Jump Force is a game developed by Spike Chunsoft and publish by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The story’s premise involves humanity being invaded by creatures called “Venoms”. It’s up to the Shonen Jump heroes (Goku, Naruto, Monkey D. Luffy, etc.) and you to fight back against the “Venoms” and save humanity. The game aims to capture the anime fans and fans of the fighting genre. Jump force’s mechanics is unique compared to other fighting games. For example: health isn’t specific to one character but rather all your teammates’ health is pooled into one health bar.
Jump Force’s combat is fast-paced, flashy, and satisfying. But, the combat, overall, is really simplistic. There are 40 fighters, spanning over 16 anime series. Anime series like: Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Bleach, etc. The character’s movements and fighting style is true to the source material. Jump Force allows you to build your own fighter from the ground up. You can change their hairstyle, skin tone, eye color, etc. You can buy clothes and even buy special attacks for your character.
Jump Force’s story is rather lackluster. The character’s lips don’t sync well with the dialogue. The cutscenes switch between fully voiced interactions and subtitle-only conversations; most of the character interactions being subtitle-only conversations. Character animation looks bad when roaming around the lobby. The enemy AI is bad at times. There are a lot of framerate drops when fighting and there’s no way to skip cutscenes. The loading times are long and there is no English Dub. Jump Force has microtransactions and paid DLC. The DLCs mainly being character passes that cost between $15 to $18.
Jump Force is a game that was a good concept but stumbled on the execution. The fighting is fun for a while before it starts to become repetitive. The game has more bad qualities than good qualities, but fighting locally and online the saving grace for Jump Force. If you like Shonen anime or fighting games, then grab yourself of copy of Shonen Jump’s Jump Force.
