The legendary Weekly Shonen Jump magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018, which spawned so many collaborative projects from its series.
Bandai Namco has teamed with Spike Chunsoft to unite all the heroes from the pages of Shonen jump in flashy crossover fighter. Two years and a few character passes later, the chaotic fighter Jump Forces has finally found its way to the Nintendo Switch in a new deluxe edition.
All of the previous crossover games from Weekly Shonen Jump take place in the Jump universe seeing all the heroes unite to defeat a familiar foe. This time round Jump Force Deluxe brings it’s universe into the real world.
(Image: BANDAI NAMCO)
Players are instantly dropped in Times Square where the conflict has already begun, you will control a random victim of collateral damage during a battle between Goku and Frieza.
Once revived your character is given powers by Trunks and recruited into the Jump Force team. There’s a lot of cutscenes and if you want to jump into a dream battle with your favourite characters… There’s a long wait till players can select versus mode.
Players will have to create the look of their own hero and choose a fighting style. There’s isn’t a ton of choice here and while most styles could allow you to create missing characters, the overall character creation process lacks a lot of depth. Once this is done players will be given a choice to join either Luffy, Goku or Naruto and then are thrusted into a 12-15 hour story campaign.
Overall Jump Force’s plot is somewhat hit and miss, there are a few great character interactions like Goku meeting All Might. However, a lot of these iconic moments are spoilt with the lack of voice acting and action.
I feel like there was a great opportunity missed here as a lot of the dialogue was funny and well-scripted, but fell flat with its lifeless animations, off-beat lip-syncing and rigid facial expressions.
Rather than having a menu system for players to access the various modes, you will be dumped in a hub world where your character can roam around. As I’m not opposed to this style as seen in other games like One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, however once online there will be extra players running around which can get irritating at times.
Players will have to take part in different styles of missions to help progress the story and unlock other elements such as new attacks. Free missions are not needed to complete the story mode but will be useful as players can level up their character which will be important later.
Extra missions have some added story mode content but as the name states, they are extra and completely avoidable. Players will have to beat Key Missions to progress in the story, a lot of these missions can only be accessed by talking to other characters around the hub world.
Each mission will see players team up with a specific Shonen Jump hero to battle against the opposing enemy. These missions are very repetitive and follow the same structure, their only saving grace is that players get a chance to try out all the characters in the game.
These missions also suffer from frequent loading screens after every piece of dialogue, cutscene and fight. Although they vary in length, and may not keep you waiting for long at times, their constant presence may leave gamers very frustrated.
Jump Force uses a realistic art style which works in certain parts of the games and lacks in others. The realistic textures mixed with each character’s original aesthetics looks great during fights, but during cutscenes characters barely show any emotion.
The overall presentation is noticeably softer than the PS4 and Xbox One and it’s obvious there’s been a downgrade. Saying that, the locations still look nice with destructible elements and attacks still all look flashy adding to the frantic fights.
The big question is how well does the Switches Deluxe version compare to the original, and I have to say the game does struggle to run at 30FPS. It’s not so bad during fights with early parts running smoothly until a super attack is executed, causing the frame rate to drop.
Sadly it does fail to recover most of the time, although it’s not super noticeable with it only dropping down to about 25-26fps, players may feel a slight lag inputting their commands which only worsens during online plays. The hub world suffers from this greatly as once players go online everything drops quite drastically. Although this doesn’t ruin the experience players it’s certainly something Jump Force Deluxe can do without.
Jump Force’s main attraction was always the versus mode and after talking to a few characters in the hub, players will be able to access it’s impressive roster of over 50 characters from 16 different series, including all the ones from the first fighter pass.
Matches will consist of mainly 3v3 battles in a 3-D arena, using a two-button combat system made up of rush attacks using the Y button and heavy attacks by using the X button. By repeatedly mashing the Y button players can create a combo by linking rush attacks, players can also pull high or low rush attacks making it difficult to be countered.
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Heavy attacks are much slower but can be combined with a rush attack. Players will also be able to chase down their opponents with high-speed dashes or by calling your teammate to get them. Each character comes with four signature moves called abilities which are easy to pull off, awakened abilities are the super moves like Vegeta’s Final Flash.
This all eats up the ability gauge which can be recovered by powering up. And yes every character can transform into their super forms be it Super Saiyan or Gear Fourth players can unleash these full awakenings once their gauge is full from battling.
Players will want to take note that all their characters share one life bar, so it’s important to know when to bring out the right character at crucial moments. Jump Force Deluxe also allows 6 people to play using the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers allowing for all you manga mates to take part in the fun.
Combat may seem simple compared to other fighting games but finding the right combination for each character and knowing what signature move to finish with will make the difference in battle. The controls make this one an easy to pick up and play for all and Spike Chunsoft have done very well to include the intricate details that make all the heroes standout and fans of the series gush over them.
Verdict
Jump Force Deluxe is definitely an anime fans dream come true, being able to pick from one of over 50 characters with more on the way is epic.
Fans will gain countless hours from mixing and matching various teams of their favourite Shonen Jump heroes. However, other than the fan service, players may find it hard to return to Jump Force Deluxe after a few sessions due the lack of depth in gameplay, shallow story mode and severe lag when playing online.
Jump Force Deluxe Edition is out now for the Nintendo Switch for £44.99
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