Good afternoon everybody,
You know, in my time working in Market Resaerch, I have come to really dislike trying to interview people from certain parts of the country... New England in particular... it's like everyone up there has a bug up their butt the size of a Texas hornet.
Anyway, last night's stream saw Jump Force finally taking center stage, and I certainly see why people were disappointed with it. Folks were expecting a new version of the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games where adventure took center stage, and believe me, with the plot Jump Force has, it would've have made so much more sense to go that route with it... but instead, you got a 3 on 3 arena fighter, that's okay and fairly easy to learn. I'm going to go out pm a limb here and say that some one on the development team for Bandai Namco clearly made the wrong call about what aspects of the Xenoverse games people liked... and with that in mind, the reception to Jump Force clearly explains why Dragon Ball: Kakarot exists.
That all said, I did enjoy messing around with Jump Force, and I am going to continue it, as clearly there are plenty of achievements that can be earned offline, the biggest concern will be the few online achievements requiring head to head play. I figure I could get the 30 matches done easily, but scoring 1 win against seasoned players will be impossible at this stage in the games life cycle, not to mention the issue with the servers not being the greatest as fare as I can tell.
But let's get back to why I believe Jump Force should have been an adventure game: its the story, you clearly have it established that worlds are merging, there is an evil force sending their troops everywhere, and you have a collection of heroes determine to stop it and the player plays as an original character who gets to team up with them to save the day. Between all the franchises involved with Jump Force, there could have been something huge in scope, with taking down multiple enemies using the full arena mechanics as your allies watch your back much like in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 and 2... but instead... we got what we got.
That said, our character for Jump Force is named Nautea, which means Navigator, and we styled her to look sorta like Android 18... and hopefully there are moves that can be unlocked that allow us to build up Nautea's move set to be similar to what I used on both Xenoverse games.
Graphics and sound are decent, but i do wish there was an English audio track for the game, yes I often leave or turn subtitles on for the games I stream, but for the few characters in Jump Force that I'm familiar with, I do prefer their English voice actors over their Japanese counter parts (Buu, Piccolo, Yusuke being the top three). The biggest drawback is the load times, as the loading screen comes up so freaking awesome it's not even funny.
More than likely we are going to keep Jump Force as a late in the week game, most likely on Friday nights until we clear all 9 chapters of the story.
Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was doing a special bonus stream of Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal! What was unique is that they were doing DRS runs, where communication can only be with the members of the party or group that you are with, not with the extended Alliance... needless to say things got real silly.
Jump Force Achievements
- Apprentice Warrior: Cleared Free Mission on Easy one or more times.
- Seeds of Evil: Cleared Chapter 1.
- Upgrade Apprentice: Performed upgrade at the Upgrade Counter one or more times.
- This Party Is Just Getting Started!: Used emotions 10 or more times
- Fashion Master: Obtained 50 or more avatar outfit parts.
- Just Getting Warmed Up!: Raised an avatar above level 10 through battle.
- Unite!: Raised ten support characters above level 10 through battle.
Twitch Clip Links
- In Where A World Where A Ninja, A Pirate and Dumbass Must Unite...
- Okay That Was Excessive
- Nicely Done
In regards to my own Final Fantasy XIV adventures, I put in several hours knocking out a lot of the Main Story Quests listed as Levels 62-63, from 'Once More, to the Ruby Sea' up to the start of 'In the Darkness the Magatama Dreams'... where we learned about the Confederacy (great name there Square Enix), as well as the Kojin as well as gained access to diving underwater... which by proxy leads to using the mounts underwater for faster travel considering we cannot fly yet... I did find all of the Aether Currents in the area, and did a few side plus quests for a couple more... but geeze, it is plainly obvious that Square Enix didn't want people tearing through Stormblood... everything is so spread out, and reliance on swimming certainly made things rough to get around, plus there is a lot of exposition to get through.
I can safely say in terms of just sticking to the Main Story Quest, really haven't seen much in the way of Combat within the Stormblood expansion... certainly spent a lot of time clicking through dialog and watching cut scenes, and for sure there was one dungeon (The Sirensong Sea) done thus far. I did come across another one which is tied to an Aether Current side quest, and looking at the MSQ list, I know there is a Trial coming up which means major trouble on the horizon. On the plus side, I did find Yugiri's parents, which was a nice surprise.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Advanced Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Weaving Combo #1 for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 480 kcal.
For tonight's stream I will be playing Final Fantasy XIV as we're into the Stormblood content, so we'll do gradual progress on that, maybe dungeons or raids depending on how things shake out of course!
So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!
