J-Stars Victory Vs+ takes the best of what Bandai Namco Entertainment has to offer with its licenses and throws all the characters together for fighting mayhem. So, think of this like a Smash Bros. or that one title from SCEA that combined all their characters and wasn’t quite as fun, and you get the idea of what you’re in store for with J-Stars.
The gameplay is, at its core, a fighting game needing an excuse to fight. Developer Spike Chunsoft sets up the bridge between fights by adding a campaign called J-Adventure, which puts together a shallow, yet somewhat entertaining storyline that links groups of fighters for a gigantic, always happening tournament. You’re constantly moving and finding new groups to fight in this open tournament.
The J-Adventure mode of the game puts you in a ship that allows you to travel around lands and find quests and adventures that eventually lead up to fighting. The adventures are broken up into four types of arcs, each led by different manga personalities. For example, I chose the Hope Arc in my first go around with the game, which was an adventure led by our favorite ninja wannabe, ramen obsessed, Naruto. The adventure starts by picking up teammates, who help to fight with Naruto. Once they are established, then there are series of non-linear storylines that Naruto and gang run into, each leading to a different part of the somewhat confined world (sometimes a different dimension).
Ultimately, while the stories are fun, intriguing (and sometimes creepy), all end the same place — fighting. Again, I have to give some kudos for Spike Chunsoft at keeping the gamer occupied and detracted from just saying it’s an all-out brawler. The stories work well, but ultimately the gamer just goes through mounds of dialogue to get to the next fight. Again, there isn’t anything wrong with that, as I think, outside of Street Fighter, we’ve moved beyond the days where a fighting game just goes from fight-to-fight-to-fight, but the storylines to help you forget that’s really the core gameplay aren’t memorable enough to separate J-Stars Victory Vs+ from that stigma.
If you can accept the game for what it truly is, then the J-Adventure option will entertain you. Having said that, J-Stars Victory Vs+ has a few issues it needs to address, mainly with the fighting itself.
The controls are loosey-goosey when it comes to fighting, and sometimes forgivable when you need it to be. I found most of the fighting to be a bit of a button-mashing fest. While the controls aren’t that difficult to learn, the heat of battle brings out the worst in button-mashing habits. While I never lost a match during my stint with the game, I can’t say that I was exactly on point with my skill set. Mostly, I just hit X to fight with O+Triangle for combos. When my power meter was at a peek, I hit R3 to join my teammates in a friendly combo attack that brought out the very best in Naruto. Two to three hits from my ninja in this powered-up state pretty much did it for my enemies.
Now, speaking of teammates, the CPU AI is just the worst sometimes, but amazing when it works. The CPU’s methods of teamwork seem to be on point when you’re close by them when fighting. For example, there was a fight where my teammate, who was close to my vicinity, ran to my aid and just absolutely wailed on the enemies. It was like a fighting ping-pong match, and it was stunning to watch in action because the enemy didn’t stand a bleeping chance. That’s when your CPU teammate is close by.
If the teammate is far away, they won’t go out of their way to join you in battle — no matter what you’re being put through or how much energy your character has left. It’s frustrating to get beaten down by someone while your teammate is just two buildings over twiddling their thumbs. It was certainly a WTF (kids translation: why the face) moment in the game. That sort of AI extends to the other modes as well, which can be frustrating.
On the flip side to that, the enemies aren’t much better in the AI department. The enemies really didn’t get better as the game progressed, at least on the J-Adventure side of things. I could work my way through and beyond fights without a hitch each time. It felt like there wasn’t a wall to hit or a steep difficulty hill to climb, which meant that the fighting, after a while, became somewhat dull, despite the stories attached. After the sixth or seventh fight, I expected (and prepared) for the difficulty to ramp up just a little, but it didn’t — at least prior to this review (I put in some good hours with this game). In a normal fighting game, by the fourth or fifth match you would have your hands full. That is a pattern that extends to games like Mortal Kombat, Smash Bros., Street Fighter and Tekken. It’s a common and expected theme in fighting titles — even brawlers. I do understand that this game is put together with a younger audience in mind, but it needed a bit more ‘umph’ added in there.
What also didn’t help the fighting situation was the fact that environments rarely changed beyond a handful of main maps. For example, there is a cityscape environment that I saw 5-6 times in the game in my first three hours of play. Why is this a problem? Well, some of the fights launched in the middle of an ocean when my ship collided with another ship. Another fight happened when I was on a Magma-volcano-based part of the map I was traveling, yet the same map kept popping up regardless. It seemed like there wasn’t enough variety of fighting maps on this game, at least ones that correspond with where the fights were launched. While that may seem like a lame complaint, it’s not after you play the game for a few hours and you’re expecting some wider range of variety. How cool would it be to fight against each other on ships? Or to fight with a fiery lava background happening? I know it’s a bit more work and I understand that it might fluctuate the fighting arena size a bit, but it would have been nice to see a bit more range of environments. More range presents more challenges, which equal out to more change in gameplay. That helps break away from repetition.
Regardless of these two complaints, J-Stars Victory Vs+ still had more fun to be had than not. The fighting was cheeky enough to equal out to some high-sensation entertainment, though I think an opportunity was missed a bit when it came to expanding the J-Stars Victory Vs+’s world and offering up maybe some solid ‘big world’ value to the mix. More environments and better enemy AI would have helped the fighting out tremendously.
Outside of J-Adventure, the game also offers up a Victory Road mode, Arcade mode, Free Battle mode and Online Battle mode. The arcade mode is six matches right in a row, just like what you would find in an arcade-esque environment (think Mortal Kombat, but without the blood). The Victory Road mode allows you to choose a set of characters and play through their own little storyline. Free Battle mode is what you would expect — free battling. As for the online portion, good luck.
The gameplay in J-Stars Victory Vs+ isn’t terrible, in fact it can be slightly addictive at times. It is a game that my kids will end up playing for months, but for adult gamers like me, I want just a bit more from the gameplay design. I think the game just needed a bit more work and a bit more ‘+’ in controls, enemies/teammates and environments. The concept of the series is great, as is the construction, but it needs to be improved.
On the presentation side of things, there are some moments where the game screams current generation (especially during power-ups), but the actual battle arenas and characters still have last generation visuals with them that have been touched up a bit. The battle arenas needed more life to them, as I couldn’t possibly imagine life in these areas being all but vacant except for the fighters. Just add some people running for their lives or debris kicking up after a character knocks down a building or maybe scorch marks where a player used a power-up and BOOM! Current generation stuff. As of now, the game is pretty, but not ‘using-8gb-of-ddr5-RAM-properly’ pretty. The hardware is there, it needs to be used.
As for the music portion of the game, it’s fun and moving during battles. It’s a cross between orchestrated material and synth-driven guitar riffs. There is a lot to enjoy in the soundtrack.
Anyway, let’s get to the summary of this sucker.
