Jump Ultimate Stars

Review by: Delfeir

Reviewers Score: 9 / 10

Posted: May 27, 2007

Jump Ultimate Stars
System: Nintendo DS
Genre: Fighting
Difficulty: Medium
Score: 9/10

Japan is often heralded as the Mecca of the video gamers. First and foremost, though, it is the Mecca of the Otaku. The birthplace of anime, and the birthplace of manga. How fitting, then, that this Japanese import game epitomises everything great about two of the biggest geek cultures to arise from the country. A vast collection of the characters and settings from one of the most well-known manga magazines in the country, Shonen Jump, have been assorted and collectively thrown into a Dairantou Smash Brothers style fighting game for your enjoyment. Sound interesting? You have no idea...

Graphics (9/10)

Crisp, colourful, vibrant, and pleasing to the eye. That's a brief summary of the graphics in this game. The characters are all reasonably different and original on-screen, and it's usually easy to tell who's who at a moments glance. Likewise, there are treats for the anime lovers in the crowd, since most if not all of the Koma (more on those in the Gameplay) depict moments right out of the various stories and series they're taken from. These make the jump pretty well too, so overall you should find the graphics to be pretty sweet... assuming you don't mind 2D.

I must detract one point, however, because the graphics get so utterly frantic that at times it really does seem impossible to tell what's going on. At the same time, the amount of objects on the screen can cause a bit of minor slowdown from time to time. But it really shouldn't detract from your enjoyment... I mean, it's just the graphics.

Storyline (-/10)

In case you hadn't realised, this game contains a mesh of characters from dozens of different manga. In the West, manga is popular... but not as popular as it is in Japan. As such, plenty of these guys come from series that we've never even heard of, so translating the game would not be a worthy investment. The game is entirely in Japanese, and since my knowledge of the language is transitory at best, I have no clue if there is a story. However, if there is one, it is not needed for the full enjoyment of this game.

Gameplay (10/10)

At the core of the game lies a typical 2D fighting game. You and your opponent get dropped into the stage and the aim is to drop their health gauge to zero before they do the same to you. Jump expands this a little... the stages are not flat stretches of land, they're multi-tiered and loaded with platforms to dodge and dance around on. And they're all styled after manga pages... and sometimes you're allowed to break the limits. See a wall there? Not a problem, you can just bash it repeatedly until you can escape the page. Then you have the freedom to blast your opponents out of the ring and into oblivion.

To make matters more interesting, we have a large array of items that appear throughout the course of the battle, all instant pickups and all ranging from good to bad. Some items might heal you, others might poison you, others might reverse the directions of your controls for a while, and others may buff or lower your stats briefly. Still others may be bombs that wipe out a chunk of the health of everyone nearby, and others may be Koma gems, which I'll explain briefly. So it's a pretty crazy fighter, and every character out there has all sorts of different moves. Everyone can jump twice, has a few basic attacks, a few strong attacks, and two special attacks that do a lot of damage. Mixing them up and figuring out combos is all part of the fun.

And all this is the battle system in JUST the stage. There's a lot more that comes into play even before you pick the stage and get to battling. The main adventure part of the game is a mission based ordeal called J-Universe. You start out presented with three worlds. Checking those worlds reveals that each is made up of another handful of worlds, each based on an individual manga - the early ones include One Piece, Dragonball Z, Black Cat, D.Gray-man, and many others. Every world has a mission on it, and usually more. And every mission has five or six objectives for you to complete. Just finishing the first nets you the mission clear status that you need to unlock the next in the chain, but all of them have bonuses. You can win either more Koma gems, or even the Koma themselves. Check the next paragraph for that explanation. But anyway, completing all the missions in one world clears that, and beating ALL the missions available in ALL the worlds? That opens up another few worlds for you to explore, which is just as full of missions. This is what you'll be doing for much of the single player experience, but it's so varied and so much fun.

To explain what I mean about setting up the game before the battle, let me explain the Koma. The entire universe of the game is set up like the manga pages that the characters are taken from. The Koma deck that you use to battle is set up just like that, too. From the start, you'll get five Koma - two Battle Koma, one Support Koma, and two Help Koma. There are arranged into a 5x4 deck that you can customise and shape. Battle Koma are playable characters - they're pretty big and take up a lot of space, so most decks have from one to three of these. Support moves are moves that you can call up in the actual battles to deliver a powerful attack for you. Help Koma each provide passive effects that you can attach to your characters by arranging them in certain ways on the Koma deck. To expand your Koma deck, you have to win missions and rake in the Koma from there.

But there's a catch. Every Koma you win is just a passive Help Koma. In order to get the truly interesting stuff, like new characters and support attacks? You have to evolve your Koma. Each Koma starts out as a Help Koma and has a pathway that it can follow. This usually has a couple of tiers to it, all of which are blocked out at the start. Paying Koma gems, however, unlocks these. Most characters can then get extra Support Koma (no Koma is replaced, you just buy new ones in effect), and some select few become Battle Koma. A few rarer ones do other things... they unlock Quiz questions, unlock new stages, unlock data for use in the sound test, and even unlock a handful of new worlds to try out in the main adventure.

Some rare few even unlock new pathways on OTHER Koma. Just about every Battle Koma has a few versions to choose from when building your deck, and the more spaces it takes up, the stronger the stats and the better the specials are. By default you can access the first three on most characters, but these are all moderate changes. In order to get the truly powerful characters and their alternate forms, you need to find the right Koma and unlock the expanded pathway. Want Goku to go Super Saiyan? Have Naruto become part fox-demon? Have Ichigo unleash Bankai? Then you need to find the right path on the other Koma to expand them. Once you've built up your deck - which has to contain one of each kind of Koma - you're ready to go into the battles that I've previously described. The system is fairly simple when you get right into it, and there's so many things to unlock that it'll keep even the RPG nuts in the crowd happy.

Still not interested? Well, it's usually more than just beating your foe senseless. You may have to collect and hold a special item for a set length of time. You may need to collect several items and be the first to hold them all. You may need to grab the most coins, that are dispensed from item boxes scattered around. You may have to kill people in a specific manner - using your special attacks, knocking them out of the ring, or bringing one of your Support Koma into play to finish them off. Sometimes you may even have to avoid getting hit... or destroy ALL the walls in the stage. There's a lot of variety in the objectives, and you'll come across a whole bunch of them in your journey through the game.

This is NOT a generic fighter. This is the closest thing we have to a new Smash Brothers game (notice how I keep bringing that up?) since the early days of the Gamecube, and it's all handheld. Simply put, the gameplay is well thought out, there's a vast amount of variety, and the replay factor is huge. My only complain is that some of the objectives can (very rarely) be difficult or a little frustrating... but this is a very rare case, and certainly not enough to detract from the fun of the other 500. If this sounds AT ALL interesting to you, then odds are you will adore the gameplay of this.

Longevity (10/10)

There is so much to do and so little time to do it. You start off the game with just two characters playable - Luffy from One Piece, and Uzumaki Naruto from Naruto. Coupled with the support of three other characters that aren't playable right from the start, you go into the game and get to work. And start unlocking more. And more. And MORE. Every world in the game has at least one, but usually two to four missions to complete. Each mission has five objectives, and sometimes a hidden sixth objective. And every single one of those objectives gives you stuff - either gems for enhancing your Koma, and thus expanding the abilities of or even unlocking entirely new characters, or getting completely new Koma... which can ALSO be expanded. At a rough guess? There's over 40 worlds in this game. You do the maths... there's a hell of a lot to do, and it's often challenging enough to keep you at it for a time. As well as this, there are a bunch of extra missions that are included on the side that don't contribute anything, as well as battling against computers or even getting a quiz on the manga in question.

And if you don't like all that single player? There's a lot of multiplayer capacity in there. Single-card play is enabled, although it is minimal - you fight with preset rules using a few pre-built Koma decks, which is okay for a while but really makes you want to buy additional copies. If you have additional copies? You have all your Koma unlocked and your decks at the ready. Don't have anyone close by to play with? It's Wi-Fi compatible, so you can find a rival on the internet. And there's a lot of people playing the game of all skill levels - I checked this myself - so you should be able to find something there.

So... yeah. I think this game has a long lifespan. Just like Smash Brothers (again), you'll be at it repeatedly.

Innovation (5/10)

This isn't a game that you can immediately say 'hey, this is completely original and changed the world'. In my introductory paragraph I compared it to a very similar game - Super Smash Bros. A slew of characters from all elements of the one company come together to beat the hell out of each other. However, this games' predecessor Jump Superstars was the first that I know of to truly do this with anime characters, and they both do a great job. Additionally, the Koma system is reasonably fresh and interesting, and helps give the game points in this area. There aren't too many like this one out there, and that gives it a mildly original spin. Lastly, you use the touch screen to switch between characters or call on support attacks, so that gets some use as well.

Overall (9/10)

This game is utterly brilliant. It's an interesting system, it's a great deal of fun, there's a lot to keep you busy in both single and multiplayer endeavours. So why not a perfect 10? Because, sadly, the the language barrier does make it a little too difficult to fully enjoy for everyone. I know from experience that playing in a foreign language is difficult in most games, even if this is simple enough to get used to. If you don't mind the language barrier, however, then this is at the TOP of the import list for the DS. Odds are that you will enjoy this game. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to playing...

Worth Buying?: If you know Japanese or don't mind about a language barrier and just want raw fun? This is a DEFINITE yes. Otherwise, be picky, but definitely consider it.

f you liked this, try: The previous game, Jump Superstars, isn't quite as large and intense as this one, but it does do a good job. For English games, however? The Super Smash Bros games have you covered.