The lack of certain elements and the needlessly complex controller setup really hold this game back from being great.
I'll mention the negatives of this fighting game right from the start.
The first negative drawback is the game's controller setup is the only real hurdle that you will have alot of trouble to get over. It's just needlessly overly complicated, like if the developer couldn't figure out how to down size it or make it more efficient, when it obviously could have been. I won't go into detail about this setup system, but if you play the game, in 15 minutes you'll see how issuing commands and the controller layout for those commands could have been simplified.
The second failure is that at the beginning of a battle, the characters have literally no dialogue between each other. This means that no voice acting was recorded for battle intros or for their conclusions, leading to well animated, attractive, cel shaded characters having zero personality, and a total sense of lifelessness emanating from them. Now that is a sin, considering the source material, which is an anime filled with interesting characters full of zeal and spirit. Without any dialogue before and after the fights, you feel like your less controlling the facinating characters of the Yu Yu Hakusho world, and more like your controlling lifeless, personality-less Rock'em Sock'em robots instead.
Lastly, the game has the signature specials and ultimate spirit attacks of their respective characters, but, since the ultimates do not have cinematic cut scene departures from the in-game screen, the ultimates end up looking like regular old, average every day,....specials. *Yawn*
Aside from these lackluster elements, it's a good fighter, but who really cares.
The game had alot of potential...but it fell short due to lazy programming and a lack of backing support by its publishing company.