Jump Ultimate Stars

"If you could get past the flaws of this game, you've got yourself a gem."

Now, we've all heard of countless fanfics where the authors attempt to perform a mash up of all kinds of things, be it TV shows, games, animes, mangas, and so forth. Hell, there are even games that attempt to do crossovers, like the game Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. These games and fics may act as nothing but fanservice or may actually hold some significant value. Regardless of the creator's intention, the idea is that somebody thought that it was either an interesting or a good idea to fuse multiple worlds together.

That's why we have this game.

When Jump Superstars first came out, it was phenomenal. That game was a 2D platformer-fighter that is also a mash up of many different mangas that were all licensed under Shonen Jump. The game was fairly successful, and players even went far enough to coin it as the "Super Smash Bros. of the DS."

Years later we now have Jump Ultimate Stars, the same concept except with hundreds more komas to unlock and a larger character foster. Needless to say, this game is an amazing game, originating from the concept of a giant fanservice mash-up.

But, hey, it turned out well. This game is a combination of about 40+ different mangas with 870 komas to unlock total. It is a free-moving, 2D fighter that's similar to SSB yet has an entirely different concept. The battle takes place on various stages to your choosing, and battles involve komas (or panels) that you use to construct your "deck" in order to use for battle.

To battle, you first need to make your deck. Your deck is a 4x5 grid where you place your komas on for use in battle. Each deck require at least one Help Koma (which provide indirect assistance), Support Komas (which momentarily will appear in the battlefield to assist you in any way they could), and Battle Komas (the actual controllable characters you can fight with). That's right. You have to place the battle characters there yourself, since there isn't a character select screen. That means you could have just one, or even four or five different characters at one time! But your skill in battle depends on how well you can utilize your deck.

In battle, there are multiple games you can play. There's Deathmatch, where you simply defeat all of your opponent's Battle Komas to win. There's the Point Game, where you earn as many point as you can by defeating your opponents as many times as you can. And finally, there's the Star Game, where you collect all of the stars that appear to win.

Your Battle Characters duke it out on the screen, and a life bar signifies how much energy your character has left before being defeated. They could also be defeated through ring-outs.

Yeah, this game is similar to SSB as you can pick your best deck you have and duke it out against three other people, but what makes it different is that fact that you can use Help and Support Komas to turn the tide in your favor in battle. Support Komas allows for an infinite possibility of combos you can perform, and Help Komas help you utilize your characters.

Of course, I can only explain the basics of the battle system. What I can't explain is how fun this game is in words.

Except for one major flaw in the battle system. Some characters are made to be downright better than most others. Some are blatantly made to look much weaker than others, if they're placed in the hands of two equally skilled players. This kind of balancing pisses all sorts of people off online.

Moving on, the graphics in this game are rather top-notch, at least for a 2D game. I found the sprites to be rather nice-looking and colorful. Each character has a recognizable distinction, and their attacks are rather flashy and fanciful. But it isn't without its flaws. The game runs terribly when four plays come together, especially when their WiFi is low. That means that your game will start to break down with lag at times, and it's just downright annoying. That's not the only problem: if you look closely, you'll notice that the sprite animations are rather choppy at times and don't flow well. For example, Tsuna's running animation seems to copy Mr. Game and Watch's style of moving. The creators of this game probably had the idea that having all the characters and their respective animation speed along will solve the problem of choppiness. It doesn't.

The music and sound in this game is...bleh. I personally found the music boring and monotonous. As for the sound, it's just as bad. The sound consists of the same punching, blasting, slashing, and a few other sounds played over and over again; they all sound rather dull and unexciting, but I guess you wouldn't notice it in a middle of a fight.

Story? Yeah, let's not cross that line.

Well, the game consists of you going through many different Jump worlds and completing the missions there in order to move on. That's all there is to it. Everything else doesn't really matter.

Now the WiFi is probably one of the biggest selling points of this entire game. What else is more fun than using your favorite characters against other people online? Well, you might think that, but it's far from being as exciting as you might wonder.

If you go online on Random, you're bound to meet at least one of the following in each match:
1. Cheaters
2. Farmers
3. Spammers
4. Cheap Bastards
5. ****ers That ****ing **** Run ****ing Away Whenever You ****ing **** Get ****ing Near Them

Yup.

When each of your battles has at least one of these guys there to ruin your party, it all goes down to Hell. I guarantee it.

But if you are lucky enough to fight against people who are scrupulous enough to...well...fight fair, then you'll have a great time...so long that disconnections and lag don't kill it. And frankly, those good matches don't last long enough.

The alternative is that you could find somebody who plays this game and battle them specifically. Too bad it takes too long to set up and such. Frankly, it's not worth it in the long run.

Thinking about it, if WiFi is such a great factor in this game, you'd think that they'd spend more time improving it. There are plenty of things that they could've done to make this game more enjoyable.

First of all, HACKERS. Dammit, HACKERS. Maybe it can't be helped. Maybe it could. But, Hell, hackers just ruin this game at every moment. If they somehow found a way to fix this, we'd all be fine and dandy.

Random has no lee-way in anything. It's either "Fight-Against-Three-Other-People-Or-Bust" with only one other person. Now, a Four-Way Free For All is fun and all, but not after a while. Why couldn't they give us more variety and options, like 2 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 1? 1 vs. 1 would solve the waiting time and would probably get rid of the problem of farmers if you attack them first.

You're probably wondering why I gave this game a 9/10 despite all the flaws I've listed. This game could obviously be better, and there are some things that downright piss people off, right? Yes, this is the case, but regardless of everything, the game managed to do one thing perfectly: be fun. Sure, WiFi is irritating, game is unbalanced, graphics screw up every now and then, and music is crap. But hey, this game is a blast to play; that's the only reason I got it imported.

I didn't understand a lick of Japanese. Nor was I a fan of fighting games or a hardcore otaku towards anime and manga. But I got this game because it seemed fun and interesting. And frankly, I don't regret buying it. It really it fun, it really does look good, and, when you could get people together to play, it really is a blast to play. If you want a fun game to play, you could get this or not - it's your choice whether it's worth it or not. But I can absolutely promise you that you'll at least have some fun when playing this.

Verdict: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/29/09

Game Release: Jump Ultimate Stars (JP, 11/23/06)