Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Platforms: PS3, PS Vita, PS4
Tested on: PS4
J-Stars Victory VS+ – Review
A lot of popular anime series have a game specifically dedicated to their cast and storyline. Often too, those games are fighting games (Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, …) so it’s pretty fun you can take it up against anime characters from the series. What’s even more fun is to fight with and against characters from other anime series! J-Stars Victory VS+ brings characters from various shows together in one pretty decent fighting game.
Story
J-Stars Victory VS+ offers something that represents a Story mode which proves to be a fine way to learn the ropes a bit but it’s not really as heavy on story as you’d imagine. In the story, you get invited to join the Jump Battle Tournament and basically all major characters in the fighting roster want to do the same. Eventually, you team up with some of them and then you mainly sail around in a ship to points of interest. Here you can get a quest which (of course) mostly ends up in you fighting one or more opponents. Although the storyline itself is pretty weak, if you’re new to fighting games, going through this mode might prove useful later on when taking it up against human players.
Graphics
Fighting games are usually not known for amazing graphics but J-Stars looks quite good for a game in this genre. The characters look pretty authentic to their anime show versions and the environments (although nothing overly special) are enjoyable enough to look upon. As we all know, anime fights are always accompanied by loads and loads of special effects and J-Stars handles that aspect pretty well. Special attacks look awesome and make an impression when trying them for the first time. The effects are almost literally blasting from the screen and this makes the game a very fun one to start fighting in.
Sound
The general audio is alright in J-Stars but you won’t find anything extraordinary here. The biggest letdown here is that the voice acting isn’t really worth mentioning. You’ll mostly read through text boxes instead of actually hearing the characters speak. Yes, they do often throw out a simple word or a grunt here and a sigh there, but the game would’ve been an absolute fan service if all characters were spoken in by their series counterpart voices. The sound effects are pretty average but get the job done well enough.
Gameplay
As a 3D anime brawler, you can expect a lot of fast paced action on screen when you’re desperately trying to beat your opponents to pulp. With an incredible 52 characters roster (of which 39 are playable while the rest acts as supporting units), it’s not hard to find one or more fighters to your liking. Each of the characters has his/her own moves and special attacks and it’s great to see how the developers tried to stay as close to the respective anime as possible. For example: Ichigo’s ultimate attack is to change in his Final Getsuga Tenshou form and those who’ve seen the anime know that Ichigo lost all his power after using this ability. Well, in J-Stars, Ichigo goes down when using this attack. Things like that make it very fun for fans of the series to make use of specials and combos coming from their favourites.
The game features some different modes like the Story mode mentioned in the beginning of the review and the obligatory online/offline multiplayer. Besides those two, we’ve got the Arcade mode in which you can pick the difficulty setting and try to beat your own high scores. You can choose either to fight on your own or in a team and although a bit more hectic, team battles are actually quite fun to do.
Some fighting game are pretty hard to learn and master (yes, I’m looking at you Street Fighter) and not everybody wants to spend every minute of spare time practising combos and perfecting their play style. J-Stars is a great alternative for some more casual fighting game fans and it’s the perfect game to play with your friends on a gaming night. However, because the game is a lot less complex than others, you might feel like the game falls short on certain aspects. Making combos is possible but chances are big you’ll just be button bashing throughout a whole fight as that often seems to be pretty effective as well. There’s really no immediate need to learn all kinds of special moves expect for showing off your skills. Veterans of the genre can go all out on figuring out the combos but newcomers can choose to just press some buttons and come out as a winner too (when fighting the AI, online opponents are often a lot harder to win from).
J-Stars plays very smooth most of the time but when you fight an opponent and land a hard blow, he becomes untouchable for some seconds before you’re able to hit him in the face again. The reason for this ‘downtime’ is not really clear and can cause some frustration when fighting. This mechanic often ends up with you trying to attack the enemy but as he’s invincible for some time, he eventually gets the first hit and throws you down even though you clearly had the upper hand. For grieving reasons, it’s understandable that the creators wanted to give the people who just received some major damage a chance to recuperate, but this feels way too much like hand-holding and it’s just very unfair for the player on the winning side.
Conclusion
J-Stars Victory VS+ is an absolute treat for fans of anime series and doesn’t fail in bringing enough characters from various shows to the table. However, the Story mode is pretty weak and only good for learning the ropes a bit and some game design choices are just annoying or disappointing. There’s no original voice acting and the game often feels more like a button basher than a game where skill matters. Still, it’s a very accessible title for newcomers and the dynamic fights with lots of special effects will keep you wanting to come back for another round.
J-Stars Victory VS+ - Review,
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