"Not as good as the original"

Jump! Ultimate Stars is the sequel to the popular DS title Jump Superstars. The premise is that, controlling characters from popular Shonen Jump manga, you travel from world to world (all themed after some playable series in the game) fighting other Jump characters. Ultimate Stars features a vastly expanded roster, more variety in stage layout, and a different system for obtaining new characters. However, the game is hindered by a variety of changes from the original. Some of these changes are large, some are small, but virtually all of them render this game inferior to the original. Aside from the expanded roster, there is little reason to obtain this game if one already has Superstars.

Gameplay: 8/10

The basic gameplay takes place on the top screen, where you control your character in an attempt to knock out or ring-out your opponents. The combo system is basic but fast-paced, and requires experimentation with each character to find what works and what doesn't. The characters all play very differently, and finding characters that match your playing style can take a bit of time. What really makes the game stand out is how the touch screen is used. Before combat, you have to use comic panels of different sizes to construct a page of manga on a 5 by 4 grid. The number of squares (called koma, in Japanese) determines how the character is used. A 1-koma panel is a help character, which grants an automatic bonus to a character of your choice. A 2 or 3-koma panel is a support character, who appears briefly to cause some effect, usually an attack. 4-koma and up are battle characters, who you will carry out the actual fighting with. During combat, this manga page is shown on the touch screen, and to activate a support character or change your battle character, you simply tap on that panel. The more koma a combat character takes up, the more hit points they have and the more damage their Special Attacks do, but it leaves less room for the rest of the page. This deck-building aspect is a large part of what keeps the game interesting and replayable. However, there are rather substantial changes to this game which I think hurts the gameplay. In Jump Superstars, the Help characters were also activated by a touch on their panel, and could heal your characters, or dispel status ailments, or cause any number of beneficial effects. This has been removed, and instead, help characters confer an automatic bonus, usually much less helpful in nature. This goes against the flow of the game, in my opinion, and makes help characters much less helpful, which seems to me to be against the entire point of calling them help characters. Further, the tag-team Special Attack function from the first game, where two characters from your deck could come together to unleash a devastating combined attack, has been removed. Also, while the variety on the stages is nice, some of the more vertically-oriented stages are quite narrow, leaving them feeling somewhat claustrophobic. While this game should be considered on its own merits, it simply cannot do some of the things which its predecessor can do, so it deserves a lower score.

Graphics: 9/10

For a DS title, the graphics are very good. It is easy to pick up small details on the character sprites during combat. The manga panels look very nice, as well, and constructing your own page can make you feel like quite the artist. The effects on the attacks are all large and interesting, and very accurate as to what the characters are actually capable of in their own series. Occasionally, there is a bit of slowdown, but this only occurs when you have multiple characters throwing huge beams of energy across the screen, and it isn't much of a hindrance.

Replayability: 9/10

Provided you make an English-language FAQ your bible, it's great fun trying to unlock every character. To unlock characters, first you must obtain their help koma by fulfilling some mission requirement in one of the levels. Then, using gems you collect during fights and as bonuses after fights, you purchase upgrades in the form of support and battle koma. In addition, some levels must be purchased in this fashion. This is a change from the unlocking method in the first game, but I like that, as it keeps things interesting. What I do not like is actually interacting with the deck-building screen. With the vastly expanded roster, scrolling down the screen to find the character you want can be a little time-consuming. That would be fine, except that if you access your deck without selecting a panel to place in it, it starts you over at the top of the page. So then you get to scroll back down to where you were all over again. This is extremely frustrating at times, especially since the previous game did nothing of the sort. Another problem is actually selecting your deck. Once you've built a deck, chances are you'll want to use it repeatedly to get a feel for it. In Jump Superstars, every time you started a level, the deck you'd just used would be highlighted, making it easy to pick the same deck again. In this game, it starts you off at the top of your list, so you have to scroll through it to find the deck you wanted. Both of these are extremely minor gripes, but I am baffled by the fact that they would actually add things that make their game more frustrating to play, so they bear mention.

Fun: 9/10

This game has a frantic pace, at times. With as many as four characters on the screen, trying to dodge huge beams of energy is hard enough, but when your enemies start using their own support characters, things can get really hectic. The only answer is to fire back yourself, and the act of knocking manga characters around the screen is really incredible fun. Aside from the sheer giddiness one feels when matching up characters from series like YuYu Hakusho, Dragonball, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the game itself plays very well. You have to constantly keep an eye on your health, so you can be ready to tag in another battle character. You have to keep in mind which type (Power, Intelligence, Laughter) your opponents are, so you can use a character that has an advantage over them. And calling in support characters to turn the tide has a great feel to it. In addition, the walls are all destructible, so if knocking an opponent out is getting too hard, simply blast a hole in a wall and send someone out of the ring. The only thing which I feel holds the game back from being as fun as the original is the way help characters are handled. Other than that, once you're actually playing, the game is a blast.

Overall: 8/10

First things first: this game is great. It isn't "bad" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a lot of fun. But aside from the larger roster (and really, the roster is huge), pretty much every change that was made from Superstars either makes this game worse or doesn't improve it at all. I don't feel changing the size and shapes of the levels adds much, since the levels in the first game felt perfect to me. The new method of unlocking characters also seems like a lateral move, no better or worse than the method in the first one. What really soured me on the game is what was done to the help characters, and while I know I've mentioned it multiple times in this review, it really makes me angry. While adding an automatic effect to a character (like the ability to triple-jump) is nice, it should have been implemented as a choice, leaving the old system in place as well. As it is, I'm left with the feeling that I've been robbed of my ability to heal my characters. Also, there are the minor issues of using the menus which I mentioned earlier. If you already owned the first one, chances are you're a huge manga fan, and you're willing to put up with these problems to get the bigger roster. I also fall into that category, and am glad I purchased it. Having access to Fist of the North Star, Saint Seiya, and Houshin Engi characters really puts a smile on my face. But the fact of the matter is that this game is not as good as the original, and when I'm done unlocking everything in this game, I'll probably go back to Superstars. If you don't own either of these games yet, I would recommend the original, as it plays more smoothly and has none of the frustrating quirks this game has.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/07