Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions Review (Switch)

Plenty of us were creative as kids. Coming up with imaginary friends, creating fun scenarios to play through, and positioning ourselves as the hero (or villain) that will save (or destroy) the world is something that we can all relate to in some way. And when we’re going through tough times, it can be easy to slip into these imaginary worlds in order to cope. Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions deals with a young boy thrown into a new country and his many adventures to try and deal with the sudden change.

Story

Damien is a 10-year-old boy who has moved with his family from France to Japan due to his grandfather passing away and his father wanting to help with the family business. However, Damien isn’t enthused by the sudden move, feeling as though his feelings weren’t taken into account. After all, all of his friends and memories are back in France and now he’ll have to start all over in Japan.

Damien keeps a sketch journal that tells of all the tales of Captain Velvet Meteor, an intergalactic hero who travels all over and helps those in need. However, Captain Velvet has recently crashed on an unknown planet, so it’s up to him and his partner, Jay-P, to work out a way to get off the planet. It doesn’t take them long to locate their ship and find out that they need to make repairs before they can leave the planet. Luckily for them, there are energy sources all across the planet that can be used to help with the repairs.

As Damien does chores around the house left by his mom, he’ll come across several obstacles that he’ll need to overcome. In order to beat these obstacles, whether it’s calming his anxious dog or fixing a broken washer, he’ll transport himself into the world of Captain Velvet Meteor to solve the problem.

The storytelling in Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions is pretty simple, falling into the cycle of coming across a new obstacle, transporting yourself into the world of Captain Velvet in order to solve said problem, and then coming back to the real world once the boss has been defeated. It’s a relatable tale of a frustrated child trying to come to terms with their new life. And when it comes to the additional cast, who are all characters from various manga circulated in Jump+ like Spy x Family and Hell’s Paradise, their storylines are just as simple. Everyone has been drawn into a strange world with no recollection of how they got there, but they need to get back to their own world.

Gameplay

Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions is a strategy/RPG where you will navigate Damien’s new house and as you come across new challenges, you’ll be transported into the world of Captain Velvet Meteor with a new mission. All of the missions are the same in that you will play through several maps until you reach the end where you’ll fight against the boss. Once you defeat the boss, you’ll be taken back to the real world, where Damien conquers the problem. But of course, you can switch between the imaginary world and the real world at any time.

Combat

You will play as Captain Velvet Meteor as you shoot your way through each map. Along with yourself, you’ll always have a partner to help you battle through each map. With each partner, you can choose to either attack separately or use a combo attack. Each character that you meet has a different combo that has a different effect, whether it’s making you and your partner invisible or pushing enemies back several spots via knockback. There is no option to change partners, as each mission has a designated character so if you don’t happen to like the combo attack, it’s unfortunately something you have to deal with. Most of the combo attacks are useful, but there are a couple that cover a smaller ground or the effect requires one turn before you can actually attack, which does slow things down.

Along with your regular and combo attack, you also have an ultimate attack that you can use once you collect power orbs and fill your gauge. Much like combo attacks, your ultimate attack triggers when you stand next to your partner, and you can choose to toggle that attack or not. These power orbs drop from enemies that you defeat. In the case of some obstacles and bosses, you can only deal damage using your ultimate attack. So there will be times where you’ll need to anticipate when it’s the best time to use your attacks. This is especially the case during boss battles where it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the number of enemies coming at you.

Both you and your partner can move up to four movement spots. Movement isn’t locked in until you choose to end your turn, so you can navigate your character wherever until you’re happy with the movement. Along with your allotted four movement spaces, you can also collect additional movement points that are stockpiled into your movement gauge, with a maximum of ten points that can be split between the two characters.

Your health is another thing that is shared between Captain Velvet and his partner. If you lose all of your health, you’ll have to start the entire stage all over again. Health is regenerated whenever you defeat an enemy, so you’ll want to try and defeat a few enemies each turn so that you don’t end up unexpectedly dying. Keeping track of where you can potentially take damage is another thing to look out for, because both of your characters suffering heavy-hitting attacks can easily wipe you out.

The stages are straightforward and unfortunately, end up feeling monotonous after a while. You’ll either need to reach the end of a stage or defeat all enemies. Your weapons don’t change at all during the course of the game, only your partner and the combo attack you get to use with them. And while Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions does offer new enemy types as you play through the game, most enemy types are encountered around halfway through the game. The game does attempt to give some variety with additional missions, such as defeating enemies using specific obstacles, but there aren’t any rewards for completing these missions.

Exploration

Outside of conflict, you can also explore around Damien’s new family home. There are a few items that are glowing that you can interact with. Most of these items will just generate flavor text, but a few of these will give you a collectable sticker. After you collect a certain number of these stickers, you can unlock harder difficulties of the bosses battles that you’ve completed, for those looking for more of a challenge.

Otherwise, this is pretty much how you collect missions throughout the game. Immediately after entering a new room, you’ll be given a prompt that states that something feels suspicious, giving you the option to go to the source of the issue. From here, Damien will transport himself into his imaginary world to clear through another mission.

Presentation

Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions uses a mix of 2D and 3D art, giving the game a lot of character in the way that it portrays itself. When it comes to the 2D art, there are plenty of manga caps that are used for the partner characters, a nice wink for fans of those particular series. There are several scenes that use a manga art style to illustrate key moments of the story, as well as show Captain Velvet during cutscenes when he’s talking to other characters. There’s also the background in both the real world and Captain Velvet universe, which both look very nice and clean. The 3D models used during combat are alright, but nothing to really write home about.

The music is your standard fare of piano and orchestra pieces. They’re all nice on their own, but nothing truly stands out from the soundtrack altogether. And rather than go the route of full or partial voice acting, the character voices are comprised of gibberish noises, similar to Animal Crossing. It’s a cute addition, although it would have been nice to hear some voices for some of the characters.

Conclusion

Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions is a standard strategy game. It’s not particularly difficult to get through the stages, as just a bit of strategy or cautious playing can make each stage easy. Its biggest downfall is the fact that each stage feels samey and the lack of upgrades means that the stages will feel the same at the beginning that they do at the end.

The story is touching, dealing with a kid whose struggles and frustrations of leaving his home to live in a new country are very real. Watching his journey dealing with challenges around the house was relatable, especially when it comes to solving these challenges mentally before fixing them in the real world. And the touch of manga characters was a nice dash of fanservice for those who like these series and enjoy decent strategy games.