Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament

"For fans of the series only"

After months of anticipation Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament is finally out for the ps2. Before this game came out many comparisons to Dragon ball z Budokai have been made because of screen shots. Yu Yu Hakusho does have many similarities to Dragonball z but this game plays nothing like that game. This game is better off for doing so and I think it would have ruined the gameplay. Read on.

Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament plays like your average fighting game. You got round house kicks, leg sweeps, punches, uppercuts etc. You can even use the same spirit attacks you saw on the show which is a real big plus. You would think this would be a solid fighter with all of the basic fighting moves but its not very good. There is lag when you input combo commands and if you miss it leaves you wide open. That is big problem since the life bars in this game is way to short. Two combos that connect can finish you in just fifteen seconds tops. That is a real problem the first couple of times you play this game. This game is really hard at first when you play it so you will be beaten a lot of times before actually winning. A mini game has been included with the fighting and its average at best. All you do is place tokens on a board and see if you have the higher number when the game is over.

If you are not familiar with Yu Yu Hakusho I will give you a little back story. Yu Yu Hakusho is about a troubled teen named Yusuke Urameshi who saves the life of a young boy at the cost of his own. He is rewarded with a chance to come back to life and he succeeds. His task was not done yet as after he was revived he was able to see demon spirits which puzzled him. He is later told that he has the potential to become spirit detective. From there the series has Yusuke and his rival Kurabara teaming up to take down powerful demons. Yusuke and Kurabara defeat a powerful demon named Togoro but the battle was not over yet. Yusuke is then greeted by Torgoro with a demand to enter the Dark Tournament. Yusuke had no choice but to accept and the game lets you pick up from there.

Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament has some of the best cel-shading I have seen in a game. The characters really do look exactly how they looked in the anime. You can even tell by early screenshots of this game that it was going to look good. Each special move has been faithfully recreated in this game. Yes, even the moves look like how they looked in the anime. You can also do damage to each arena in the game in real time. That was the cool things about the graphics, here is the bad. On certain stages the frame rate starts to drop and makes the combat look really slow. Also the characters show no emotion on their faces when they are getting hit. Even Budokai had characters showing emotion. Now the battle music in this game isn't so great either. It could have been way better.

The games main story mode can take up to 4 hrs to beat. Other than that this game has tremendous replay value. After completing the games main story mode you are encouraged to go back through the enhanced version of it. Even after that you still have to do many things to unlock all of the games secrets. It could possible take weeks before you have everything. Its very rare to see this much replay value in a game.

Yu Yu Hakusho is worth a look at if you are a fan of the series. I think that is who this game was made for. Other than that hardcore fighting fans won’t really get much out of it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/04