Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
If you know what the Jump in Jump Force stands for, then this game is very obviously made for you.
This is a crossover anime brawler featuring some of the most iconic anime characters of all time. From Goku to Naruto, Gon to Izuku, Ichigo to Saint Seiya, all of your favorite faces from Shonen Jump’s properties are here, and ready to beat the crap out of each other (and also Asta from Black Clover.)
But a video game can only travel so far on fan service alone. The real question is, does Jump Force have the mechanics to make it anything more than a curio piece taking up space on your shelf next to your Gundam models and Hatsune Miku figurines?
The plot fanfiction
Some strange force has caused anime to become real, and we’re all in trouble! You, a mild mannered otaku, gets caught in an attack by Frieza and some strange silver-haired edge lords called the “Venoms.” After taking a death beam to the chest, you are about to die like all the other NPCs, until Trunks comes along and infuses you with a Cosmic Cube… renamed to an Umbras Cube in the English translations to avoid copyright issues with Marvel. This cube not only brings you back to life, it gives you cool anime superpowers! It’s now up to you and an assorted cast of Shonen Jump heroes to save the world from this strange new menace of fanfiction villains and evil cubes.
If that paragraph made sense to you, you’re probably the target demographic for this game.
The plot of Jump Force just serves to get you out there fighting battles, and for the most part it does a good job. “There are some bad guys. Beat them up!” is the motivation for 95% of all Shonen Jump properties anyway.
What’s unfortunate, however, is that the plot doesn’t spend much time indulging in the goofy crossover antics that games like this are known for. For example, there could have been a great interaction between Ryuk from Death Note and Ichigo from Bleach considering they are both their own universe’s Shinigami, but that never comes to pass.
Rather, Jump Force seems like it wants to skip its own story as fast as possible in order to get you back to the gameplay, which kind of defeats the purpose of massive crossovers like this. Granted, it still has more plot than other popular crossovers, like Marvel vs. Capcom, but those crossovers are known for their gameplay, and Jump Force… well…
The gameplay button mashing
In the most technical sense of the word, Jump Force is a fighting game. You are squaring off against an opponent, and trying to reduce their health to zero.
However, in a more technical sense, Jump Force is what I call a “franchise fighter.” Franchise fighters are games that pay little attention to balance and mechanics, and instead focus on the spectacle of seeing your favorite anime characters beat the crap out of each other.
Bandai Namco is very well known for their franchise fighters, producing low balance high spectacle titles for properties such as One Piece and Naruto. It’s only recently that they married their love of anime with highly technical skill-based fighting games with the release of Dragon Ball FighterZ.
Jump Force is not Dragon Ball FighterZ. In fact it’s barely Dragon Ball Xenoverse. It’s an incredibly mash heavy game that consistently undermines its own attempts at being deep.
Your buttons are simple: light attack, heavy attack, throw, and jump. Don’t jump though. It’s literally never useful.
Mashing on light or heavy attack sends your character into a series of attacks, while holding it causes them to charge an attack that has super armor. You can also block, use a homing dash, or vanish out of combos with the shoulder buttons.
Then there are the more stylish anime techniques to make use up. Pressing the right trigger will cause you to charge up energy (as one does) and pressing a face button while holding the trigger will spend that energy to execute a super move. The left trigger tags into your party member when pressed, and calls them in for an assist when held, allowing you to string together impressive tag team combos.
These all sound like elements of a deep and technical fighting game, but don’t be deceived. This is a mash-fest through and through.
First of all, all supers take forever to start up. Some literally have you standing in place and posing for seconds at a time, allowing your opponent to do basically whatever he wants to dodge. While this is very true to anime, it makes those moves practically useless in a fighting game context.
Second of all, all three of your characters share the same health bar, and that means there’s no real strategic element to tagging, aside from using assists to extend your combos. In fact, you can only ever tag in one direction, cycling through your teammates rather than calling in whichever one is best for the situation.
Third of all, most of your attacks just leave you wide open. I got through the entire game by mashing on light attack and, if I was blocked, ending my combo early and hitting the throw button.
The progress grind
On top of these fighting game mechanics there are a number of RPG mechanics to indulge in. After every fight your characters gain XP, which increases all sorts of stats, from HP to strength to elemental resistances. Certain enemies are naturally resistant to certain types of attacks, and you might find that many battles can be won in the menu screen rather than on the battlefield.
You’ll earn everything from new abilities to skills that you can equip on those abilities to augment them, to new costume pieces. However, the game doesn’t do a good job of teaching you what these do. In fact, it uses the terms “skill” and “ability” interchangeably about three separate mechanics in the game, which is super confusing when you just start out. For example, you equip your “J-Skills” in the menu but you purchase “Abilities” to get new J-Skills in the shop. But then you can equip those J-Skills with Abilities (a different type of ability) to power them up and… it’s all just a confusing mess.
System Shock
The core gameplay loop has you going to the mission counter, accepting a mission, being catapulted into battle, and then returning to base for some plot.
Simple enough, but even this system has some flaws.
First of all, side-quests are given a difficulty and recommended level, but main quests aren’t. You’ll have no idea who you are fighting and what their abilities are, so you just have to go into battle blind. When you lose, only then can you equip yourself with abilities that make the battle easier. This is needlessly frustrating, and serves no purpose aside from artificially prolonging the gameplay.
As for side-quests themselves, there are a number of them themed around getting cash, new costumes, new abilities, and so forth. The primary objective in each is just to win the fight, but the secondary objective can be anything from winning with a certain amount of health left to winning within a certain amount of time remaining.
There’s the issue though. You don’t actually get any award unless you complete the secondary objectives, and the game won’t tell you if you did. In fact, simply winning any side-mission gets you a nice cleared stamp next to it. You have to go into a secondary menu to check if you’ve actually claimed any prizes for it. This essentially makes your side-quests successes into failures. One has to wonder why they would even allow you to “clear” a side-quest, if doing so wouldn’t actually get you anything.
I do want to give Jump Force some credit, though. Its character creator is amazing. It’s built to allow you to create the most over-the-top original anime character you have ever seen, complete with eyes that are two different colors and hair that could act as a spike trap.
But even this system has flaws, in that it’s basic clothing elements doesn’t allow you to change colors. This causes you to grind endlessly just to get five different colors of the same skirt, and none of them was the color you wanted in the first place. It also means that any kitty ears you put on your anime girls…well you get it.
I care about things like this ok?!
The presentation spectacle
Jump Force looks very good.
Initially, everything looks a little off, like those hyper-realistic photos of cartoon characters that went around the internet a while back. Frieza is… very sweaty.
But eventually you get used to it, and I actually came to like they style. The textures are all deep and complex, merging the light colors of anime with a more gritty realistic style. The animations make gratuitous use of motion blur, and while that can be distracting and hard to keep track of in the middle of combat, it certainly does give every fight the feel of a bombastic anime climax.
It is a little disappointing that so many animations were re-used though. Many characters share attacks, and even some special moves are just slightly tweaked animations from other characters in the roster.
Sound wise, it’s a bit hit-or-miss. The Japanese voice actors do a phenomenal job with their characters, but they are only as good as they were in their original anime. Characters like Deku or Ichigo have these phenomenal passionate performances while others sound like an engine refusing to start (looking at you Asta.) Some characters are even totally missing voice actors, like Ryuk.
I wondered if this was because it’s a Japanese tradition to not hire new voice actors if the original voice actor dies, but nope! Nakamura Shidō is alive and kicking. It was just laziness.
It’s also worth noting that there is no English voice track whatsoever. Granted, the type of anime fan that would be interested in this game is probably used to reading subtitles by now, but it makes the game a bit harder to get into for casual otaku.
The soundtrack also leaves a lot to be desired. Considering that Jump Force takes so much from so many different franchise with so many memorable theme songs, it somehow avoids using any of them. Instead we get this generic MCU style score filled with energetic but ultimately forgettable orchestral tracks.
The best part of the presentation was the layout of the Jump Force base. You can see all the other fan created characters running around as you play, and it’s fun to see what wild anime creations other players come up with.
The final verdict
Here’s the honest truth about Jump Force; it bored me. It shouldn’t have. I love the franchises that make up its roster. I love fighting games, even if they are a little button-mashy. I love stupid crossover stories. But Jump Force felt like it was jumping (hah) in the way of any attempt I made to enjoy it.
The battles it forced me to fight were too samey and repetitive. The story bits were interesting, but were too few and far between. The menus and controls were confusing at first, and once I got used to them, I was still frustrated because certain menus (like the character creation menu) require lengthy loading processes. Sometimes, you’ll even complete every mission available to you, and realize you have to wander around the base looking for the right character to speak to in order to progress the story, only to find that it progresses to just another samey battle.
I wanted to like Jump Force, but the mechanics were shallow, the U.I. was sloppy, and the pacing was bad. Without any of this, it just leaves a very pretty game with a bunch of anime references. That might be enough for some other hardcore otaku out there, but it wasn’t enough for me.
