Jack & Bella 5

The logo of the game. ジャック＆ベラ5 | Jakku & Bera 5

***Jack & Bella 5*** (***ジャック＆ベラ5** Jakku & Bera 5*, lit. "Jack & Bella 5") is a dungeon crawler action role-playing game developed by Round 1 Industries and published by Imaginate.

*Jack & Bella 5* is marked as the final *Jack & Bella* game before creators Luke Robinson and Yoji Tokonaki end the series and separate each other after leaving Imaginate.

As a properly direct sequel to the fourth game, *Jack & Bella IV*, the 5th continues the adventures of Jack and Bella, along with their friends Freddy and Arsia. As they discover a magical tunnel outside of the city of Capital Boundarier, they ended up in a mysterious version of CB filled with supernatural enemies known as the Nightmarians, lead by Master Xalvandar. With that, Jack, Bella and their friends must save the world one last time before Xalvander makes everything gloomy and scary.

The game was released in August 8th, 2020 and a demo version was released in June 30th, 2020, prior to *J&B5*'s release.

## Gameplay

Inspired by classic dungeon crawler games such as *Diablo* and *Torchlight*, players will constantly discover new weapons and items that are used to fend off against Nightmarians (Creatures in the Japanese version). Players will traverse nighttime cities, snow biomes, and lava lands on a quest to defeat Xalvander. Players can play alone or with a group of up to four players. They can play on local multiplayer or play with friends online. It has been hinted that there will be challenging puzzles that unlock secret dungeons and possibly the entrance to the nether or end hidden in one of the levels.

If the party deals a critical damage or deals damage that the enemy is weak to, the enemy may be knocked down for an 'Team Up Scuffle' which deals a large amount of damage. All party members can obtain new moves, known as Marvels Ways, by controlling the characters manually and defeating enemies. If all active party members are knocked out in battle, the game ends.

## Development

After the financial failure of *Jack & Bella IV*, the team of Round 1 Industries need to find a way to get fans back into the series with a better and proper installment. And with that, the game will be marked as the final game for the series with a new gameplay and a better story. The development of the game began in February 2019, shortly after the release of the fourth game.

## Plot

The story begins with Bella running and fighting with the Nightmarians until she flash attack a flying Nightmarian, make it to the ground safely and lets the flying Nightmarian explode to purple fire and ash. Nightmarian securities came to stop Bella from rescuing Jack and Bella has to choice but to fight against them. Furthermore, more enemies starts to appear until they ran from her for being scared (in which they didn't after this prologue). Bella looks at the blue moon and says that she's coming for Jack.

After the prologue and 12 months after of the events of *Jack & Bella IV*, school is out for Spring Break for a special 3 weeks prior. Jack and Bella, along with Freddy and Arsia can now rest from hard work until they both discover a new mysterious game on their Dreamlock called Nightmareworld that is for free. However, they want to save it for tomorrow. The next day, they went on to a private park with their Dreamlock and decided to download the game already without any explanation. After the download was complete for 7 minutes straight, they start up the game and they was interrupted by a rather jumping and sparkling blue sewer. The 3 (except for Arsia) jumps in and sled into another dimension, in which Freddy thinks that the game made them appear in this dimension. They soon got spotted by Master Xalvander and his Nightmarian Securities and they decided to arrest them until the team decided to fight, only to be saved by Arsia. The 4 teenagers escaped safely to the real world and are now beginning to face against another quest.

Moments and 3 weeks later, the team now fights with Xalvander in the real world, where the nightmarians are causing havoc around Boundarier. Xalvander become Mutant Xalvander after defeating him and it's the only way for the team to finally beat Xalvander. After another loss, he is now about to self destruct himself, alongside Boundarier. The team tried to stop him but it didn't work, until Arsia came and holds him tight to make a workable loving barrier around Xalvander and saying goodbye to Jack, Bella and Freddy, leaving a happy smile and tear coming out of her eye. Afterwars, Arsia died, along with Xalvander, thus making his nightmarians disappear into ash. Bella cries in sadness and Jack made her feel better with a red rose, with the team going back to the ground and missing Arsia forever.

Months after the victory, Jack and Freddy graduated and went off to college. After 3 months of Summer and a new school year starting in September, Bella was nervous being by herself until she manage to find nice friends. After greeting her new friends, she tells them her the story of how 4 friends manage to save Boundarier, thus ending the game with a fin.

## Reception

*Jack & Bella 5* received universal acclaim than the previous game. IGN gave it a 8/10 saying that "Although *Jack & Bella IV* didn't get the love it deserves, Jack & Bella 5 is a game you may want to pick up and give it a high '**five**' for a finale". Metacritic scores the game a 94/100% on the Dreamlock. GalacticGamer gave the game 10/10 ★s and says "***The game didn't ended with demons and nightmares, but it ended with a wonderful dream of sadness and joy***". EGM gave it a 7.7/10. Destructoid gave it a 8/10. Huneykune gave it a charming score with a 50/50. Famitsu gave it a 32/40. SurferReviewer gave the game 9/10 dots (・) and calls *Jack & Bella 5* " a game with so much charm, atmosphere, moments and feelings than a crappy, sexual *Jack & Bella IV*".

The game won at the Top 5 Imaginate Best Dreams Games live stream and it now belongs to the library of Best Dreams games on the Dreamlock and Neo Reo.

## Characters

This is the list of characters that appears in this game:

 Bella
 Freddy
 Arsia
 Xalvander

## Elph Wonderworld

A new DLC mode was added to the game known as Elph Wonderworld was released in September 4th, 2020. It features Bella and returning Earick as they must help a race of human elphs to defeat a new villain named Infire, who causes wildfire and blaze through fields and areas. Thus, a new hero comes in named Heather The Elph.

In the ending, Heather thanks Bella and Earick's help and returns to her home village. Afterwards, Bella and Earick graduates from high school and moved on with their lives. Some years later after college, eventually, Bella gets to meet Jack again.

The Elphs have both male and female genders and the males dress appropriately while some females dress half appropriate and half inappropriate (for example Heather and her friends). Not only there are good Elphs but there are bad ones as well.

Elph Wonderworld received mix to positive reviews, despite having dress code problems.

## The Final Frontier

Main article: *Jack & Bella 5: The Final Frontier*

## Trivia

* This is the final game of the series before Robinson and Tokonaki leaves Imaginate and separate each other.
* The ESRB rating of this game is M where it features Language, Sexual Themes, Partial Nudity, Blood, Violence, Suggestive Themes and Use of Alcohol.