Weekly Shonen Jump is the best selling manga of all time in Japan. It has spawned a multitude of some of the most popular anime series of all time as well, such as Dragonball, Naruto, Rorouni Kenshin, One Piece, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Hunter x Hunter. Many of these stories and their characters are no strangers to video games. Dragonball has a long history of fighting games, action RPGs, interactive stories, and even a couple MMO’s. Naruto has seen many games come out in the last decade, and One Piece has a new VR title out. Jump Force is a little different though. It brings all your favorites from Shonen Jump and even a few you may not know, into the video game world.
Jump Force is essentially a fighting MMO, much in the same way that Dragonball Xenoverse and it’s sequel were. You can choose to play online or offline. I played offline for this review so I’m not sure how that affects things aside from certain missions and game modes ,like versus, that rely on it. When you start a new game you are welcomed with a cinematic showing Dragonball Z’s big bad Frieza destroying what looks to be New York. Goku (from Dragoball), Naruto (from you guessed it, Naruto), and Luffy (from One Piece) all show up and spring into action. They launch multiple attacks that lay even more waste to this particular block of the city. That’s where you come in. Apparently you were an innocent bystander in all this, and when Trunks (also from Drabonball) shows up to do damage control he finds you half dead. In order to save you he imbues you with an Umbras Cube, that’ll get explained later, which gives you the powers of these heroes. Thus launches the character creator, which is nice a simple but also has a lot of options to help you craft your perfect Shonen Jump character.
Once your character is made you get brought to the Jump Force base to pick a team and start training. The base is basically a lobby, and even when offline you’ll see random NPC’s running around like they are other players. There are shops where you can buy abilities, clothes, and consumables. Some shops are team specific and some are generic, but the team you actual pick doesn’t seem relevant since you can go to each team’s area and access their shops. Whichever team you pick will run you through some tutorial missions to help you get the basics. You are a member of a 3 man team, sharing health and ability bars as you battle another 3 man team in an open 3 dimensional area.
While this game has a ton of similarities to Dragonball Xenoverse and Xenoverse 2, it has some minor differences and they really improve on that formula. For example, the energy use and refill works much better, making you take time to recover before blasting off powerful attacks, but not making it feel like you can’t fire a Kamehameha Wave right into your opponent’s face when you want to. WIth so many different characters from different universes in one place, the list of abilities and special moves is also much larger making for a lot more variety and subsequently more fun. There’s a variety of missions available from the get go, giving you the chance to grind for items or gold, or just power through the story. The fights at first may seem too easy but don’t be fooled. The learning curve gets steep fast and you’ll find yourself having to use a litte strategy to defeat your opponents quickly. The controls are pretty simple, but that’s a good thing because this fighting system is more about chaining attacks together, blocking and dodging effectively, and catching your opponent off guard. With timing being so important, you’ll be thankful you only need 2 buttons to pull off that special move.
Jump Force is a fun and exciting game, and if you are a fan of Shonen Jump in any form, this will be a good time. The story is a loose excuse to get all the characters together so it’s not especially well written or thought out, but it doesn’t really matter because no one is here for the story. Jump Force gives you exciting combat, using special attacks and moves your favorite characters use, against some of those very characters. Want to see what Goku’s Kamehameha Wave will do against Nine Tails Naruto? You can! It won’t be easy however, because Jump Force is also challenging, which it needs to be. The challenge makes it fun and keeps you playing. It’s not Dark Souls hard, so you won’t need a few extra controllers to replace the ones that go out the window, but you won’t feel like it’s too easy and not worth your time. All in all, Jump Force does exactly what it set out to do, it lets you play in the Shonen Jump sandbox in a meaningful way without taking itself too seriously.
Jump Force is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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