Out of all the fighting games I’ve played, I don’t think I’ve ever seen AI worse than the AI in Jump Ultimate Stars for DS. Even the first game, Jump Super Stars has better AI (though not by much…). Let me give a few examples. Keep in mind that this is a SSB-esque game where you can jump around and it has platforms and such (though it’s a lot more combo-oriented than SSB).
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The AI on Easy, Normal and Hard modes is virtually the same. The only difference is that on Normal, The AI sometimes blocks, on Easy the AI almost never blocks and on Hard the AI will automatically block as soon as you tap an attack button.
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The AI has absolutely no sense of combos or tactics. It’s literally no different than if they were randomly mashing buttons. Even characters which carry the most basic B&B in the entire game (B > B+forward > Y > Y+Forward > X/X+up), and there are quite a few, will never use it. In fact it’s extremely rare to see any AI opponent use a combo at all, they’ll usually use one attack and then stop. The AI is also fond of using “Touch” attacks (where you touch your character’s portrait on the touch screen. It’s usually more or less an EX version of one of their attacks, but it can’t be comboed) over and over, despite having 12 other attacks that it could be using.
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As I said, the AI has no sense of tactics. This also applies to basic things that any AI should be programmed with, like if you’ve been knocked off the stage, to use some sort of attack to prevent you from getting back on the stage, which the AI will almost never do. They could have an awesome anti-air attack and you can approach them as many times as you like from the air and they will never punish you for it. They’ll even go so far as to freeze or paralyze you, and then stand there while you’re vulnerable and do nothing.
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The AI has no sense of blocking. JUS is a game where blocking is VERY powerful (you take no chip damage, but you cannot take too much pressure before your guard breaks and leaves you open to attack. Also, there are no conventional throws, only Guard Break attacks which have a startup time) and should be used every moment that you aren’t attacking, but they will very rarely block, even when the attack is obvious. You can even use a long-charging, obviously huge attack that could easily be stopped with a poke or just by blocking, and the AI will just stand there or walk towards you or something. Even the Hard mode AI, which, as stated above, blocks as soon as you press a button, will only block for a moment after you hit the button, leaving them wide open to your slow-starting, powerful attack.
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The AI will randomly throw out Supports (assists) with absolutely no regard to their usefulness or situation. They will use close-range supports when you’re halfway across the stage. They’re drop healing supports (That you have to touch to get the heal from) in the middle of the fray, sometimes right on top of you. And even when given the most useful combo-breaking support in the entire game, they will never use it to break a combo.
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The AI has no regard for your type or immunities. JUS has a sort of rock-paper-scissors type system - Power > Knowledge > Laughter > Power, and each character is one of such types. A stronger type deals a bit more damage to a weaker type (but there are some advantages to using a weaker type, such as equipping an ability that will increase your SP gain when attacking enemies of a stronger type), but the AI will never utilize this. You could have a deck comprised of all Knowledge characters and they could have two Powers and a Laughter and they’d end up choosing the Laughter type before the Powers. Also, some characters in JUS have natural immunities to certain status effects, and it’s possible to equip abilities that give these immunities to characters who don’t have them naturally. But, even if you have a character that is immune to Freeze, the AI may continually use Freeze-inducing attacks.
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Speaking of status effects, the AI has absolutely no clue how to deal with them. Below is a list of how the AI deals with certain status effects (and what the effect does), if they are afflicted with one.
– Confuse (Reverses Left/Right) - Turns around from the direction they were facing and walks forward, not attacking, not blocking, not even using Supports. Even if they hit a wall, they’ll just continue to run into the wall until the effect wears off. But you know what else this means? If they run into a pit… well, they kill themselves.
– Auto-Run (Makes it impossible to stand still unless blocking) - Same as Confuse only they don’t turn around first.
– Burn (Poison (small damage every second) + Auto-Run) - See Auto-Run.
– Movement Seal (Impossible to walk/dash, jump, fast-fall or control drop angle if you’ve been knocked into the air) - Stand there and do absolutely nothing, not attacking, not blocking, nothing.
– Guard Seal (Impossible to block) - See Movement Seal.
– Blind (Screen turns black/white aside from your character) - See Movement Seal/Guard Seal. -
Last, but most certainly not least, the AI is apparently blind at all times, that is to say, there could be a pit in the middle of the stage, and you could stand on the other side of it, and instead of jumping over the pit to get to you, they will simply walk straight into the pit. You can even use characters who can hover in the air with certain attacks, and jump off the edge of the stage and hover there, and the AI will continuously run straight for you, off the edge of the stage, killing themselves.
Thank god the game has Wi-Fi >_>