J-Stars Victory VS+ is Bandai Namco’s version of Super Smash Bros., but quite hollow in actual comparison. Those who love anime will delight in the game’s 40 or so characters, ranging from Dragon Ball to One Piece (and others I admittedly don’t really know), but will soon realise there’s not much to the title other than its superficial fan-service.
An ultra-simplified fighting game, J-Stars boils down to one-on-one or two-on-two combat. Standard moves are controlled by two buttons, while character-specific specials are controlled by another. Blocking is assigned to another button, and can only be performed if you’ve enough Stamina, though you’ll soon realise that technique isn’t overly important. Support characters and their trademark moves also are assigned yet another button on the PlayStation controller.
As fights progress, you’ll be able to use your Victory Burst, which delivers the highest levels of in-game fan-service. As an example, Goku goes into Super Saiyan form and uses his Spirit Bomb. While that sounds cool – and is, in theory – it gets old pretty quickly. As do fights in general; you’ll always win a match by waiting for your opponent to enter into a heavy attack animation, and then spam the light attack button for combo after combo and the win. Yawn.
Specials are like Victory Bursts, looking a bit cool, but ultimately getting repetitious quite quickly. J-Stars is quite adept at delivering a feeling of ‘this is the same for everyone’, over and over again. Fights are padded out more than they should be by the strange decision to make a character invulnerable when getting up from a punishing attack. Likewise, the game’s story mode is also artificially inflated by 2D sequences that largely play out the same. Sure, it’s cool to see myriad characters – and let’s face it, this is why fans are buying the game — but when they all fight and act the same, that appeal dwindles quite quickly.
J-Stars’ story mode is boring, but necessary to unlock extra characters, spending points you earn as you progress. Its monotonous, but the feeling of constant reward, gaining access to new content as you move forward, almost makes up for that. The game’s story is split into four separate tales which, again, largely play the same, but involve different sets of characters. You’re given a boat by a God in which to interact with the story mode and its map, but for some reason your omnipotent craft can barely get you anywhere; that’s a pretty good summary of the padded-for-the-sake of it plot.
I’m being harsh to J-Stars, but that’s because it feels like a phoned-in effort. Fighting fans will think the game is completely Mickey Mouse. Anime fans will be drawn to it for its style and quickly will see its lacking substance. This is only for the hardcorest or hardcore fans. For anyone else, be prepared for a yawn-fest.
J-Stars Victory VS+ was reviewed using a promotional code on PS4, as provided by the publisher.
Review: J-Stars Victory VS+
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