![]() Oftentimes, rather than expanding on relationships and wrapping up arcs, heroes or villains slowly walk or float off screen to end an act. It doesn't help that the story seems to pull a Kingdom Hearts 3 and leaves out notable details about the overarching plot until shoving it into the game's third act. They aren't skippable, don't have an English dub and at times experience frame rate drops on top of the fact they aren't all voiced outright. The cut scenes once again have to be addressed here. There are interesting threads here and there that could have been expanded upon to really flesh out the narrative, but it instead goes the typical fighter route and shoves the player from one bout to the next while freeing heroes who have been captured. Unfortunately, there are a ton of repeated missed opportunities for interesting character interactions. Mere moments into the story, the player is back at a central hub for the Jump Force led by Director Glover, and those umbras cubes are central to the story from all angles. Future Trunks shows up and uses something called an umbras cube to revive the player as a hero and away they go. ![]() It starts with the hero as a civilian who catches a stray laser beam from Freiza in the middle of New York. Players create a hero in a limited character-creation suite before getting tossed into the story. Like other fighters, the decision to inexplicably throw the player's created character into the narrative creates a mess. But with Jump Force, the visuals are polarizing for a large portion of the audience, and gameplay doesn't appear to have the upside capable of fully compensating.Ĭoincidentally enough, the story has the same problems as the visuals. Typically, fighting gamers have been able to overlook anything in regards to graphics if the gameplay is good. Watching Yugi Mutou summon some long-range attacks against Vegeta is one of the many odd and fun possibilities. The three unique styles combine with individual character nods from their respective stories to results typically only reserved for fan fiction. Once it's gone, round over.įans of these anime offerings should have a blast regardless. But even this will check in as polarizing with some fighting game fans-all three teammates share the same health bar as opposed to each having their own. That said, juggling three-player fights and creating interesting combos is fun and takes a little more than a basic understanding of the game's systems. Where some fighting games offer these rudimentary features but a ton of layers to master at the highest levels, Jump Force is content to be a 3D brawler with lots of flash and little in the way of substance. Players can also power up and change forms for brief wrinkles offering bigger damage.īeyond that, there isn't a ton of depth to the game's systems. Landing attacks or charging up permit the use of special moves. There are some grabs and blocks, while rushing or dashing out of a combo requires timing and managing a mobility meter. There are traditional and smash attacks, which can be mixed with rushes (auto combos). Three overarching styles from the leaders of the Jump Force teams have their own approaches.ĭragon Ball is martial arts, One Piece uses pirate style and Naruto focuses on flashier ninja approaches. Big attacks rip up parts of the stage, and as the fight rages toward a conclusion, attire worn by the characters starts to shred just like they do in, say, DragonBall television adaptations. Luckily, once a fight gets underway, the animations look like they are ripped right out of the manga pages.Įven better, the fighting stages are varied and colorful. The game does look really good in motion, though sometimes all the particle effects on screen are overkill. The characters stand around hardly blinking or moving their mouths, while expressions rarely change.įuture Trunks is one of the notable characters, as he has a scowl slapped on his face regardless of what's going on in the scene. Luffy, at all times, looks like he's just been told he's overdrawn his bank account. The bulk of these problems unfold in the cutscenes, where the direction really gets thrown under the spotlight. Unfortunately for Jump Force, if something as gorgeous as Dragon Ball FighterZ hadn't dropped and gotten this sort of topic so right, it probably wouldn't get as much criticism as it likely will. It makes for an odd combination, as the fan favorites and even some niche offerings end up having an action-figure flair to them. Instead, Jump Force takes a weird best-of-both-worlds approach and attempts to slap realistic-looking graphics over manga characters. The formula seemed simple enough: take beautifully-drawn manga and apply it to a fighter.
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