Hanamaru Kunikida
04-01-2014, 12:31 PM
The most anticipated anime brawler has arrived for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita both digitally and physically in Japan. J-Stars Victory Versus is an anime-crossover game from many different Shonen Jump series released throughout the years. They range from classic series such as Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Saint Seiya and Dragon Ball to newer series like Kuroko no Basket, Madaka Box and Assassination Classroom. This is not the first time Shonen Jump characters have clashed in battle as there has been other titles for the Nintendo DS, Jump Super Stars and Jump Ultimate Stars. Additionally there was Battle Stadium D.O.N which consist of Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto characters. This time around, Spike Chunsoft, who are known for the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series takes a shot at the game.
J-Stars Victory Versus has four different gameplay modes, which are seen in many different anime brawlers released in the past. J-Adventure, which is Story Mode and the Main Mode of the game. Victory Road which consist of fighting different set of opponents as well as as completing certain tasks along the way, Free Battle so you can play along with a friend, either against him or with him as well as fight the CPU with the option to set this difficulty settings as we as his handicap settings, and of course Online Mode, so you can battled it out with your friends and many other Japanese gamers or gamers that imported the game. Sadly, the game lacks a Training Mode.
Gameplay is important for any game, even for an Anime Brawler. J-Stars Victory VS. manages to successfully make a balanced, simple but yet deep enough to make it a decent fighter to play competitively among your friends. The game being made by Spike Chunsoft, it has a few similarities to some of their previous work. This time around, you have the ability to chose your partner and support character in addition to your character. As expected, you will use the character you chose however the secondary character will be controlled by the CPU or another player if you're playing in teams instead of against each other.
The support character can be summon every once in a while since it has a 30 second cool down, but even then they are great help as their single attack has multiple purposes such as break out your enemies combo, thus protecting you as well as add to your combo. This isn't the first time Spike made a team-based game as they previously made Tenkaichi Tag Team. The combat system of the game takes a free-roam like point of view like their previous work, which lets you free walk around around any stage you chose from the Shonen Jump series, such as Namek from Dragon Ball, Alabasta from One Piece, Soul Society from Bleach, Penguin Village from Dr. Slump, Dark Tournament from Yu-Yu Hakusho and more. The game has simple commands such as two melee attacks, one special attack, jumping, charging your energy, and your ultimate attack.
This game isn't very deep with it's combo system, however you can definitely pull off some nifty combos and even make greater combos with the help of your partner and your support character. This game isn't your average fighter since it has a slightly different objective. You must defeat the other team at least three times to win the match, as well as try to put as much damage as possible to fill up your Victory Burst gauge, which it will reward you the ability to pull off your Ultimate Attack, giving you the opportunity to earn another victory and win the match if the attack lands. The game offers Split-Screen mode, however due to the objective in the game, it's cluttered but still organized enough to be playable. Take a look for yourself in the following video.
J-Stars Victory VS also offers a feature that many anime fighting games do, the ability to customize your character by equipping cards which will buff up your character in different areas such as Stamina, Health, Defense, reduce Support Character cool off and many different cards that will give you the advantage in battle. You will have the ability to use your customized characters in many given mode in the game, so make sure to buff up your character to the best of your ability for online battles.
J-Adventure consist of four different arcs, the Dynamic Arc with the leading character Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, the Hope Arc with Uzumaki Naruto from Naruto, the Investigation Arc with Toriko and the Pursuit Arc with Ichigo from Bleach. Each arc will take you to an adventure across many places from the Shonen Jump universe as well as meeting characters from each individual series, the ultimate mission is to defeat the Dark Phantom which creates clones of the Shonen Jump heroes which eventually makes a clone of your chosen hero, which in the end you must defeat. You can complete different sidequests given by different characters from many series across the Shonen Jump world that serve as NPCs, such as Karin and Master Roshi from the Dragon Ball universe or Athena from the Saint Seiya universe. Ultimately, all arcs ended the same way and sadly, the ending wasn't the best either for the kind of potential this game had. But we all know for the most part, Story Mode isn't the strongest suit for a lot of fighting games.
Free Battle is basically an offline mode which you can play either with your friend locally or with the CPU. Unlike Online Mode, which I will get to later, you have more control of how many characters you want to use in battle, you can make it 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 2 vs. 1, or 3 vs. 3, the other character being the support character. It also gives you the option to actually play COM vs. COM so you can sit down and watch while the computer fights it out. Just within the character select in Free Battle, you got many options such as using your customized character, the difficulty of your CPU which range from 1-5 stars, which 5 stars can be somewhat difficult, life gauge, which isn't too deep as it only offers from 60% to 140% of life and the character type which is Friendship, which is based on stamina, Effort which is based on Power and Victory which is based on Defense. After you are done with the character selection, you got the option to choose from many different stages as well as chose the BGM that you want to play while playing the game as well as timer, which it isn't too deep either as you can only choose between 300 seconds and infinite.
Playing Online Mode with your friends can fun, but like any other game there will be people who will abuse some of the cheapest character which can get frustrating. Some of the negatives of Online Mode is the inability to play 1 vs. 1 with your friends, instead you are forced to have a CPU as your partner. Also, the game's net code isn't very strong so playing with people too far from you can get annoying with the intense amount of lag. However, if you get a couple of buddies to fill up all the slots that live close to you, it can lead to a really fun game time. Unlike the offline modes of the game, this mode doesn't give you the ability to play split-screen mode either.
After ending each battle either offline or online, you will get the option to save the replay of your greatest battle in the game so you can later show it off to your friends. All replay battles will be located in the Gallery Menu of the game. Last but not least, J-Stars Victory VS lets you use your own soundtrack installed in your PlayStation 3. This isn't the first time a Namco Bandai game has that option since games like Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Kamen Rider Battride War and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure had the feature as well. However, the game already offers an amazing soundtrack which it will be hard to actually replace, but it's always good to have the option to do it. Only minor problem is that for you to be able to use your own soundtrack, you will have to remove the default ones and replace it with yours for it to be available in Free Battle. The option is not available in Online Mode, however.
Rating: 8/10
J-Stars Victory Versus has four different gameplay modes, which are seen in many different anime brawlers released in the past. J-Adventure, which is Story Mode and the Main Mode of the game. Victory Road which consist of fighting different set of opponents as well as as completing certain tasks along the way, Free Battle so you can play along with a friend, either against him or with him as well as fight the CPU with the option to set this difficulty settings as we as his handicap settings, and of course Online Mode, so you can battled it out with your friends and many other Japanese gamers or gamers that imported the game. Sadly, the game lacks a Training Mode.
Gameplay is important for any game, even for an Anime Brawler. J-Stars Victory VS. manages to successfully make a balanced, simple but yet deep enough to make it a decent fighter to play competitively among your friends. The game being made by Spike Chunsoft, it has a few similarities to some of their previous work. This time around, you have the ability to chose your partner and support character in addition to your character. As expected, you will use the character you chose however the secondary character will be controlled by the CPU or another player if you're playing in teams instead of against each other.
The support character can be summon every once in a while since it has a 30 second cool down, but even then they are great help as their single attack has multiple purposes such as break out your enemies combo, thus protecting you as well as add to your combo. This isn't the first time Spike made a team-based game as they previously made Tenkaichi Tag Team. The combat system of the game takes a free-roam like point of view like their previous work, which lets you free walk around around any stage you chose from the Shonen Jump series, such as Namek from Dragon Ball, Alabasta from One Piece, Soul Society from Bleach, Penguin Village from Dr. Slump, Dark Tournament from Yu-Yu Hakusho and more. The game has simple commands such as two melee attacks, one special attack, jumping, charging your energy, and your ultimate attack.
This game isn't very deep with it's combo system, however you can definitely pull off some nifty combos and even make greater combos with the help of your partner and your support character. This game isn't your average fighter since it has a slightly different objective. You must defeat the other team at least three times to win the match, as well as try to put as much damage as possible to fill up your Victory Burst gauge, which it will reward you the ability to pull off your Ultimate Attack, giving you the opportunity to earn another victory and win the match if the attack lands. The game offers Split-Screen mode, however due to the objective in the game, it's cluttered but still organized enough to be playable. Take a look for yourself in the following video.
J-Stars Victory VS also offers a feature that many anime fighting games do, the ability to customize your character by equipping cards which will buff up your character in different areas such as Stamina, Health, Defense, reduce Support Character cool off and many different cards that will give you the advantage in battle. You will have the ability to use your customized characters in many given mode in the game, so make sure to buff up your character to the best of your ability for online battles.
J-Adventure consist of four different arcs, the Dynamic Arc with the leading character Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, the Hope Arc with Uzumaki Naruto from Naruto, the Investigation Arc with Toriko and the Pursuit Arc with Ichigo from Bleach. Each arc will take you to an adventure across many places from the Shonen Jump universe as well as meeting characters from each individual series, the ultimate mission is to defeat the Dark Phantom which creates clones of the Shonen Jump heroes which eventually makes a clone of your chosen hero, which in the end you must defeat. You can complete different sidequests given by different characters from many series across the Shonen Jump world that serve as NPCs, such as Karin and Master Roshi from the Dragon Ball universe or Athena from the Saint Seiya universe. Ultimately, all arcs ended the same way and sadly, the ending wasn't the best either for the kind of potential this game had. But we all know for the most part, Story Mode isn't the strongest suit for a lot of fighting games.
Free Battle is basically an offline mode which you can play either with your friend locally or with the CPU. Unlike Online Mode, which I will get to later, you have more control of how many characters you want to use in battle, you can make it 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 2 vs. 1, or 3 vs. 3, the other character being the support character. It also gives you the option to actually play COM vs. COM so you can sit down and watch while the computer fights it out. Just within the character select in Free Battle, you got many options such as using your customized character, the difficulty of your CPU which range from 1-5 stars, which 5 stars can be somewhat difficult, life gauge, which isn't too deep as it only offers from 60% to 140% of life and the character type which is Friendship, which is based on stamina, Effort which is based on Power and Victory which is based on Defense. After you are done with the character selection, you got the option to choose from many different stages as well as chose the BGM that you want to play while playing the game as well as timer, which it isn't too deep either as you can only choose between 300 seconds and infinite.
Playing Online Mode with your friends can fun, but like any other game there will be people who will abuse some of the cheapest character which can get frustrating. Some of the negatives of Online Mode is the inability to play 1 vs. 1 with your friends, instead you are forced to have a CPU as your partner. Also, the game's net code isn't very strong so playing with people too far from you can get annoying with the intense amount of lag. However, if you get a couple of buddies to fill up all the slots that live close to you, it can lead to a really fun game time. Unlike the offline modes of the game, this mode doesn't give you the ability to play split-screen mode either.
After ending each battle either offline or online, you will get the option to save the replay of your greatest battle in the game so you can later show it off to your friends. All replay battles will be located in the Gallery Menu of the game. Last but not least, J-Stars Victory VS lets you use your own soundtrack installed in your PlayStation 3. This isn't the first time a Namco Bandai game has that option since games like Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Kamen Rider Battride War and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure had the feature as well. However, the game already offers an amazing soundtrack which it will be hard to actually replace, but it's always good to have the option to do it. Only minor problem is that for you to be able to use your own soundtrack, you will have to remove the default ones and replace it with yours for it to be available in Free Battle. The option is not available in Online Mode, however.
Rating: 8/10