Game #1205: YuYu Hakusho - Dark Tournament

  Unlike Yusuke, this one should stay dead and buried.

 I've read Yu Yu Hakusho's manga, and, to be honest, I never cared too much about it, however, I do know that it's a much beloved classic series. Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament is a one on one fighting game that came out hot on the heels of Dragon Ball Budokai. Back in the day, I remember actually liking this game. Seems I was an idiot. 

 On its defense, it actually has quite a bit of content. Besides the Arcade and VS modes, you get Dark Tournament, which follows the anime Dark Tournament arc, with anime clips included to boot, Survival, Tag VS(There are loading times when changing characters mid-fight!) and even a bizarre Token Game that has nothing to do with the fighting. There's a training mode that takes you through each character's movesets, but it's not very good. It doesn't tell you the correct timing to perform some moves, and the diagonal moves are presented as "Left/Right Up Button" instead of "diagonal left/right button". And trust me, some attack strings have some weird timing, sometimes you have to input the whole thing before the first hit connects, other times you don't.... It makes no sense.

 I felt that the Dark Tournament was a nice way to relive the arc. There are many fights, and not all of them are straight up one on one fights. While we only get the dub, the anime clips are a nice addition, and there are a ton of them. The character models, while super simple, look relatively nice and there's this very nice slowdown when you land the last hit in a match. And that's all the good things I can say about this game. It's all downhill from here.

 Y'see, the game is broken everywhere. Let's start with just the basic movement, as there isn't a simple step forward or backward, oh no, press right and you'll do a running start towards the enemy, tap back and you'll do a backstep. Combos feel wonky, the timing is all weird. Also, you get full 3-hit or so combos out of Diagonal+Button. Other times you hold down a button and you get "rapid fire punch/kick". It's hard to put into words, but it feels horrible to play. It also seems the game queues your inputs, so if you pressed a button one too many times, you will get that attack after your attempt at a combo. Honestly, playing the game feels putrid.

 And that's not even getting into the nonsensical special move inputs. For example, playing as Yusuke R1 does nothing. R1+ Back does nothing. R1+Forward is the spirit gun.... And then R2 does nothing either unless you press R2+Back. There are no global shoulder button + direction inputs, which is very stupid. L1 does nothing for most characters, but pressing it at the end of one of Hiei's auto-combos it works as a follow up attack? It's very poorly thought-out, it feels like a game made by people who had never played a fighting game before.

 ...so I did some research. The company only ever made three games, two boxing games, which don't count as fighting games, and this one. That's it. Honestly, I'm willing to bet nobody knew much, or cared about, fighting games, and designed it the way they thought it made sense, leaving aside normal conventions of the genre. And the end result is awful, terrible!

 The worst part about the game? Everything surrounding it is decent. A nice variety of modes, anime clips to make the Dark Tournament mode more interesting, a pretty comprehensive character roster considering the arc it covers... but none of that matters when the foundation is so horribly laid. It's easily one of the worst fighting games on the system.

 2.0