Shonen Jump Tactical RPG is a crossover manga game

If you haven’t noticed, 2022 is far and away the year of media conglomerates taking advantage of disparate property ownership. You can see it clearly in the world of video games like MultiVersus And the last chief of foolish crossovers, fortnite. Not to be left out, popular manga publisher Shonen Jump has indulged itself in its lineup of video games as well as its own crossover game.

Captain Velvet Meteor: Jump + Dimensions is a 2D isometric tactical video game developed by Momo-Pi, the people behind the turn-based puzzle game. Persephone. You play as Damien, a meek kid who struggles with his family’s recent move from France to Japan. Unfortunately, Damien does not have the opportunity to voice his complaints with his parents because they left him at home alone with a list of chores. Fortunately for Damien, he has a vivid imagination to help him move forward faster and fight his nagging fears about loneliness. Whenever he overwhelms Damian, like handling small talk with an annoying neighbor or calming his nervous dog, he reframes scenarios as if in a manga. Through this lens, he turns into the manga’s brave protagonist, Captain Velvet Meteor.

Captain Velvet MeteorFighting is like live aliveThe tile-centric combat system, albeit more simple. Control Captain Meteor and Shonen Jump as they navigate puzzles and turn-based battles. Since the characters share a health bar, their positioning plays a major role in how the battles are played out. Successfully defeating hordes of enemies rewards you with renewed health bar and increased movement points. While the initial levels play like animated checkers, its later levels spice things up by turning into a challenging game of chess. The ultimate boss fights, which often include psychedelic designs like the giant kaiju dog, is a blitzkrieg of frenetic combat intertwined with traps and waves of enemies.

where Captain Velvet Meteor It shines in that it doesn’t go the easy way by making Damian’s machinations include heroic teams with established Shonen Jump champions like Goku from Dragon ball ZOr Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto (They’re probably too busy making a mess fortnite). Instead, Damian has teamed up with newer and lesser-known shounen heroes:

• Lloyd Forger from Spy family x

• Kafka Hibino from Kaiju No. 8
• Jabimaru from Hell’s Paradise
• Ushio Kofune from Daylight saving time display
• Chloe Love and Kai Iod from Ghost Reaper Girl
• Chrome From heart gear
• A princess And the Previous From It’s torture time, princess
• Slime from Slime Life

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before playing Captain Velvet MeteorI was just reading Spy family xAnd the Kaiju number 8And the Hell’s Paradise He was perplexed every time approximately 62.5 percent of his favorite Damien manga appeared on screen. While most cross-plays ignore the premise of their contradictory properties of the novelty of irrational crossovers, Captain Velvet Meteor She avoids this predicament by crafting a captivating story that respects the source of their manga through battles that capture their energy and tell their own story.

To my surprise, the game not only successfully achieved its imprecise marketing goal of sparking my interest in reading other manga properties by providing a rough synopsis of their stories, but it also weaved a compelling storyline where each character offers warm life advice to Damien. If that’s not the definition of a hero, I don’t know what is.

Often a video game does not make a well-thought-out story as a baseline for a stark fan-service intersection, but Captain Velvet Meteor He has his cake and eats it too. It is very delicious.