If you haven’t noticed, 2022 has acold and distant go the twelvemonth of media conglomerates capitalizing connected ownership of disparate properties. You tin spot it intelligibly successful the realm of video games similar MultiVersus and the last brag of wacky crossovers, Fortnite. Not to beryllium near out, fashionable manga steadfast Shonen Jump has plunged into the video crippled excavation arsenic good with a crossover crippled of its own.

Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions is simply a 2D isometric tactical video crippled developed by Momo-Pi, the folks down the turn-based puzzle crippled Persephone. You play arsenic Damien, a meek kid struggling with his family’s caller determination from France to Japan. Unfortunately, Damien doesn’t person the accidental to aerial retired his grievances with his parents due to the fact that they near him location unsocial with a database of chores. Luckily for Damien, he’s got a vivid imaginativeness to assistance him spell on faster and combat his niggling anxieties astir loneliness. Whenever Damien gets overwhelmed, similar dealing with tiny speech with a noisy neighbour oregon calming down his tense dog, helium recontextualizes the scenarios arsenic if helium were successful a manga. Through this lens, helium transforms into the manga’s fearless protagonist, Captain Velvet Meteor.

Captain Velvet Meteor’s combat is akin to Live A Live’s tile-centric combat system, albeit overmuch much simplified. You power Captain Meteor and a Shonen Jump quality arsenic they navigate their mode done puzzles and turn-based battles. Because characters stock a wellness bar, their positioning plays a large relation successful however battles play out. Successfully defeating hordes of enemies rewards you with some a replenished wellness barroom and accrued question points. While archetypal levels play similar a breezy crippled of anime checkers, its aboriginal levels spice things up by transforming into a challenging crippled of chess. Its climactic last brag fights, which often see dope designs similar a elephantine kaiju dog, are a blitzkrieg of frenetic combat interlaced with traps and waves of enemies.

Where Captain Velvet Meteor shines is successful that it doesn’t spell the casual way by making Damien’s machinations impact heroic squad ups with well-established Shonen Jump protagonists similar Goku from Dragon Ball Z, oregon Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto (they’re astir apt excessively engaged causing mayhem successful Fortnite). Instead, Damien teams up with newer and moderately lesser-known shonen protagonists:

• Loid Forger from Spy x Family

• Kafka Hibino from Kaiju No. 8
• Gabimaru from Hell’s Paradise
• Ushio Kofune from Summer Time Rendering
• Chloé Love and Kai Iod from Ghost Reaper Girl
• Chrome from Heart Gear
• Princess and Ex from ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess
• Slime from Slime Life

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Prior to playing Captain Velvet Meteor, I’d lone work Spy x Family, Kaiju No.8, and Hell’s Paradise and was astatine a nonaccomplishment whenever the different astir 62.5 percent of Damian’s manga favs appeared on-screen. While astir crossover games disregard the premise of its contrasting properties for the novelty of its nonsensical crossovers, Captain Velvet Meteor avoids this pitfall by crafting an enthralling communicative that respects the root worldly of its manga with battles that seizure their vigor and tells its ain story.

To my surprise, the crippled not lone successfully achieved its not-so-subtle selling extremity of generating my involvement successful speechmaking different manga properties by providing a unsmooth synopsis of their stories, it besides weaved a compelling communicative wherever each quality imparts heartwarming beingness proposal to Damien. If that’s not the explanation of being a hero, I don’t cognize what is.

It’s not often a video crippled crafts a thoughtful communicative arsenic the baseline for its blatant fanservice crossover, but Captain Velvet Meteor has its barroom and eats it too. And it’s damn delicious.