Well, they can jump pretty high....
This is one of those games, like Xenoverse, that have a boring HUB town instead of quick and simple menus. If you want to fight another player or fight the CPU at your leisure you have to go to the right counter. I wish this trend would die, it's not immersive, it's just a waste of time, like developers working with the Wii, making abilities and functions that would've been perfect for button presses require waggling the Wiimote around.
The artstyle really is something else. It bothered me back when the game was first announced on PS4/XOne, and it's still creepy. Characters keep their original artstyles, like, say, huge eyes, spikey hair and/or sharp chins, but they are rendered with realistic cloth and skin textures, making for some incredibly weird looking characters. They also keep their proportions, which means that characters like Hitsugaya and Deku, who should look about the same, look completely different. Heck, Deku, a young teen, is BIGGER than friggin' Kenshin Himura, a young adult. It looks awful. A cellshaded filter, alongside simple and colorful textures would've looked much, much better.
Cutscenes run very poorly, the first cutscene in the game struggles to reach the double digits, and the character models have some weird glitches, but as far as the game plays? It's very smooth for the most part, and while the framerate can tank when it gets hectic, it quickly reverts to 26-28fps, so I'd say it's pretty stable and plays pretty well. The game was made with the PS4/XOne in mind, so downscaling the graphics will obviously end up making everything look blurry and jaggy, but it's not too bad. Honestly, I think the game survived the downport quite well.
The character creator is surprisingly fun. You get a lot of hairs, tattoos/scars and clothes from the characters in the game, as well as a few original clothes only your created character can wear, so you can create some pretty cool characters. A few cloth pieces are not compatible with others, like most pieces from Saint Seiya, but it's not too bad. You can equip most super moves from most characters in the cast, although a few abilities can't, for instance, anything that requires a Stand(Jotaro, Dio), a Sharingan(Like Kakashi, Sasuke or Madara's Susanoo) or summoning a tailed beast because you don't actually have a tailed beast inside you. It gives you a lot of variety when selecting your super moves.
There are a few wasted slots in the roster, for instance the three original villains. On the plus side, they were designed by Akira Toriyama... but that doesn't mean they are good designs, I mean, this is the guy that was scolded by his Editor twice because his Androids weren't threatening. I think they should've stuck to Jump's properties exclusively when picking the true villains for the story, because these guys are lame and I would've much preferred more characters from more series. Not that the story is particularly good, I really didn't like the theme about Manga heroes and villains duking it out in the real world. Having the characters deal with their own worlds colliding would've been much more interesting I think, and it wouldn't get in the way of you getting to create an avatar.
I'm a bit conflicted on the character roster. On one hand, we get a lot of really cool characters from some of the series I like the most in Jump. But, and it's a huge but, this game covers about half as many series as J-Victory Stars did. As far as a Celebration of all things Jump go... the other game did it better. This game is pretty lacking as far as 'weirdos' go, and, mind you, I prefer having THIS roster made up of mostly cool character, but I can't help but feel like the game's scope got reduced and this isn't as much a tribute to Jump as it is a giant appeal to fans of the popular series.... like me. And the DLC is only adding to the series already featured in the game. Why don't you give me Kinnikuman(And maybe Kinnikuman GREAT or Phoenix, although that might be asking for too much), Allen from D.Gray-Man, Gintoki from Gintama, Toriko from, well, Toriko, someone from Katekyoushi Hitman Reborn... y'know, the classics, the oldies and the ones that were popular a few years ago.
To be honest, the story mode feels bloated. There are a ton of story missions, plus the DLC missions that came bundled in for free, plus tons of Free missions. The problem is... the gameplay is very basic, so there's not much in the way of creativity when it comes to fighting. There are too many battles to take part in, and every single battle feels the same. Except that sometimes, maybe, enemies are so overleveled they can take huge chunks out of your life bar with a few moves. But even in the harder missions, baiting the CPU into making mistakes is fairly easy and you can pretty much apply the same strategy in every single fight.
They went a bit too far with attention to detail. Dio can't fight in Daytime stages and Sanji can't deal damage to female fighters... and this is to the game's detriment, making Sanji useless against a few characters is incredibly stupid, not the kind of details that make for a fun game.
A few battles got stuck on the post-battle loading screens at 84%. Luckily the game is very generous with auto-saving, so quitting the game and then reloading lets you continue right after the fight. Doesn't excuse the fact that the game gets stuck during loading, but at least you don't lose any progress.
Eh... Jump Force is alright. It's functional, and you get a lot of popular characters from a a decent amount of popular series. But, the art-style is really off-putting, and I really hate how they didn't go for uniform proportions with the characters, which in the end makes everything look really ugly. The fighting itself is nothing to write home about, but for an anime fighter it's serviceable, you have your flashy attacks and your simple combos. Still, the story is very uninteresting, which is a front I'm sure they could've done better in, and while I usually prefer a game having lots of stuff to do, in this case it's just fat with no substance.
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