it definitely could've been better, but overall, Smackdown: Just Bring It is a worthy addition to the great franchise.
Unfortunately, Just Bring It did not expand on the formula as much as Smackdown 2 did over its predecessor. The most obvious improvement is in the graphics. It's like night and day. The character models look much cleaner, the animation is more fluid, and the game plays more smoothly. Just Bring It introduced a number of new animations, most notably a number of really nice looking reversal animations. It also added a few new move types, which gives your characters even bigger movesets to use.
Other improvements made in Just Bring It include a referee in the ring, which adds some authenticity. You can have up to 8 wrestlers on the screen at once, twice as many as Smackdown 2, but you can only have 8 in the Royal Rumble match, as no other match type supports it. Although, that does make the Royal Rumble match much more enjoyable. The backstage areas are bigger and have more interactivity. The entrances are more authentic, as the wrestlers actually walk down to the ring, and have all their unique lighting and pyrotechnics like on TV. Just Bring It also allows you to go over the guard rail and into the crowd, which is a fun novelty unique to this game, as it wasn't included in the sequels to come after it.
Other areas didn't get nearly as much improvement. For example, the match types. The biggest new match type is the 6-Man tag, which is great fun. Other new match types include 3 Stages of Hell, which is really just a best of 3 match which you can add gimmicks to each fall. Street Fight is a worthless addition because it's just a hardcore match where you can't go backstage. Submission match, as the name suggests, is a match where you can only win by making your opponent submit. And that's about it as far as new match types. Most other match types weren't improved, and pretty much play the same as they did on Smackdown 2. On top of that, they actually removed the casket match, as well as the Create A PPV mode. Neither of those omissions kills the game, but they should've added more content, not removed it.
The roster has actually been downsized as well. Smackdown 2 had over 60 characters, but Just Bring It only has 44. However, I still believe the roster in Just Bring It is better. They removed a lot of the more boring characters from Smackdown 2 and put in some really fun new ones. Among the new characters are several ECW wrestlers which came to WWF following ECW's collapse. New characters include Rhyno, Spike Dudley, Raven, Tajiri, and Jerry Lynn (the latter made his only Smackdown appearance in this game). Also included as a secret character is Fred Durst from the band Limp Bizkit (which did Undertaker's entrance theme at the time). Fred Durst is an awesome character. His entrance is amazing, and he's very fun to play as. Unfortunately, you can't use him in Story Mode.
Speaking of which, they went in a completely new direction with the Season Mode in this game. Some people like it, some don't. Basically, the Season Mode has been completely done away with, and it's been replaced by Story Mode. Story Mode is 3 shows long. You have a Raw, a Smackdown, and a PPV (Although if you choose an existing title holder, you skip Raw and Smackdown and just do a title defense on the PPV). There's one match on each show, as well as cutscenes which build up the matches. The cutscenes are much better than what we had on Smackdown 2, and there's a good variety of them. As a WWF fan at the time, I found these cutscenes to be very satisfying, much cooler than Smackdown 2's.
There are different branching paths, different decisions you can make on each of these shows. These decisions affect who you're going to be wrestling, what titles you're going for, and what cutscenes you'll see. So, the point is to play through the Story Mode multiple times, with different characters and make different decisions, in order to see all the cutscenes, unlock all the characters and get the best outcome.
There are pros and cons to these changes to the Story Mode. The main advantage is there's no CPU matches to skip. It's narrowly focused on your character and what you're doing. Also, the storylines are much better. The negative is the satisfation of playing through a whole year (or even multiple years) of a Season mode chasing the title, which is more faithful to what you see on television. Ultimately, I thought the Story Mode from Just Bring It was more enjoyable than the Season Mode on the first two Smackdowns. However, it would be best to combine the two (which is pretty much what we saw in the sequels to come after this).
The Create A Wrestler mode is largely unchanged from Smackdown 2. Of course, there are new options for appearance and moves, and the menus are streamlined a bit. Also, there are two extra slots, so you can now create up to 12 wrestlers, but again it wasn't as big of an improvement as Smackdown 2 was over the original. Still, it's a very solid mode and you can create some really cool characters in it. The big new feature added to the Create A Wrestler mode is the ability to edit the default wrestlers' movesets and entrances. I've actually played around with this feature quite a bit.
The graphics, as I said before, were a big improvement over Smackdown 2. I think the biggest improvement, however, was in the load times, which are now pretty much nonexistent. Also, even when you have 7 or 8 characters on the screen at once, the frame rate stays perfectly smooth, and fast. As far as sound goes, they included commentary, but it's horrible. Some of the worst commentary in wrestling game history, and that's saying something. Other than that, and a weird voice in the menu screens, the sound is pretty much the same as Smackdown 2. The music is again a like it or hate it kind of rock thing, and the smacking sounds are generic but get the job done. Overall, the sound in Smackdown: Just Bring It is once again its weakest part.
Another really big issue with the game is the fact that it literally takes up more than half a standard memory card for saved data. 4173KBs to be exact (a standard memory card is 8000KBs or 8MBs). Even after playing over 120 PS2 games, I've never seen a game that's more selfish with memory card space as this game is. It also means it takes forever to save and load your data. But again, that's not a crippling flaw. It's just an annoyance. Still, if the game were designed better, they could have avoided it, as evidenced by the fact that the sequels to come after this take up a mere fraction of that amount. Not to mention nearly every other PS2 game ever made.
I sounded like I did a lot of complaining about the lack of improvement in this game, but really, I still think this is an incredible wrestling game. The gameplay is phenomenal, the roster is great, the match types are fun and varied, the story mode adds a lot to the game, the graphics are a huge overhaul over the previous game, and the new features added are a lot of fun. It has its flaws, many of which are carried over from Smackdown 2, and it definitely could've been better, but overall, Smackdown: Just Bring It is a great game, and a worthy addition to a great franchise.
Scoring:
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 9
Sound: 5
Value: 10
Tilt: 10
Overall: 8.8