"Great import, but after awhile..."

Gameplay: 8
Everything about playing this game is great. Building decks creates a limitless number of possibilities, and although there are commonly used deck combinations, while playing with friends, every match is a little bit different. However, if you don't have access to wifi, the games value immediately drops. This is definitely a game made for wifi.

I noticed some major frame rate drops when things got crazy, and I'm not talking about wifi, this was in game against computers. The lag while playing on wifi is nearly unbearable, and takes at least 5 minutes to adjust to after playing other games.

The controls were intuitive after 10 minutes, and I liked the fact that there were no real "combos", and everything just flew seamlessly. But after awhile, you have so many characters and supports and help komas that you just don't know what to do with them all, and you don't get the chance to play as half of them.

Graphics: 9
The sprites in this game accurately represent their respective mangas, and leave little to disappoint, and I definitely liked the colored manga pieces used for the komas. However, the stages really disappointed me when it came to graphics, the backgrounds ended up being just some bland platforms with a few moving pictures in the background.

Music: 6
The music was mediocre, at first some of the tunes were decent and catchy, but after the millionth time hearing the same music, it was just annoying. there were about 3 songs that you heard constantly though the menus, and then each stage "technically" had its own theme, but once again, after your millionth time playing through any stage, you end up just turning the volume off and enjoy the silence.

Story: ??
I admit that I know no Japanese, but from what I understand, the main villain from Dr. Slump has stolen all the pages from Shonen Jump, and YOU are left with the responsibility of reclaiming them. Since I can't understand it, I'm not going to rate it.

Replay value: 7
After I beat the campaign, play wifi for awhile, and unlock about 3/4ths of the characters, I really started to get bored, and can't play more than a few matches until I just shut off my DS in boredom. While that seems like very little, it's actually quite a bit, as to get everything in the campaign is at least 10 hours, and then there are 300~ characters, each with at about 3 komas, that's quite a feat to behold.

Final Value: 7
If you like manga, and you like super smash brothers style games, then this is an automatic buy. However, for joe shmoe who can't tell Ichigo from Lysol, then they might want to borrow it from their local Otaku buddy before paying the extra twenty dollars in import fees.

Pros:
+ SSBM feel
+ Incredibly Long
+ Cool to play manga characters in a game that isn't a money grabber
+ Great WiFi setup

Cons:
- Frame rate issues
- there was just too much to do
- If you can't read japanese then it will take a little while to learn the menus
- Not much of a real online community for this game

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/07, Updated 02/09/07