Jump Super Stars

[trainwreckx]

PROS

• Take a bunch of well-known characters and make them fight each other a-la Smash Brothers

• Creative use of the DS hardware using the two screens and touch screen functionality

• Enjoyable single player experience with average 30 hours to unlock everything

• Excellent DS to DS multiplayer

CONS

• Download play could have used a little more love

• No Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (understandably so)

• Battle characters lack variety

• Single player lacks replay value, nothing to work for when you finish challenges

At A Glance
So what is Jump Super Stars all about anyway? If you are not familiar with Shonen Jump, then this game may be a mystery to you. Shonen Jump is a weekly magazine featuring several issues of popular Japanese manga characters. That is to say, it is a magazine filled with comic books. The issues debut in the Japanese edition and soon make it to the localized (USA) version of the popular magazine.

You may know some of the famous characters and anime shows that got their start in the pages of Shonen Jump: Dragonball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, Bleach, Bobobo Bobo Bobo, and YuYu Hakushou to name just a few of the many.

In Jump Super Stars, all of these characters come to life in a battle of good versus evil versus everything in the middle.

Gameplay Mechanics
The basic style of combat is a mixture of Smash Brothers and classic 2D fighters. Players make a "deck" consisting of Battle Characters, Support Characters, and Help Characters. A deck is basically a complete page from a comic book that the player makes which is displayed on the bottem screen during a battle. Each character takes a certain amount of space on a grid. Each deck must have one of each of the three types of "koma" (character cards) that I listed above.

Battle characters (4 to 7 koma in size) are the ones you actually play as. Tapping a battle character on the touch screen during battle will simply switch characters. Battle characters that are not "in" will slowly recharge their health to full.

Support characters (2 to 3 koma in size) are best defined as "summonable". Much like the assist buttons in Marvel vs Capcom, the character will come on to the screen and do one of many actions: heal you, attack/stun the opponent, boost stats, etc.

Help characters (1 koma) are not seen on the screen. When you use a help koma it will either heal you or boost one of many stats. They typically aren't entirely useful in combat, and some of them don't actually have a function outside of assisting in unlocking new cards.

There is a lot of strategy to building decks, and there are several special cards in the game. Please refer to the IGN guide at the end of this review for a strategy guide.


Here is an incomplete deck - the blue slots are empty

Combat is fairly easy to pickup, even for the English-speaking audience. A simple button map can be found below. Each of these buttons has a bit of depth to them. For example: holding a direction (other than down) on the d-pad and pressing heavy or light attack will produce a different result.

In addition to the buttons, the touch screen displays your deck. This allows you to switch battle characters, summon a support character, or ask for help from a helper character - simply by touching the appropriete koma. Certain combo and tag-team attacks are availible by touch screen as well. For example, tapping your current character, then tapping another character in the deck, and touching the original character again is a "Dream Combo".

There is a lot of depth in the battles and deck creation. If you wanted to explain it in a few words "Easy to learn, hard to master" would suffice.


Here is a button map

I find the character balance in the game to be very simple, but very effective. There are three types of characters: Laughter, Strength, and Knowledge. All of the help characters are of no type, but the battle and support characters fit into one of those categories.

It is like rock-paper-scissors. Power>Knowledge>Laughter>Power. It may not make sense that Power is effective against knowledge, but you have to make sense out of it with the fact that there is a laughter type. They make the powerful characters laugh, but the knowledgable characters are too smart to laugh, and so they are strong against the laughter-type.

If you are more effective against the type of character you are facing you will take less damage from them and you will do more damage to them. Usually about 4-8 points depending on the matchup. This effects support characters in the same way.

One reason people may complain about balance is that all of the "cool" characters are power characters. There especially seems to be a lack of cool knowledge characters. Therefore the inexperienced player will make an all-power or knowledge deck. You can see where the problems arise here.

I recommend one battle character of each type, if you can spare the koma.

The Quest for the Holy Grail
The single player experience is actually pretty fun. You go through over 50 levels (across four worlds) completing challenges. These challenges range from things like "Break 15 barrels in 30 seconds" to "Get 3 Ring Out KOs on each opponent".

There are two types of levels: Battle and Mission. Missions usually do not involve other characters, and are mostly there to teach you the basics of the game. Battles are just as they sound: you get to kick the crap out of computer players.

Each challenge completed is another koma earned. When you first earn a koma, it is an "empty koma." Empty show the character as a shadow and you have to guess from the text in the cell which help character you need to place in the empty box to complete the picture. Since you probably don't speak Japanese any better than I do, IGN has figured out a trick to completing empty koma. Just see the guide at the end of the review.

Eventually you will beat the game, showing you the credits. Don't be fooled, you will see the credits three times before you unlock every koma in the game. It took me roughly 35 hours to get it all.

One of the problems I have with the game is that the battle character koma you unlock are usually just more powerful versions of ones you already have. The differences will be in their special attacks, and, in the case of Dragonball Z characters, a change in hair color. Still, there are quite a few (maybe 20) completely different characters.


Completing an empty support koma

Throwing Down the Gauntlet
So obviously once you play through adventure mode, you will want to take all 657 koma and stick it to your friend via local wireless play. Let's go over the three options here. The single-player battle mode is the same as DS to DS play.

DS to DS play is where each player has a copy of the game. Simply choose any of the decks you have customized, decks you earned in single player, or decks you have downloaded from a friend. There is no limit to the stages you can choose, or the rules of battle. Play time mode (+1 for a kill -1 for a death) or stock mode (when one of your battle characters dies, they stay dead).

Up to 4 players can go at it simultaneously or fill in the blank spots with CPU characters. The AI is actually pretty competitive. It comes at three levels: fragile, medium, and difficult. Fragile characters will rarely even KO you, while difficult characters will not actually let up on you.

DS Download play is when only one player has the game card. Unfortunately I think Nintendo could have given us a little bit more in this package than they actually did. Up to 4 people can download the game from the host. Once the download is complete, the player with the game starts it.

Each person gets one of three random decks (they don't change, and they all suck). You can not set the game rules, and no AI characters can fill in the empty spots. This mode serves really only to give players a taste of the actual game. It loses its fun factor in about 15 minutes.

Deck Transfer mode allows you to send your custom-made decks to friends who have the game. These decks are permanently saved to their game card, but can be deleted if they become bored of them.

Conclusion
All said Jump Super Stars is a great game, and since it is published by Nintendo you know the level of quality packed into this DS title.

Single player is fun, but you probably will not have the urge to play through it a second time. Some of the challenges can get repetitive, but there is a lot to do here, and you will not be bored as you go about unlocking all 657 koma.

The characters are interesting, even if you aren't a fan of all of the series. Battle characters that have several different versions can be dissapointing, but there is enough variety to keep you coming back for more.

Multiplayer is great, but don't bother unless everyone has their own copy of the game. Single-player battle mode against the AI is a better use of time than DS Download play.

The control is easy to learn, but not intuitive. You will not know the depth of what you can do unless you fiddle for a long time, or play through the missions. Touch screen use is very interesting, and definitely far from the "gimmick" category.

If you don't speak Japanese, don't fret. You can take a look at the IGN guide here to get a translation of everything except the story. Unfortunately I haven't found a story translation any place, but I have been told there isn't a lot to it. This is supported by the fact that you don't often get cutscenes in the game, and these cutscenes are in the form of comic pages being shown to you.

So if you like playing interesting fighting games, and you have friends who may be interested in the same thing, I would definitely recommend this title. If you are going to play it alone, but you are a fan of one or more of the series in the game, it is probably also worth a look. If none of these things interest you then "These are not the droids you're looking for."

Using the IGN-style scale:

• Presentation - 9.0: A bunch of famous Japanese comic book characters go at it in a brawl to the wall.

• Graphics - 8.0: It's 2D and looks about as good as a similar game would on the Super Nintendo. This makes sense given the content, having an almost cartoony quality.

• Sound - 7.0: The music isn't very intersting, and there are not many songs on the track. They will annoy you pretty fast if you are actually paying attention. Combat sounds fit the bill, and are very anime-like. They should not upset you, but nothing special here.

• Gameplay - 9.5: Very good use of the DS hardware, making the touch screen look far from a gimmick. Controls work well, but need to be taught. No camera complaints, which is rare from me.

• Lasting Appeal - 8.5: This will be great fun for you and your friends to play for a long time. Think about Smash Brothers, and then multiply that. However, the score drops because the single player really only ties you in once.

• Importability - 9.0: With the guide from IGN you will get everything except the story. Hopefully somebody translates this part of the game, and this will be a perfect score.

OVERALL - 8.5

IGN Translation Guide: http://guides.ign.com/guides/706897/index.html
All images thanks to IGN Guides

[trainwreckx]

Guys, there is a lot more to this game, but I wanted to just present the essentials. This is my first review, so please give me feedback. This is a deep game that has a lot of potential to be a competitive tournament game. It already is in Japan :)

[ShadowMarth]

Very nice review. Good illustrations, excellent explanations, and an especially good conclusion. I would like to hear more about the character balance however, that's one of the things I'm picky about in games. I hate imbalance. From the sound of it it seems that it's not well balanced...

[trainwreckx]

Sure (and I will add this to the review). There are three types of characters: Laughter, Strength, and Knowledge. All of the help characters are of no type, but the battle and support characters fit into one of those categories.

It is like rock-paper-scissors. Power>Knowledge>Laughter>Power. If you are good against the type you are fighting, you will take less damage from them, and you will do more damage to them.

The reason people may complain about balance is that all of the "cool" characters are power characters. Therefore the inexperienced will make an all-power deack. You can see where the problems arise here.

[ShadowMarth]

Well that's odd. Power > Knowledge? Pshaw!

[theONE]

cool the game has always appealed to me.. but im still waiting for SSB DS

[trainwreckx]

Originally Posted by ShadowMarth03

Well that's odd. Power > Knowledge? Pshaw!

Well you have to make sense out of it with the fact that there is a laughter type. They make the powerful characters laugh, but the knowledgable characters are too smart to laugh, and so they are strong against laughter-type.

theONE: They are never going to make one. Even if they do, it won't be until 2007 at the earliest. You may just wanna buy it, I'm sure you will have the money to buy another game in a couple of years.

[P4NC4K3Z]

good layout and great review...( thumbs up)
I'm ordering this from japan so hopefully ill get it in the new future =]

[trainwreckx]

Alright everyone, I updated it in places to incorporate answers to your questions, and I corrected a couple of typos.

P4NC4K3Z, thanks for the compliment, the first one is hard to do :) Tell me, was it my review that finally convinced you to pick up the game?

Feel free to keep leaving me comments.