Review Jump! Ultimate Stars Review

GameSoul

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<div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Foremetor/Jump_Ultimate_Stars_boxart.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></div>


Fighting fans and anime fans rejoice! The sequel for Jump Super Stars to exceed the Jump! Stars series, is Jump Ultimate Stars, which has included Nintendo Wi-Fi to allow online play. This is a fighting game that holds the universe of 'Weekly Shonen Jump' magazine characters and is the second Jump! Stars game developed by Ganbarion. Jump Ultimate Stars has literally hundreds of characters from 30+ Jump series, yet only a fraction of them are playable. Due to licensing issues, this game will never be released outside of Japan. If you have a flashcart, you may patch the rom made by the JUS Translation Project that offers enough translation to play.

The translation patch can be found <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=71200" target="_blank">here</a>.


<b>Gameplay</b> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->8/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->

New manga series, new characters, and tons more plus Wi-Fi! Did I mention that Shonen Jump fighting games aren't your typical pick a character and beat-em-up games? You must build decks with battle characters, support characters, and help characters with a bit of strategy to win!

<div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Foremetor/PA63638008.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></div>

Three types of battles are available in this game. There's Point Battle in which you must collect the most points to win. If there is a tie, the players who are tied go to Sudden Death, which is a small platform without walls. If you die or fall off the platform, you lose. There may be occasions when there can be more than one winner if time runs out in Sudden Death. The second type is Deathmatch, which is the standard rules for fighting. Last character standing wins! If time runs out you go to Sudden Death. The last type is J-Symbols. Collect all the J-Symbols from each opponent to win! If a character dies, they will lose all of the J-Symbols they have (if any), and the J-Symbols will appear on the stage for anyone to take. If there is a tie, the players go to Sudden Death.

The stages that you fight in are created from scenarios in manga series, and a few are made exclusive for the story. Some stages have borders that look like the pages of a comic book which is pretty cool. Most walls of stages can be broken and if you fall off the "page" you will die, lose points, etc.

Now for the strategy in Jump Ultimate Stars. There are many elements in the gameplay that adds strategy to any battle. You have the natures of battle komas (panels), which are Laughter, Strength, and Knowledge. Laughter beats Strength, Strength beats Knowledge, and Knowledge beats Laughter. For instance, if your character has the Laughter nature, damaged is increased when fighting a Strength-natured character and their damage is decreased. However, you will have a hard time with Knowledge-natured characters as they deal more damage to you, and your damage is decreased when fighting them. Knowing this is crucial if you want to win, and you may have the upper hand in battle.



In total there are 8 different game modes to choose from the main menu.

<div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Foremetor/82b2kw9.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></div>

There is Adventure mode, in which you explore the J-Universe in order to gather the scattered komas throughout space! You are greeted by Jump Pirate to help him gather the missing komas! This where you start with a deck of Naruto and Luffy, and your first support character that is Goku's Kamehameha Wave. After learning the basics of fighting and battle, you are off to start your epic adventure. Travel to the worlds of J-Universe and beat the missions there to clear it and rescue komas. The missions get harder and harder, so you will have to practice a bit to really get the flow of the game. Remember, there will be boss fights at unknown worlds!

The next one is the J-Arena, which lets you take part in your very own tournaments, battle, train and allows you to play missions you unlock in J-Universe. If you happened to have downloaded a player's deck from Wi-Fi, you can have the AI control the deck for you to fight against.

Following up is Multiplayer. In this section you can battle with Multi-card play, Single-card play (pre-set decks will be given), and online play. Fight random people online or grab someone's Friend Code for a few battles! You trade decks wirelessly by the use of exchange or passwords, or battle it out with a 20-question quiz! Hehe.

The next mode is the Jump Quiz! Test yourself on how much you know about JUMP! You are able to choose which set of random questions you would like to answer by 10, 30 and even 50! Try to get the highest record you can without any screwups! No pressure.

Deck selection is where you do all deck creating. Your deck is plotted on a 4x5 grid. The "cards" of the deck aren't cards at all. They are actually like cut-outs from their comic books and they each show the expression and appearance they had from that moment of time they were "cut out". The universal name for them would be komas. Each battle koma have special abilities they use in their battles without the need of help komas. For example, Rukia is a Shinigami, meaning she has the ability of flash stepping. There are certain rules your deck must follow for it to be legit. You are required to have at least one battle character (usually takes up 4-8 komas), at least one support character that you can call out to aid you by healing you, attacking, or causing a status ailment to your opponents (2-3 panels), and a minimum of one Help koma (1 panel). Also, one battle character must be the leader of your deck and tagged with the Leader sticker. The leader of the deck gains more HP and represents the whole deck in Sudden Death! You can have any combination of characters on the grid as long as they meet the guidelines. The game also helps you out by giving stickers for support komas. Place L or R on a support koma to call them out using their assigned buttons, or you could just touch them to use them. There are time periods between the uses of supports to be fair, and you can't have two supports out at once.

<div align="center"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Foremetor/23d1211980599-jump-ultimate-stars-s.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></div>


Then, you have J-Power mode. When you unlock komas in J-Universe, don't forget to evolve them in J-Power mode to get stronger characters and new komas using J-Gems! This is really helpful and expands your deck to the hundreds of characters you might have seen or heard about. You choose which koma you wanna evolve and the evolution chart of that koma appears. Just choose the koma in the chart and if you have enough gems you may unlock the character.

There's also the option to change the volume, your Helper (the guy at the top screen that says stuff to you), view your player profile, look through your collections of manga summaries and cutscenes of the worlds you unlocked, and listen to the great in-game music. There's a lot of great bonuses in the game that you will have to discover for yourself!

Overall, the story is interesting, the mechanics of the gameplay is awesome, and multiplayer is really fun. However, the AI leaves a lot of room for improvement. They can be really random and sometimes they just suicide on their own. There are glitches in this game that can be exploited as I've seen in videos and during random online battles.



<b>Controls</b> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->8.5/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->

The attacks in Jump Ultimate Stars all flow together for good combos. The B button is the weak attack. In combinations with the Directional-Pad you can do three different attacks. The Y button is the Strong Attack. Some characters can do a longer attack if you tap Y or hold Y. X is the special attack. Each character has a different special. The only two specials you can do is with X and Up+X. Use the A button for jumping. Every character can double-jump. Special characters can triple jump and wall kick, and help komas may allow you to obtain those skills also. If you attack in the air, you lose a jump which is pretty fair. So remember these things and I'll have saved you some frustration.

The controls are simple and easy to remember. Once you get the hang of it, it's like riding a bike. You never forget!

<b>Graphics</b> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->10/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->

Hmm.. This is a game about manga characters right? So what do you expect? The graphics are really great in this game. It's 2D and very polished. You can clearly tell who a character is because they aren't just blobs! The stages are beautiful and the character sprites are very defined in their respective anime styles.

The animations are just purely gold. They really give the feel like you are playing the comic book. You can see the effort put into the art when they made this game.



<b>Sound</b> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->10/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->

The music is really upbeat to get you in the fighting mood. Each stage has a different theme song to it and they all fit their stage well. There's no static and the quality is perfect. You might even recognize some songs when you play the stages from Jump series.

I highly recommend checking out the music player to hear the great songs you unlock.


<b>Replay Value</b> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->8.75/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->

I play this game everyday with my friends, thanks to Wi-Fi! There is very high replay value for this series. If you are a fan of Shonen Jump, look for a series you would like to read! There is tons to do to keep you occupied for a long time, and you can play Jump Ultimate Stars with anyone as long as they have a DS because of Single-card play! If you are one of the lucky ones with Wi-fi you can play online with friends or just take your chances on random, but beware of the annoying players =/.





<!--sizeo:5--><span style="font-size:18pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><div align="center"><b>Overall
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->8.5/10<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></b></div><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->


<!--sizeo:2--><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->
Pictures are from random sites lol.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
 

Uzumakijl

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Cool review GameSoul, You really sayd what game is and does, i think the best part of game is wi-fi, Without that the game whouldnt have been that great, But the cheaters/people who plays gay sometimes ruins it
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Nice job

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GameSoul

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Splych said:
Awesome review. Very detailed and if I were to grade it, it would get a 90%. It is missing some visual aids, but I guess there are none to add xDD

Yeah I was having trouble finding things relevant to parts of the review, and I never used an emulator before
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da_head

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lol a little late on the review
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but nice nonetheless

personally i love this game, but don't play it anymore due to:hackers, and SEVERE balancing issues (trunks anyone >.>)
o and final form of ichigo is pretty shit (way to slow! lol). other than that, its a blast to play with ur friends
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GameSoul

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Shiro786 said:
I didn't like the review.

"your typical pick a character and beat-em-up games"

Stopped reading right there. I know for some people english is not your first language, but using cheap cliches and weak sentence structure will not captivate the reader. I know it's a review, but seriously, if you want the person to keep reading you gotta maintain some good skills here.

Otherwise I give your review a 7/10.


I can see how you didn't like the review after reading the first paragraph.

I agreed that it is a bit cliche, but I don't know what you meant when you said sentence structure.
 
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Deleted_171835

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This game KICKS BUTT. My favourite characters in this game are Sasuke (Naruto) and Luffy (Bleach). This game is a must have!!! Games like this make me feel happy that I own a DS!!!!
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GameSoul

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Lol, I didn't know people still read this review. Well, I hope you all enjoyed it. I should tend to all the stuff I've been procrastinating in
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