2019 is truly the year of games with exceptional titles like Jump Force. With characters ranging from Naruto, One Piece’s Luffy and Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro, everyone is thrown together for one epic showdown that is Jump Force. If you are an anime fan, you should definitely have this title for your collection.
Visuals
The character models and game environments are nicely detailed and look amazing on 4K. Every special move is worth enjoying with the formidable designing.Jump Force has a decent open-world hub and a storyline to keep players hooked to it. The cameras move extremely well and fast depending on the local battle where you can partner up with a friend.
Gameplay
The game initiates in the broken ruins of a city. Goku fights Freeza, a quick dodge of a beam from him leaves Goku safe, but blast the player down and left for dead. In rushes Trunks to save the player and there’s only one way. The aim is to be the ultimate champion. This is where a player gets to dive in and make a custom character. One can pick the origin world from any one of Dragonball, Naruto or One Piece. From that player learn the basic back story of the game and decides which team to join which gives him starting skills.
As the game progresses players can get other skills later and change his moves around to further customize his character. From there, players go off to various missions or play against other people with a chosen team of 3.
The customization options in Jump Force are really good. There are various hairstyles from original anime as well as plenty of clothing options can be unlocked as well. This really does help the player to define the uniqueness of his character or he can just make a Naruto clone. The player can then spend the in-game currency to pick up different moves until he has 3 power moves as per liking and one ultra-awakened move.
The heart of the game comes in its fights with missions and cutscenes in between trying to weave the main story of Jump Force. Between fights, the player spends time in the Jump Force HQ, which has several shops and the likes to visit. The player can purchase clothing, accessories, and more moves to further customize his character, chat with the different characters and take on a variety of missions.
Side missions have numerous optional challenges for the player to complete as well, such as achieving a multi-hit combination or winning without losing more than a set amount of health. These challenges, along with the plethora of moves to learn and utilize help keep the game from becoming too stale. These moves utilize a special power meter as the player uses them.
The story itself is fairly straightforward, which is not too surprising considering various franchises are all present in the game. During the battles, the characters look simply amazing, with the exception of some cutscenes. The single-player mode links the missions together and helps to unlock more characters.
Fighting-wise, in addition to the special attacks player, can purchase and customize his character. He can have a regular and strong attack, both of which can be charged to break the enemy’s block. The player also fills up another meter known as Awaken that, when at a certain point, allows him to perform a powerful move. Transforming also tends to make characters change appearance; Goku, for example, can turn into a Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan Blue, depending on how much of the meter was filled.
The combat is fairly easy to learn, but the player also has quite a bit to learn as he fights. Timing his abilities and using them during normal combinations is one example, as well as attacking as the opponent does. One time, I was playing as Yugi fighting Frieza. I used his ultimate move to bring out Slifer the Sky Dragon, who attacked with Thunder Force. And Frieza used his ultimate, Death Ball. The result was that the two attacks canceled each other out, and neither Yugi nor Frieza suffered any damage whatsoever. A slip here and there would have led to getting caught in opponent’s and we could not have done anything until the attack was over.
It gets difficult to switch between one of three characters, to switch up the fight or call for aid. The various moves are neat and look good. This makes a player with passive damage boosts, access to his Ultra move and in general, makes him look cooler. As the player’s character takes damage, it’s reflected in their torn clothes, cuts on their body, etc. This detail lends itself to the feel of an anime.
Jump Force has a lobby system, where you can challenge online players for battles. The online matchmaking is smooth in Jump Force, and the battles vary due to the number of characters available. Even the local battle system works great as well with.
Innovation
The unique art style of Jump force separates it from the rest. It has tried to make anime characters look much more real and the results are quite good. You can customize the character to a large extent as well. Jump force uses realistic backgrounds and detailed character’s clothes. The CGI cutscene and in-animations are quite good. The developer team has really put in a great amount of time and effort into this one.
Sounds
In terms of audio, the voices are Japanese only for the time being due to licensing issues. The background score is quite and maintains an immersive feeling throughout. The sound effects during action may get a bit repetitive, but overall, Jump Force has a pretty good sound system in place.
Replay Value
Jump force is highly entertaining and for a gamer who loves anime and combat games, it is a great purchase. It has a large roster of fighters, plenty of content, amazing visuals and full of action. We highly recommend Jump force a considerable title for 2019.
