going into a fight, you have to run around in the hub world to talk to quest-givers and determine if you take part in a fight that progresses the story or earns extra XP. There are plenty of cut scenes, but a number of them seem nonsensical, as the different characters repeat things or tell jokes with awful punchlines.

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You can also choose to equip your character with super moves that belong to the other fighters, whether it's the trusty Kamehameha or Jotaro from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.Īs expected from a fighting game, the campaign consists of a series of fights, but the pacing kills the excitement. You can also choose your character's fighting style, whether it's sword-based or more of a ninja style, a martial artist style, or even one that emulates Luffy. You can change a decent number of parts, and while there aren't a ton of options, you have enough to create a few knock-offs of absent characters. For newcomers and longtime fans, the story is a letdown, even more so when you realize that it's the game's focal point.īefore you start the campaign, you'll be tasked with creating your own character. Some of the more exciting crossover meetings fail to have an impact, since a chunk of the scenes are conveyed with text instead of voices. The game requires you to have extensive knowledge of every series, since the title won't explain much about the characters or let them grow. The storyline feels derivative and predictable, and it doesn't go in any interesting directions. Now a newly minted member of the team, it is up to you to battle the Venom invasion while also trying to figure out who's behind this.įor a game that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the manga anthology magazine, the story is worse than the one in J-Stars Victory VS+, which feted the magazine's 45th anniversary. After your fight against a mind-controlled minion known as a Venom, you are invited to Jump Force headquarters, where you learn that the real world and the heroes from other worlds have merged together. You're close to death, so Trunks infuses you with an umbras cube to revive you and give you the ability to become a hero. During a fight between Goku and Frieza in the ruined streets of New York City, an errant energy blast Frieza hits your character. The story starts off without much explanation. Unfortunately, it isn't a new game but a port of Jump Force. Thanks to the massive popularity of the Switch, fighting fans are getting another taste of a fighting game that encompasses a number of Shonen Jump mangas. Those who didn't migrate to the PlayStation platform missed out on J-Stars Victory VS+, but some would argue that they dodged a bullet since the move to 3D didn't make for a particularly engaging fighting game. Despite no plans for localization, the game was popular enough that retailers like Best Buy imported a few copies for hungry Shonen Jump fans who didn't want to order it online. The fighting games were big hits in Japan and emulated a Super Smash Bros. In fact, Nintendo was responsible for the crossover with Jump Super Stars on the Nintendo DS in 2005 and its sequel Jump Ultimate Stars a year later. Longtime Nintendo fans will note that they've seen this kind of crossover before.
