![]() Counter attacks give you a clean way to open your enemy up to damage while stopping the barrage of their own. An embarrassment of movement capabilities let you chase opponents down or seek safety from devastating attacks. ![]() Well-timed tag team attacks hit harder and keep your opponent guessing. You can't charge at your opponent without stamina and you can't pull off crazy looking combos without a lot of energy. There are stamina and energy bars to maintain, both of which dictate the stuff you can do in battle. That said, there is gameplay nuance that'll satisfy more serious players. On the flip side, more experienced fighting game players may eventually master the fighters too soon as if you've played them once, you've kind of played them all. It makes it easy for new or lesser players to pick up and play, and it even gives them hope that they can beat some of the tougher fighters. Jump Force is much better when it's time to fight I'm also of the general opinion that if it's in the game, it should feel complete, and this isn't that. The entire point of Jump Force is to get closer to all the characters you know and love, and it's kind of hard to do that when they're presented in such a putrid light. Here is where I would normally forgive Jump Force's story mode for being a tacked-on afterthought that wasn't really expected to deliver something breathtaking in the first place (especially since many games in this genre don't even opt for full character models in cutscenes), but that's a stance I'm not willing to take. Characters sound far more passionate than they appear, a nice point for the excellent Japanese voice actors who lent their talent for the game, but not conducive to the end goal of providing content that's actually enjoyable to play (speaking of which, there was no English localization for voiced lines whatsoever, so if you can't understand Japanese then expect to do a lot of reading). They bring back horrid memories of pre-patched Mass Effect Andromeda with awkward expressions that don't fit the context of the situations. Rarely do they move, and if they do, it can look robotic.įacial animations are largely stone cold. The dialog is carried out in cutscenes where characters are so stiff that they sometimes seem devoid of life. The result is a top-heavy list of names that just tumbles off a cliff.Īnd that's not considering the myriad technical issues I encountered. However, there's no inherent excuse for overall poor character choices. You can argue against a bigger roster size as it allowed Bandai to craft each character with more care (which comes through in the gameplay department, more on that later), and that's a fine tradeoff. ![]() Also, if Light Yagami and Ryuk of Death Note fame are eligible for this supposed celebration, why didn't we get any characters from Death Note - one of the best and most popular titles in anime - in playable form? And why couldn't we get more cameos from others who were snubbed? In the realm of Dragon Ball, Cell could have been sacrificed for a more exciting option like Android 17. That slot could have easily been awarded to someone like Jiraiya or Tsunade, or perhaps a villain like Orochimaru. While strong, Naruto's Kaguya is one of the least relevant characters in her series. To make matters worse, most of the cutscenes are driven by text the game doesn't offer fully voiced lines, so a majority of these interactions don't even come through in a natural way. While there are moments of cheeky references strewn throughout as characters from entirely different worlds interact, they don't happen frequently enough for my liking. The plot is actually not half bad for a fighting game (it's not the main focus, after all), but the execution is doing it no favors. This neglect is apparent all throughout the game, but it's most noticeable in Jump Force's easily forgettable story mode. It's hard to do that when they're presented in such a putrid light. The entire point of Jump Force is to get closer to the characters you love. It had the opportunity to create the last anime game we'd probably ever want to play, but instead took a ton of shortcuts to rush something out of the door. It's more a shameless cash grab by Bandai Namco, who took what should have been a momentous occasion and decided to perverse it. I'll tell you how: because this game isn't the celebration that Shonen Jump deserves. ![]() We just wanted a good fighting game with all our favorite anime characters. No one was ever expecting it to take EVO by storm or turn the world of fighting games on its head. Jump Force merely had to be competent, if nothing else.
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