"A unique anime fighting game with some odd problems"

In a few words, Jump! Ultimate Stars is Super Smash Melee for anime nerds. A multi-level fighting game that lets you play as your favorite anime/manga characters from Shonen Jump. While the gameplay is fun, it's not completely balanced and is hampered by some other problems.

Graphics: 10/10

Put simply, the graphics for this game are great. They do a good job of representing the characters, and the manga panels (more on this later) look excellent as well. Also, when you first enter each different world, you see a neat little video section of scrolling manga panels from major moments in the story. It's a neat touch and adds style.

Sound: 8/10

The soundtrack for this game is fairly nice. Nothing to write home about, but the music for each stage fits the theme well, and the sound effects work well. The music tends to get slightly repetitive after awhile, though.

Gameplay: 15/20

While the gameplay itself is quite fun and is very unique, it still falls flat in a few areas. Before you can do battle, you have to create a deck. Decks are made on a 5x4 grid, where you can put manga panels. There are different sizes of manga panels (or koma) - 1 panel tiles are help characters that provide passive bonuses but don't show up in battle, 2 or 3 koma panels call out support characters, who show up in battle and perform one attack, then leave. 4-8 koma panels are battle characters, the ones you play as. You're free to arrange the panels as you like - Want a deck that's got a bunch of different battle characters so you'll be invincible in elimination? Sure. Want to make a deck that powers one character up to extreme levels? No problem. The possibilities when creating different decks are endless, leading to plenty of interesting strategy. The one catch is you have to have at least one of each type of tile in a deck. Also, another nice feature is that if you have two characters that are friends or have similar personalities, they'll usually give each other a stat boost. The deck system really works out well - creating new decks is fun and interesting.

When you want to fight, you can duke it out against various other characters on various themed maps. This is where the problems start. While the general gameplay is quite fun, there are a few problems (mainly balance problems) that stop it from being a really good fighter.

The battle characters in general are decently balanced. While some are a good deal more powerful than others, it's not anything gamebreaking. The bigger problem is with supports - there are several supports (which are banned in most tournaments but unrestricted in public play) that come out extremely fast, can be used anywhere, and deal good damage. Any player with no skill at all can use them to break out of a combo, or even open up an enemy for a combo as long as they're not blocking.

Blocking is somewhat overpowered in this game as well. Every regular attack, support, and special (with a few scarce exceptions) can be guarded against. Each character does have a guard break attack, but they're very slow (slow enough that your opponent can hit you out of the attack before you pull it off), and usually can't be comboed, so your opponent can go right back to guarding after taking minor damage.

Then there's the matter of ringouts. The primary way to KO someone is by reducing their health to zero, but knocking them off the level is much, much easier. Oftentimes when you're knocked off the edge, you'll lose control of your character for a second or two, resulting in plenty of cheap deaths. Also, when someone's in the air and trying to get back onto the level, you can just spam ranged moves for a guaranteed KO. Unlike in Super Smash Melee, where getting hit by a ranged attack in the air, you don't get a extra jump, so using ranged attacks over and over again is extremely difficult to counter. Also, when you grab onto the edge, you're in trouble - when you try to come back up, you're completely vulnerable to attack, making edge-guarding even easier.

An interesting feature in the game is the fact that each character has an attribute. Power, Knowledge, and Laughter are the three elements, and they form a rock-paper-scissors relationship of sorts, with power beating knowledge, knowledge beating laughter, and laughter beating power. While this is an interesting addition to gameplay, it doesn't add a whole lot to gameplay - in general, there are a lot of power characters (and many of the best ones are power, as well), and very few laughter characters. It almost makes having a character be knowledge seem like a weakness.

A few abusable glitches exist, as well. While none of them are totally game-breaking, they can really make for an annoying experience if you fight someone who's using them.

In spite of these problems, the actual gameplay is fairly fun, provided nobody is using the really imbalanced characters or supports. Playing as your favorite characters is nice, the character roster is quite large (over 50 playable battle characters), and the fact that supports exist is neat, since it allows characters from non-fighting manga to be used in the game, as well as including many minor characters. The deck-building mechanic is also a nice touch, allowing you to mix and match characters from different manga and create different themed decks.

There are a few interesting other sections as well, like an unlockable quiz mode and descriptions of all the manga. Unfortunately, you really can't do much with these if you can't read Japanese.

Multiplayer: 7/10

The factor of online play is a great thing to have, but a few problems occur with the online multiplayer service. First of all is the random match finder - sometimes it'll find a person or two to play with, then cancel out for no reason and resume searching again. You can't try to build new decks or anything while you're waiting for a match, either. Also, if you meet someone you want to play again, you can't talk to them, add them to your friend list, or even just invite them to another match. Glitch abusing and usage of really imbalanced supports runs fairly rampant online, unfortunately.

If you do have somebody's friend code, though, there are still some problems. When you're playing with friends, one person hosts and chooses the settings, while anyone else that he's exchanged friend codes with can join. Unfortunately, there's no way to contact someone before a game starts, so if you just wanna have an arranged 1v1 match, there's nothing you can do to stop other people from joining. The only thing you can do is leave and reform the room. Even after a match has already started, people with your FC can still join, but if ANYONE leaves, then the room has to be reformed, again. Also, the only way you can communicate is voice chat - there's no text chat at all, which is a bit of an annoyance.

There is an issue with lag, as well. While it's rare, it's definitely noticeable, sometimes it'll freeze up for seconds at a time, and some matches are so slow that you'll swear it's turned into The Matrix. Also, here and there the servers will go down and you won't be able to get online at all, but that's pretty, maybe 2 times a month at most.

Finally, if you don't already know, this game is in Japanese. It's fairly easy to understand with a translation guide, though, and GameFAQs already has a very nice one posted.

So, in overview:

+ Play as your favorite Shonen Jump characters!
+ A really fun fighting game in general
+ Nice graphics and sound
+ Deck building mechanic is fun

- In general, the game isn't very well balanced, so it's more of a casual fighter than a serious one
- The online play system could've been done a lot better
- More expensive then your average DS game, since you need to import it
- The language barrier can be annoying at times

Final Score: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/14/07