Well I can’t Kamehameha myself out of this situation, I’m a huge anime fan that’s not really a surprise so when I heard J Stars was coming to the West I couldn’t help but get excited, under it’s core J Stars is a truly ambitious fighting game which isn’t a bad thing or a good thing. I love the game as a fan don’t get me wrong but as a critic I gotta say this game is not all its cracked up to be. It’s sort of like how I feel with most movies, I love Howard the Duck even though I know it’s not good at all. It’s more of a guilty pleasure then anything really for me.
There’s a great variety of characters and I love each of them, including Yusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto, and Goku from DragonballZ. They’re character models look fantastic, Each character has something unique and special about them except it’s more like Smash bros or the other 3D anime fighting games in the sense that each button does the same thing so there’s no ridiculous combination of buttons you need to learn for each character. The point of the game is to take out your opponent in the form of lives/stock which is really simple once you get the hang of it, there’s something called A Victory Bursts for those who appear to be winning as well. A Victory Burst allows you to perform ultimate attacks based on your character example if you were Goku you’d use a Spirit Bomb and if you were Koro Sensei you’d zoom across the world in his Mach 20 speed. There’s something to love about being able to be a character you’d usually have to buy a Japanese console or hope your console is not region locked to play games inspired by that character.
There’s a story mode in which you unlock characters by traveling by ship to complete a set of chores set out by…we can only assume God. To unlock characters you have to get a friendship meter up and buy them with J Points which can be a hassle but worth it to get the character roster up. You don’t have cutscenes aside from the awe-inspiring intro instead you get cutouts of each character talking to each other and even then it’s just boring.
But hey we got other things like a arcade mode that’ll make you wanna cut yourself, another arcade mode where you travel down a road which can be described as Classic Mode in smash bros without the boss, oh you were looking for collectables or figures of the characters? Nope. Music tracks from the original shows? Haha I wish. Nothing…There’s nothing here for you die-hard Jump fans. If anything it’s more of a Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL *Look it up* which is far better than this really content wise. There’s no need to talk about the actual fighting because it’s about as dull as dirt. It is very competitive though like I said it goes by lives so multiplayer matches are intensely fun.
In the end I’m not saying it’s a bad game but it can get annoying after a while, there’s little to no extra content, the fighting is mediocre at best. It’s a shame too cause I was really excited for this game, if there’s DLC I’ll check it out at some point. Try again Bandai Namco, I’ll give this game 2 Spirit Bombs out of 5
