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Jack Move review: a bite-sized JRPG that blends Neuromancer with Final Fantasy VIILife hack
Life hack
It cannot be a coincidence that 1997 is a pivotal year in the world ofJack Move. In the game, it’s the year everything went dark in this turn-based Japanese-style RPG, with a solar storm biffing the world’s electronics. It threw the world into chaos, giving rise to the megacorps that now control the dystopian cyberpunk society where our heroine Noa is trying to make a living. In the real world, of course, 1997 was the yearFinal Fantasy VIIcame out, the seminal JRPG that Jack Move owes a great deal to (right down to its menu plink plink sound). Developers So Romantic have said outright that it’s been one of the main inspirations for Jack Move, and its shady corporate powers and grungy urban landscape certainly feel of a piece with ShinRa’s grip on the city of Midgar.
Jack Move – Gameplay Trailer | Steam & Nintendo SwitchWatch on YouTube
Jack Move – Gameplay Trailer | Steam & Nintendo Switch
To be fair, Jack Move has gorgeous presentation throughout, with dense pixel art drawing the eye in all directions as Noa wanders the city, but the flowing elegance of its battle sprites are what truly impress given the tiny size of the studio.
The more you attack, the more you build up your titular Jack Move meter as well, which lets you dole out devastating Limit Break-style specials to everything onscreen. These are pureFinal Fantasy, right down to the three little QTE button prompts you’ll need to perform to determine the overall strength of the attack, and much like saidFinal Fantasy games, they bring a welcome sense of rhythm and flair to the overall flow of combat. Combined with its fluid battle animations and detailed spritework, these cyber clashes are just good, old fashioned fun. They tick all the right boxes in my JRPG brain, and I looked forward to each and every scrap.
The tech chat extends to the rest of Jack Move’s underlying systems as well, as you only have a limited amount of RAM (i.e: slots) to install your software attacks in, for example (thinkResident Evil inventory Tetrismeets Pokémon’s four-way moveset), and you also have a dedicated Hardware menu for equipping three extra ‘expansion’ abilities. These range from specific stat buffs and giving you scanning or counterattack options, and you can even use them to temporarily increase your number of available RAM slots (which you can upgrade permanently if you stump up the cash for them).
You can scan enemies to find their weaknesses, but their colour palette also gives away subtle clues if you want to start battles on the offensive.
The best twist it brings to the Final Fantasy playbook, however, is also sadly its most woefully underused. Your RAM slots may limit the number, type and breadth of attacks you’re able to bring into combat, for example, but you can also opt to give up your turn to ‘install’ other bits of software, effectively allowing you to switch up your battle strategy on the fly. This is such a neat idea, potentially paving the way for tricky, mercurial boss battles that bring the full force of Jack Move’s ability set to bear, but the game’s over-reliance on its basic rock-paper-scissors system meant I never really felt the need to switch up my strategy. Balance issues may be the bug in the system here, as I breezed through a lot of the game with the most basic forms of its three software specials, only switching up to the second tier (of three) about two thirds of the way through – long after I’d met the level gate requirement. On the plus side, I didn’t have to do any grinding during my playthrough -except when I eventually met the final boss, which had such a sharp difficulty spike that ended up taking me well over an hour (and failed several attempts) to actually take down.
Gee, thanks, Sapph1re, don’t hold back…
It’s a shame Jack Move doesn’t make better use of its RAM swaps, but also entirely understandable given the size and scope of the studio. This has largely been a solo endeavour for lead developer Edd Parris over the years, and what’s here is still an admirable achievement given its high level of polish. I just hope So Romantic get to build on these ideas in the future, as Jack Move feels like the start of something special – and certainly a cut above many of theother Japanese-style RPG pretenders I’ve enduredover the years as well. I’d love to see what it looks like with a bit of balance tuning, but it’s still worth a look regardless, especially when there’s afree demoon you can try on Steam. If you’re looking for a small Final Fantasy VII-style fix that will whisk you back to 1997 again beforeCrisis Core - Final Fantasy VII - Reunioncomes out later this year, Jack Move should slot into your gaming library very nicely indeed.
