Is Jam actually a interesting character?
Been talking to a friend about what we want for Strive DLC and we both just donāt want Jam
For us Character matters more than gameplay, we both havenāt played her in +R or Xrd cause we both donāt like her story and visuals.
I have liked every character in strive, launch roster + dlc, but to me it feels like Jam would be a wasted slot.
Sorry if that offends anyone but hey, if that does comment why you love Jam and I might change my mind, though again character matters more than movelist to me.
(Also just throwing it out there, my friendās top spot for Strive is Raven, and mine is a Robot modelled after one of the greatest Knights of the Holy Order, Kliff. I want Kliff a lot but heās dead so Iāll settle for a Robo-Kliff)
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Alright I guess as resident Jam Guy I'll give an effortpost on why she's great and why Jam likers like her so much.
She's a very relatable character for anyone who has a creative drive or desire of self-improvement. Anyone who's had a skill they've wanted to improve at has gone through the period of failure and getting to a point where they could stop and no one would blame them for it. Someone like Jam looks at those moments and accepts that failure happens and it's important to keep moving forward anyway. The most important thing to her is her cooking and keeping her dreams of running a restaurant alive, so she'll do that no matter what. That sort of bull-headedness to chase your own happiness no matter what is admirable.
In a story full of characters with angst and pains, she's one of the most level-headed down to earth characters. You have characters who were raised in an orphanage with no upbringing on how to kill people, or immortal men from the Holy Roman Empire who have lost all emotions other than relating to pain, and Jam's the type of character that can bring that into focus. In both her Xrd story mode appearances and her Episode mode, she spends a lot of time with Haehyun and Jack-O just talking to them to bring their problems into perspective. Not to discount that they have problems, but just to make them accept that nothing in life comes without setbacks, and you just have to keep doing what you can do.
She's not perfect, at all. This part is probably the thing I like the most, like, these same positives also can be shown as character flaws. She's stubborn and won't give up her dream of running a restaurant, but this also means she's stubborn and can ignore other people's feelings for her own sake. She's direct and blunt when people need them to be, but she can also be forceful and pushy in other moments. It makes her more of a character to me than a lot of others that exist in the cast who have one note or no real human flaws.
It goes without saying, but I'm aware of all the problematic issues she raises with Chinese representation in a Japanese media product. I feel a lot of people see that stuff up front and immediately ignore anything else about the character because "oh she's just the Chinese Girl Trope." Digging a bit deeper and looking into her (sadly rare) character bits gives more though.
Funnily enough, the main reason I don't think she'll be in Strive has nothing to do with any of that, and more to do with the movesets that OP mentioned. Her kit in a gameplay sense is built around having plus frames and a massive gatling tree, things that don't exist in Strive for the sake of simplifying the cast. Jam's rushdown style of Pure Guilty Gear Offense would be difficult to translate to Strive in that manner.
