"Fighting with the Stars"

Jump Ultimate Stars has been lauded as the one of the best Japanese import-only DS games. While it is a good game, it is not as great as some people would lead you to believe.

Jump Ultimate Stars is a fighting game similar in spirit as Super Smash Bros Melee. You can use your own selected characters, or komas as called in this game, to attempt to knock out / ring out your opponents. The battle stages are littered with items that may hurt or benefit your characters. You can choose to play in the single player campaign or participate in Wifi battles with people around the world.

The single player campaign mode requires the player to complete missions. Each mission contains objectives that you need to achieve. The story in the campaign is forgettable and basically unimportant. The reason you want to play the campaign is because you need it to unlock characters. The idea of unlocking fighting characters is an irresistible feature that makes you go “one more round”. It is incredibly rewarding when you are able to design your own fighting deck using your unlocked komas.

Speaking of komas, this game covers over 40 manga series. This is every anime fan's wet dream. I grew up with lesser known animes such as Dr. Slump, Captain Tsubasa and Kinnikuman so it is nostalgic for me when I see these characters on screen. The legendary Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya are included, as well as the newer anime series like Bleach, One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh! The amount of characters available in the game is massive, and the battle characters all have impressive moves that are consistent with their characters. For example, Ayale's poo attack brings a smile to me every single time.

In terms of the actual battle system, however, it's disappointingly shallow. When battling against the AI, it's not very entertaining. Simply put, the AI of this game is abysmal. For example, some missions require you to RO your opponents in a given time. But you probably don't need to do anything to achieve it – because your opponents are stupid enough to commit suicide by self defenestration off the battle area. There are a variety of missions that require you to achieve different goals, but after a while they become boring. It turns into a chore when you have no one but the AI to play with. For a portable game, the poor AI is a significant flaw.

When you are tired of playing against the pitiful AI, you can bring your own custom-make fighting deck to Wifi battles. This is a welcome feature because of there are seemingly infinite deck combinations that you can bring to the online battle. Realistically, however, only a small handful of komas can be used online if you want to win consistently. The reason is that a small number of battle/support komas are head and shoulder ahead of other komas. Some of the komas are deemed so overpowered by the veteran players, that they ban those komas from being selected in their games. Simply put, Jump Ultimate Stars is designed as a party game that you can have fun with. But if you are thinking about a game that has balanced gameplay, forget about it. Jump Ultimate Stars should not be taken as a serious fighting game. It's not a bad thing per se, it's just that potential buyers need to be aware of it before they purchase the game.

As for the Wifi performance, the lag is generally acceptable, especially if you don't take the game too seriously. The good Wifi performance is actually no small feat, considering that many current DS games fail to do Wifi well . Due to Wifi, Jump Ultimate Stars has very high replay value.

Technically, the game looks good and sounds good. The sound effects are appropriate for a fighting game, and the special attacks sound pretty good. As for the visual, the stages are fairly well designed, and the battle characters are expertly animated. I do notice significant lag (not online) when there are a lot of actions going on in the screen. On a serious fighting game, the lag is unforgivable because it messes up your timing. But for Jump Ultimate Stars which is targeted to the casual players, the lag is probably ok.

Jump Ultimate Stars is a Japanese-text heavy game. You WILL NEED a translation guide just to figure out what you need to do in your mission. Fortunately for us, Gamefaqs has plenty of guides that can aid. However, I know that a lot of casual gamers will be slightly turned off by the need to read guides when playing a portable game. In short, this game will not please everyone. You know who you are.

All things considered, Jump Ultimate Stars is a good game that is worth a try if you have a passing interest in manga. The poor AI and the boring single player campaign are glaring drawbacks that keep the game from achieving greatness. However, one can overlook those drawbacks because of the dearth of similar action games for the DS. The awesome amount of available characters as well as its Wifi capability make this game a dream comes true for animation fans.

Gameplay 7/10
Value 9/10
Tilt 10/10

Score: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/07