Judging by a quick google search to TIG Forums, Jack Move has been in development a very long time. And it seems it's gone through a lot of changes. That's a good thing, because the First Hour demo of this game is really, really good.
Jack Move is a self-described Cyberpunk JRPG. And so far this seems to fit quite well. The Cyberpunk aesthetic is on and the turn based battles and story fit the JRPG mold. In the demo you are infiltrating an office to steal some data. It never really says what the data is but later hints toward some images a celebrity might not want linked ;).
The main character, Noa, is led remotely through comms by a sidekick named Ryder. He tells her where to go and hacks into stuff.
Predictably there are guards and alarms and battles and a daring escape. It's all done quite well and the dialog is nice and tight even if the plot pratically writes itself.
The battles are up to modern standards: turns indicator, resource management, elemental type strength/weakness attacks, an "ultimate" move builder. The most amazing thing though is how good the animations look and feel. I didn't expect much going into the first battle but I was blown away by the time I got to using my "Jack Move" the first time.
If there's one thing to nit at, it's that you could replace every cyber punk word with a fantasy word and it wouldn't change function or behavior. For example, software modules (spells) use up data (mana) to inflict typed (elemental) attacks. I think there's some creative ways to use cool tech words but also have behavior that fits closer, using cooldowns or overloads, or requiring enough watts to do two things at once.
There is a cool aspect I haven't seen in other games though. The character essentially has a skill loadout limited by how much RAM is installed in the "Deck". Here's the new part: you can spend time in combat reprogamming the RAM if you need to change. This comes at a cost of a turn but could be incredibly useful in the right battle.
Overall, I can't wait to play this game when the full version is out. If the story turns out great, I think this will shape up to be a top tier genre entry or 2022.
