An explosion rocks you to your core as you fly through the air and hit the ground hard. You see weird beings coming through a portal that appeared out of nowhere, and they are shooting energy from their hands. This is the craziest thing you have ever seen, and then you pass out. When you wake up a young man with purple hair is standing over you with a little robot. You hear something about being a hero, and suddenly you have all of these powers you had previously seen. This is our review of Jump Force.

From Bandai Namco comes Jump Force, and it comes at the perfect time of the year for those of us who are trying to find that game to spend hours on. Jump Force is the culmination of several manga sources into one intense fighter. These mangas are featured in the weekly Shonen Jump anthology, and it is celebrating 50 years with this game release. The game we saw teased at E3 2018 has finally made it live. I remember watching the trailer and thinking to myself, “wow, a game with Goku and all of these other anime characters that I can play as. This is awesome.” My feelings have not changed.

Let’s start at the beginning, character creation. Jump Force starts with a few cutscenes about how you become a hero, and that leads into the character creation portal. You will begin by picking male or female, and with the lack of female characters on the roster, I opted for a female build. There is a multitude of options for you to go through hair, body type, body size, facial features, and much more. My review copy came with a few extra clothing and lobby options that I was able to play with. I chose the way of the martial artist and picked up my Saiyan armor to run around in. Once you have created your character, you will start the game and head into the fight against the evil Venoms.

When this game was first teased I didn’t want to play as any character except for the Dragonball Super characters; it’s my favorite anime since I was a kid. Since I have been reviewing the game, I have had the opportunity to create my character, and with the tag team system in the game, I can use other characters to see how they work. I have been pleasantly surprised with the way this system works. When you are in battle, it is as simple as hitting a key, or in my case, a button on a gamepad, to switch from one character to another. If you hold that same key down the next character in your team will give you support attacks while you close the distance. The support attacks usually consist of a ranged attack which hits and stuns the enemy or causes them to block the attack while you run into range for your attack. When you switch characters if you are hitting them as you switch the old character will hit a couple more times while you attack with the new character. This gives you a moment or two to do a little extra damage.

Fighting in Jump Force isn’t all that difficult and works pretty well for new users. It feels a lot more like Xenoverse as far as the skills are concerned. When in a fight you simply hold power up button and then press the corresponding keys for the special attacks that you have selected. There are three normal specials and one awakening power as well. The skills your character learns is determined, at first, by the team you choose to be on. Teams Alpha, Beta, and Gamma all have their different roles within the game and different skills to learn. Team Alpha is led by none other than my favorite character, Goku. Team Alpha’s job is to protect your territory from falling into Venom hands. Luffy leads team Beta, and their job is to attack and recapture territories that were taken by the enemy. Finally, Team Gamma is led by Naruto, and its mission is information gathering and recon. After completing the prologue, you are introduced to Umbra Base and its director. From here you are told to visit each team and decide who you want to join on your journey. Talk to the director after speaking with each team and then make up your mind.

Your mission is to stop the likes of Frieza, Cell, and others like Dio Brando from destroying our world and taking over everything we know. A portal opened into this world, and they came out, and what do these evil characters do the best? Well besides getting beaten by the heroes of each show or comic, they destroy and conquer everything they can. By using Umbra cubes to capture innocence around them, they gain their armies for use against the members of Jump Force. After you fight certain characters as you go throughout your key missions, you will be able to defeat them and turn those who were once pawns into soldiers to fight against the evil. 

Aside from the story mode, Jump Force has its offline and online battle modes. In offline mode, you get to choose whether to fight versus a CPU or against other players in local multiplayer. In online mode, you have the opportunity to fight against real people in ranked combat, friendly combat, or quick match combat. Ranked combat is self-explanatory, you fight against others who are your rank to get higher rankings. Friendly combat is for people who want to play but not risk a rank if they lose, and quick match utilizes the stock settings of in-game combat. If you want to play with a friend, then a friendly match with the proper settings will be the best way to go about it. Make sure to select friend invite and enter the game, you will select your characters and then a friend invite will pop up and allow you to invite them in. Nothing could be simpler than that.

Overall, Jump Force is an anime fighting game that brings together a roster of so many different characters that we know and love. The story pits them against evil and at times against each other as they try to save those who were taken control of. The fighting in the game is on point, but after a short time, I finished a lot of the key and free missions leaving online battles to continue leveling up. It is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC through Steam for $59.99 USD. Will you accept your fate and join the forces of Umbra Base to take down Frieza and all the rest?

Note: Our copy was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by PR.

SCORE: 9/10

Pros

• Many Different Characters to Choose
• Easy to learn Fighting
• Story Mode
• Impressive Graphics

Cons

• Needs the option to watch the scenes in English or Japanese
• Needs more character variety (female characters like Chi-Chi etc.)