Anyone still play J-Stars Victory VS?

[LoganForkHands73]

With Jump Force being a spiritual successor and an underwhelming one at that in my opinion, I went back to my collection to dust off my old J-Stars disk in order to get my real fix of crossover Shounen Jump action. The game is far better than I remember, partly because my appreciation for other boys' manga titles has widened significantly compared to when I first played it (let's be honest, most of us probably looked at the roster, thought "who the hell are most of these guys" and automatically gravitated to the famous Gokus, Narutos and Ichigos). Looking at it now though, I can truly see the amount of love and attention to detail that went into this game. There's references galore and I love the fact that you can random get trivia quiz questions on the loading screens to help you brush up on Jump multiverse knowledge.

Unlike Jump Force, which seems to only cater to the Western weeb fandom with its roster composed of nothing but the stereotypical badass anime characters, this game is an excellent mix of iconic fan-favourite faces and truly obscure, niche manga characters from all genres the original magazine had to offer. You've got comedic gag manga characters, violent battle manga characters and even a few non-playable assistants from sports and romance manga. It's more in the spirit of past Jump crossover games on the Nintendo DS, which just wanted to be fun, silly celebrations of a classic magazine's storied history. The bright, crisp graphics make every character look accurate to their source material, just brought into 3D, rather than the methodology of Jump Force which tried to give them a glossy, quasi-realistic finish with gritty, dull backdrops.

I always thought the game was fun in small doses, but I was always put off my some of the mechanics, namely the CPU partner system which I believed to be nothing but an impediment. However, with some proper training and getting to know all of the mechanics on offer, I realised that the game is surprisingly deep indeed, more so than most arena fighters. The main reason it could be frustrating was that I was always ignoring or working against my own CPU, when the idea is to coordinate with them to get the best results with the command options. Coordinating with the CPU is actually one of the funnest things you can do in this game.

While I'll always be a traditional fighting game man at heart, I can't help but wish that more companies would delve into this brand of party-arena genre. As much as I love Smash Bros. for example, the characters aren't allowed to interact or show much personality outside of win-screens (granted, most Nintendo characters don't have much personality or dialogue to begin with). In J-Stars, most character combinations will give you a unique and usually amusing dialogue interaction (unlike Netherrealm fighting games which force unique dialogues between all characters which tend to quickly get grating and unoriginal), and the detail that all characters will say each other's names when you bring up the CPU command options is a brilliant feature that I never noticed until recently. It's the little things.

Anyway, suppose I'd better talk about the Dragon Ball content seeing where I'm writing this currently. With a lot of crossover games, you always get that impression that the series you like most is underrepresented in some way. Seeing only Goku, Freeza and Vegeta on the roster as the only Dragon Ball reps gave me that feeling, but if any characters are going to be chosen for any crossover, it's always going to be those three. However, it makes sense since the game gives more focus to characters from titles that were still ongoing at the time, such as One Piece and Gintama. Every character has unique mechanics, but the Dragon Ball characters certainly feel the most different -- none of them have heavy autocombos, in favour of single-hit sweeping attacks that can be charged up for more damage and range. Goku and Vegeta can of course turn Super Saiyan if you ki charge their stamina bars to 200%, or if you simply perform an Ultimate attack. Also, they can all fly. I find that Goku is possibly the weaker of the three since while he has high damage with all his attacks, his stamina bar drains so damn quickly. Vegeta plays exactly as you'd expect, attack-attack-(BigBang)attack. Freeza is much more technical.

Representing DB on the arena list is Planet Namek, of course. It's honestly one of my least favourite stages. It's far too cluttered with junk and the terrain is uneven. There's a Namekian village hut, a parked Freeza Force spaceship, loads of rocky hills, and worst of all, a large body of water on the far side, which fighters can fall into and stand on the seabed. Most fights will end up centralised in the lake due to the stage's awkward layout, and unless you picked a character with multiple jumps/flight, once you're in the drink you're pretty much stuck there. Even more annoying, you can't regenerate stamina underwater and you become undetectable to the target reticles -- neat reference to the Goku vs. Freeza fight, but still irritating in practice. I feel that few video games truly capture the landscape and atmosphere of Namek very well -- part of the appeal of the location is that everywhere is meant to be flat and barren, an ideal Toriyama battleground.

Anyway, anyone still play this special little game?

[Xeogran]

Yeah, I still play it. It's the only game where I can pick my favorite teacher Korosensei to fight with DB and Naruto characters. Really love the roster!

J-Stars definitely has more soul to it put than Jump Force which doesn't have any at all. The soundtrack is great and atmosphere is bright, like anime games should be. It's a fun game to spend your time on.

I wish this game was the one getting all the DLCs rather than JF.

[LoganForkHands73]

Yeah, I still play it. It's the only game where I can pick my favorite teacher Korosensei to fight with DB and Naruto characters. Really love the roster!

J-Stars definitely has more soul to it put than Jump Force which doesn't have any at all. The soundtrack is great and atmosphere is bright, like anime games should be. It's a fun game to spend your time on.

I wish this game was the one getting all the DLCs rather than JF.

Ahh, glad to hear it! The atmosphere of Jump Force really is all wrong, it feels like it's purely trying to appeal to dudebros and contributors of VS Battles Wiki. Aside from the dude from City Hunter and the protagonist from the Dragon Quest manga, there's no real unexpected picks on the roster.

Can't beat the feeling of charging headfirst across the entire map with Koro, slamming into a poor Naruto about to nail Vegeta with a Rasengan. "HAYAII, DESU-YOOOO?"

Koro-sensei says: Reject Jump Force, embrace J-Stars.

[Jord]

I bought it on sale a few years back but it didn't click with me. I found the story mode very boring.
The fighting was okay, not too bad but not spectacular.

I'd rather see an HD version of the DS Jump games which I found much more enjoyable. (and less generic as well)

[Anonymous Friend]

I might have picked it back up and break out my PS3 if it had english VAs.

[Xeogran]

I might have picked it back up and break out my PS3 if it had english VAs.

JUMP Crossover games never will, too many different licensing companies, some of which probably don't even exist anymore.

[SSGSWarrior]

I have both J-Stars and Jump Force in my collection, but I can't stand to play either. To me, they are both terrible games with invincibility frames, lackluster controls, and boring story. plus for jump force, painful loading times. Still, I remember being crazy excited hearing that both were coming and I know if they make future crossover games and if they are bad, I will still get them and try them cause it's like a dream scenario for all these characters to be together. for the next game, I do purpose they use Dragon Ball FighterZ style gameplay. I believe the developer Arc Systems did make a DBZ and One Piece game and then crossed them over which was great

[LoganForkHands73]

I have both J-Stars and Jump Force in my collection, but I can't stand to play either. To me, they are both terrible games with invincibility frames, lackluster controls, and boring story. plus for jump force, painful loading times. Still, I remember being crazy excited hearing that both were coming and I know if they make future crossover games and if they are bad, I will still get them and try them cause it's like a dream scenario for all these characters to be together. for the next game, I do purpose they use Dragon Ball FighterZ style gameplay. I believe the developer Arc Systems did make a DBZ and One Piece game and then crossed them over which was great

The story mode of J-Stars isn't much to write home about but it can be safely skipped as there's tonnes of other single-player content. It's not a central point of marketing unlike with Jump Force's, which is so horrendous it makes you wonder why they even bothered.

The game does have a lot of invincibility frames and several actions have a lot of lag, but I feel it's mostly necessary for balancing purposes in this case to prevent endless dogpiling combo strings and most Ultimates from being totally useless.

I would be more than happy with a traditional 2D fighting game alternative to both games, though. Or even a Smash Bros-esque platform fighter.

[SSGSWarrior]

I have both J-Stars and Jump Force in my collection, but I can't stand to play either. To me, they are both terrible games with invincibility frames, lackluster controls, and boring story. plus for jump force, painful loading times. Still, I remember being crazy excited hearing that both were coming and I know if they make future crossover games and if they are bad, I will still get them and try them cause it's like a dream scenario for all these characters to be together. for the next game, I do purpose they use Dragon Ball FighterZ style gameplay. I believe the developer Arc Systems did make a DBZ and One Piece game and then crossed them over which was great

The story mode of J-Stars isn't much to write home about but it can be safely skipped as there's tonnes of other single-player content. It's not a central point of marketing unlike with Jump Force's, which is so horrendous it makes you wonder why they even bothered.

The game does have a lot of invincibility frames and several actions have a lot of lag, but I feel it's mostly necessary for balancing purposes in this case to prevent endless dogpiling combo strings and most Ultimates from being totally useless.

I would be more than happy with a traditional 2D fighting game alternative to both games, though. Or even a Smash Bros-esque platform fighter.

YES to a Smash Bros-esque fighter. ESPECIALLY because didn't Bandai Namco develop or have a hand in developing one of the past Smash Bros? All they gotta do is plug-in the Jump characters we know and love in the worlds we know and love from Jump and we're solid!