Jack Move: A beautiful Cyberpunk JRPG

For many years, the term “JRPG” was used to distinguish RPGs of Japanese origin with distinct characteristics such as turn-based battles, anime-inspired narratives, and anime art style. With the expansion of the style, the JRPG evolved into its own genre in the gaming industry.

In the midst of this, Jack Move emerged. An 80s cyberpunk-themed JRPG developed by the Indie company SoRomantic.

Jack Move is a JRPG with a narrative and setting themed in a Cyberpunk universe, with gameplay focused on exploration and turn-based combat, pixel art aesthetics, and animation.

The game heroine is Noa Solares, who earns her living as a hacker who fights against the megacorporation Monomind, the company that dominates the dystopian world of Jack Move.

Charismatic Characters and Captivating Gameplay

Jack Move is a game that surprises with its beautiful pixel art, which presents a Cyberpunk world inspired by works from the 1980s, such as the films “Blade Runner” and “Akira”, and contains many neon colors and night scenes.

But unlike these works, the protagonist Noa brings a much more cheerful vibe to the game, due to her incredible humor and lively personality, which deals with complicated situations with positivity and a lot of banter. At the same time, Jack Move does not fail to touch on subjects commonly dealt with in this type of narrative, such as the concept of immortality in virtual reality, racism, prejudice, oppression, and tyranny.

Controlling Noa, you’ll explore the city of BrightTown, looking for ways to make a living as a hacker, aided by your friend Ryder and your uncle Guin. Both characters help Noa with tactical and moral incentives, mainly against the megacorporation Monomind, which is the main focus of the plot.

The interaction between Noa, Ryder, and Guin generates many funny scenes due to the naturalness of their relationship; this is a very positive point because your live stream audience will have some good laughs during your gameplay.

In the midst of the entire battle against Monomind, you will explore several dungeons full of all kinds of enemies for you to face, such as bandits, bullies, police, Monomind security guards, and many other types of beings that are part of Cyberspace.

This variety of enemies can be a positive point for you to engage with your audience, since after combats you can discuss with them, for example, which enemies were more challenging or which ones had the most charismatic designs.

One of Jack Move‘s strongest points is found inside Cyberspace: the Battle System.
Combat is a traditional JRPG system: turn-based battles with equipment systems (here called “Hardware”), a spell-like system (called “Software”), an item system (called “Patch”), and supreme skills, called “JACK MOVE”,  which are super powerful skills that usually hit in an area of effect and help at critical moments.
This variety and simplicity of the system are aided by a great in-game tutorial, allowing for easy understanding during gameplay.

A perfect JRPG to play on the Live stream

For this review, the PC version from Steam was analyzed.
Almost any setup allows you to live stream Jack Move with ease.

There is a very strong quality in Jack Move for anyone interested in live streaming: It is not a long game, unlike what JRPGs tend to be.
It is possible to complete Jack Move in 10–15 hours of gameplay. And this is possible because there are no stops in the story; it is direct, concise, and complete.

And due to Jack Move‘s great progression, you don’t have to spend hours worrying about making your team stronger, as the game doesn’t focus on that. The progression system allows you to be properly strong as long as you play the minimum number of fights the game provides.

Another very strong point is the great localization in many languages that the game has. The languages are English, Russian, German, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish (Latin America), Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. This allows you to easily engage your audience with great storytelling and demonstrate Noa’s incredible charisma during live gameplay.

Alexandre Gaara

Anime lover, Specialized Reviewer and Game Platinator