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PRE-GAME

The Dark Tournament is back with you in complete control. Choose your fighters, plot out your strategies and fight with everything you’ve got. Take control of 10 different characters as you battle for glory and brawl your way through to the top of the heap.

EYE-SPY

THE HOOK: Despite the fact that it feels the Yu Yu Hakusho franchise is being milked for everything it’s worth, I’m still a huge fan. The original YYH game for the GBA was a swing and a miss, so at least I KNEW it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS: Super chibi form! The characters are all looking ultimately cute! Maybe not fitting for the blood bath known as the Dark Tournament from the series, but hey, if I’m going to sit down with a strategy game for once, I better appreciate how the characters look. It’s also not the most effective design form for creating a dark and fearsome atmosphere, but once again the game has been “kiddied down”.

A 5 year old could operate the controls of this game. Since it’s turn based strategy, there’s no rush or reflexes involved. You choose to move, heal, defend, etc, perform that action, and if you’re in range of an enemy, select an attack. If you’re in need of more of a challenge, trying slapping on a blindfold and spinning around in a swivel chair until you make yourself sick while operating your GBA.

HOW IT SOUNDS: It sounds like something that might have come from the 8-bit era. It’s not like I’m expecting miracles from Nintendo’s little handheld, but surely they could try harder than THIS!

EXTRAS: When you first begin the game, the only character you have and can choose from is none other than Yusuke Urameshi himself. As you progress you unlock the main team consisting of Hiei, Kurama, Kuwabara, and the Masked Fighter. A nice treat though is that later on in the game, you gain access to Rinku, Chu, Touya, Jin, and Yukina (how cool is that?). It would be nice if you could unlock even more characters, but a total of 10 isn’t too bad.

CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE: ...What are these cinematics you speak of? I really had no idea after playing this game, seeing as how they’re basically AREN’T ANY!

BEST PLAYER: Hiei. Hands down, no contest, Hiei wins. When fully leveled up and at max stats, his Dragon of the Darkness Flame can just RIP right through your enemies. His range of movement is amazing, he’s quick, and has lots of powerful attacks.

CHEAT CODE YOU NEED: Even if this game HAD a cheat feature, it’s so piss poor easy that you wouldn’t even need it. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.

CHEAT CODE YOU WANT: More unlockable characters! You get to fight adversaries such as Karasu, Shishiwakamaru, and all the other cool teaming-with-evil villains, but you can’t unlock them?!

OH MAN! MOMENT: I’ve literally sat here for about 10 minutes thinking of how to respond to this. I can’t think of a single thing that gave me a challenge in the course of this entire game. Even the final battle I breezed through, taking me only about 2-3 minutes.

GLITCH ITCH: When a lot of stuff is happening on the screen, once in a while the game goes through a second or two of random slow downs.

FAN SERVICE: Nothing. Not even a hot anime boy’s shirt flying off. That brings a tear to my girlish eye.

END GAME:

Yu Yu Hakusho: Tournament Tactics comes up short once again, targeting the wrong audience for their games. Any true die hard YYH fan is going to want to see a Dark Tournament game be true to it’s anime roots and feature blood flying as fast as the obscenities. Funimation and Atari’s attempt to open up the game to all ages alienates the long time fans of the series.

There are dozens upon dozens of levels to battle through with your selected team of 1-5 people. As the game goes on, the stages increase in the number and power of adversaries to battle through. The game takes a shot at playing through the events of the tournament, but with endless text boxes and no voice bits, it gets a little dull.

By maneuvering your characters around the level’s board you can use different attacks to suits hundreds of different tactics you may want to use. As characters level up you can choose to increase their movement, offence, spiritual energy, or power. Some situations call for attacking from a distance, while others require up close hand-to-hand combat. By positioning your character next to or behind an enemy, you’ll be capable of doing more damage, a definite tactical advantage.

The game play is far too easy, as you can easily backtrack after you’ve moved your character to try again and make sure you’re in range for a special attack. You can take a turn to recharge your Spirit Energy, your HP, or use items. And though the game has tons of levels, it feels short. Any real gamer worth their salt will be able to complete every level in 10 hours easily.

As much as I love to randomly rag on a game’s bad points, I do have to point out the good. All 10 characters feature all their special moves from the series, from Yusuke’s Spirit Gun to Kurama transforming into Youko Kurama and using his Death Plant (which is just the cutest thing ever! A little chibi Youko will make fangirls squeal). You can choose who you like best to be on the team so you’re not stuck using a character you really don’t have an interest in using. I personally couldn’t have cared if Kuwabara was slaughtered in the beginning of the game when I had him, but once I acquired Touya to replace him with, I was one happy fan. This game could have huge potential if they’d throw in some good cutscenes, music, voice clips, and difficulty. While I’d still prefer to play the Dark Tournament game for the Play Station 2, this new GBA game is head and shoulders above it’s predecessor.

It’s interesting that the three Yu Yu Hakusho games that have been released thus far have all been different gaming genres. Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective for the Game Boy Advance called itself an RPG, the YYH Dark Tournament game for the Play Station 2 was a good old fighter, and now Tournament Tactics being turn based strategy. I’m rather intrigued to see just where Funimation/Atari will go with their games, since after all, the anime series has 2 additional seasons after the Dark Tournament (I think I just saw a franchiser’s eyes light up).   

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