Jump Force Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos, Features and Esports Impact

Like in the culinary realm, having the proper ingredients doesn't always mean the dish turns out well.  

Jump Force from developer Spike Chunsoft follows a similar arc. Aimed at celebrating the 50th anniversary of Shonen Jump, the crossover fighter casts a wide net in the character and manga department to round out an impressive roster. 

But along the way, several odd design decisions and other missteps take the wind from the sails quickly. The Goku, Luffy and Naruto-led brawler will still make fans happy and offers some fun, eye-popping, pick-up-and-play gameplay, but the shallowness of it all is hard to ignore. 

Graphics and Gameplay

The formula seemed simple enough: take beautifully-drawn manga and apply it to a fighter. 

Instead, Jump Force takes a weird best-of-both-worlds approach and attempts to slap realistic-looking graphics over manga characters. It makes for an odd combination, as the fan favorites and even some niche offerings end up having an action-figure flair to them.

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. 

The bulk of these problems unfold in the cutscenes, where the direction really gets thrown under the spotlight. The characters stand around hardly blinking or moving their mouths, while expressions rarely change.

Future 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 game does look really good in motion, though sometimes all the particle effects on screen are overkill. Luckily, once a fight gets underway, the animations look like they are ripped right out of the manga pages.

Even better, the fighting stages are varied and colorful. 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. 

Gameplay trends in a similar fashion. Three overarching styles from the leaders of the Jump Force teams have their own approaches. 

Dragon Ball is martial arts, One Piece uses pirate style and Naruto focuses on flashier ninja approaches. 

Overall, the gameplay is quite basic. There are traditional and smash attacks, which can be mixed with rushes (auto combos). There are some grabs and blocks, while rushing or dashing out of a combo requires timing and managing a mobility meter. Landing attacks or charging up permit the use of special moves. Players can also power up and change forms for brief wrinkles offering bigger damage. 

Beyond that, there isn't a ton of depth to 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. 

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. 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. Once it's gone, round over. 

Fans of these anime offerings should have a blast regardless. The three unique styles combine with individual character nods from their respective stories to results typically only reserved for fan fiction. Watching Yugi Mutou summon some long-range attacks against Vegeta is one of the many odd and fun possibilities. 

Typically, fighting gamers have been able to overlook anything in regards to graphics if the gameplay is good. 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. 

Story and More

Coincidentally enough, the story has the same problems as the visuals. 

Like other fighters, the decision to inexplicably throw the player's created character into the narrative creates a mess. Players create a hero in a limited character-creation suite before getting tossed into the story. 

It starts with the hero as a civilian who catches a stray laser beam from Freiza in the middle of New York. Future Trunks shows up and uses something called an umbras cube to revive the player as a hero and away they go. 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. 

Unfortunately, there are a ton of repeated missed opportunities for interesting character interactions. 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. 

The cut scenes once again have to be addressed here. 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.

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.

To be fair, some Shonen fans might love inserting themselves into these storylines and getting to join in on the core theme of becoming stronger until hitting a wall and becoming even stronger again. But the source material left those in charge of the story with an endless well of opportunities, which makes the safe way the story unfolds disappointing. 

The game throws players down in a central hub not unlike something out of other fighters or a game like Destiny. While it can be interesting to see the characters that players around the world have created, it is a massive space that becomes a chore to get through. Characters pop in and out of existence, and there isn't a good way-point system in place to tell a player how they can progress the story.

Chugging along on foot to different vendors to accomplish different tasks is a reminder that a simple menu system would have sufficed. Also, in that hub and otherwise, motion blur is way overdone and noticeable for the wrong reasons. 

Outside of the story, there are challenges players can tackle solo or with friends. Online multiplayer is up and running well, too, and the game includes a deep practice mode equipped with player data to go against. 

Overall, loading screens are rampant. The game will often go into a load screen to queue up a cut scene, then hit another loading screen, no matter how brief the cut scene. In the social space, popping into the menu to edit a character produces a loading screen. There is even a loading pause in the bottom right corner after approaching a vendor. 

The game at least gets the most of the loading screens, offering up specific and helpful tips in a way more games in the genre and otherwise probably should.

Esports Impact

Typically speaking, 3D arena fighters have a hard time making a splash in the competitive esports scene in the first place. 

It is hard to say if the esports scene will latch on to this one. There are some fun mechanics like ability gauges carrying over to the next round that could make for some interesting strategies. 

One of the problems here is the 3D format. It removes the typical pressures and pokes of fundamental neutral games found in the 2D format and in rare instances at the 3D level like in Tekken or Soul Calibur. The result is a game that feels more aimed at casuals, which makes sense given the well-known subject matter as opposed to a unique world like Tekken's. 

This is a massive roster with varying abilities for each of its fighters, and the game's balance, without going into detail, isn't pristine by any means. If the developers plan on future balance sweeps, it will have a better chance at a lively competitive scene. 

This isn't to say there won't be some interesting chess matches between high-skill players. But the game starts to feel samey fast because of the shallow depth to the systems and some of the limiting features for depth such as the shared health bar. Also, keep in mind the topic of visibility, as the motion blur and constant particle effects might turn competitors away. 

It doesn't help the fighting scene as a whole has received a massive boom over the past few years. Dragon Ball FighterZ is a good example of not only the resurgence of the competitive community but how to get base systems into a game before really expanding with depth and raising the skill ceiling. 

Given some of the style decisions here (it's clearly aimed at broader audiences) and the environment as a whole right now, Jump Force doesn't figure to carve out much space for itself on the esports circuit. 

Conclusion

This is a "here for a good time, not a long time" game. Aimed at fan service more than anything else, Jump Force struggles even in this pursuit thanks to an odd art style and some seriously missed opportunities between characters who will only run into each other in the crossover space. 

Gameplay is fun and the characters are at least true to themselves, so dedicated fans will know some of the moves and styles of the 40-plus roster as soon as they pick them up. 

A fun romp with a well-rounded roster, Jump Force is good for spurts of play between other titles but doesn't have a ton of staying power. With any luck, the solid core can remain while everything else goes back to the drawing board in future releases. The idea and some of that core are appealing and deserve another chance at being fleshed out.