Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament

"A good first try, but it needs a lot of improvement"

I first came across this game at Blockbuster, and since I am a Yu Yu fan, I decided to pick it up. I started playing the game, and even though it is fun, I found more minuses then pluses.

Story:
The story of the game is exactly the same as the show. Since I've seen the show, I knew what was going on, and It was cool to see the game's version of the story. The story of Yu Yu Hakusho is about Yusuke Urameshi, and his adventures as the spirit detective. This game is based off of the Dark Tournament arc, which is one of the coolest fighting tournaments in all of anime/manga history. The story is told mostly through anime clips taken from the show, with you playing out the fights. I think the story is really good, but it isn't presented to well in the game
Score: 6/10

Graphics:
This game uses cel-shading, which looks really good. All of the attacks look really cool, and the fighting arenas are well done. If you've seen the show, you can instantly tell who is who, and you can also identify the moves. These are some of the best cel-shaded graphics I've ever seen
Score: 8/10

Music/Sounds:
This is one of the game's weak points. The music is just sort of there. None of the songs from the show made it in, and the only good song is Smile Bomb, which is played on the main menu. All of the other good songs, like the Recap song which is played in the introduction, the sad music, and another song which is played before big battles are only heard in the anime clips. The arenas and the Token Game use some cheap songs that could have been made in about 5 minuets. The songs from the anime are awesome, but this game needs a massive music update.

On the other hand, all of the voices from the show are hear, so that more than makes up for the terrible music. From Yusuke to Younger Togoru, everyone has their voice from the show. Even Sakyo made it in. (And he has an awesome voice.) The voice acting is great in the anime clips, and even better during the fights.
Music Score:3/10
Voice Score:8/10

Gameplay:
The gameplay here is a double-edged sword. instead of using an engine similar to the Budokai games, they use a pretty pathetic fighting engine. The moves are performed easily, but the Spirit Energy bar gets drained way to fast, and there is no way to recharge it. Also, blocking is majorly over-powered. When you block, you take no damage. You life bar doesn't go down at all, nor does your spirit energy. There is also no way to break someone's guard, and grabbing them out of a guard is useless. Another lame deal, are the grabs. Grabbing from behind and grabbing when the opponent is in a guard does nothing, and everyone has the EXACT SAME grab!! Also, some of the combos are cheap, and the computer easily exploits them. The cheap combos, plus the very low life bars, causes battles to end to quickly.

On the other hand, the Token Game is a fun little mini-game, and I like collecting the tokens. Also, Team Battles are really cool. It's like Marvel VS Capcom in 3D. The next Yu Yu game should be a Tag-Tournament only game, since this is the only aspect of the game they got right. (Although, the game lags when your switching characters)
Score:6/10

Replay Value:
Not only is their the normal story mode, but there is an extra story mode that has a few more episodes. There is also all the tokens to collect, and the characters to unlock. (You have to do some really lame stuff to unlock all of the good characters though.) Plus, it's always fun to Team Battle with a friend.

Rent or Buy?:
Give it a rental first. If you liked it while you rented it, then I would recommend that you buy it.

Overall:
A good first try, but they should have spent some time fixing the game engine. The problem with this, is that it gets overshadowed by better fighting games like SC2, Tekken 4, and SSB:M. Hoever, if you are a fan, then I would recommend you at least give this a rental, since it's a good game, it just didn't try hard enough.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/04