Worldwide JoJo’s fans rejoice when JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R was announced early this year. It is not hard to imagine as the franchise doesn’t really get a lot of console games and it has been seven years since its last video game JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven released in 2015.
Though it was a remaster of the 2013’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle fighting game, the rising popularity of the franchise only brings a greater expectation to this supposedly better version. QooApp has the opportunity to have a first-hand preview of this power-up version at a media event held by Bandai Namco in Hong Kong.
▍The Already Popular Fighting Game Returns with Power-up Contents
If you have played the original JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle, you will well know that it has rather fun gameplay but wasn’t without flaws. A locked 30FPS experience meant it consistently felt slow and sluggish compared to its 60FPS peers. Thankfully, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R fixes this flaw with upgraded visuals and refined character models and successfully takes the old game to the next-gen consoles.
While the series was widely known for its extremely distinctive art style with a cast of overly-muscular characters, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R manages to transit this unique art style almost perfectly. Pulling off special moves that you’ve seen in the manga and anime or calling out a stand to battle is simply satisfying.
More importantly, as an enhanced remaster, the game does more than visually update the game but also adds new characters and gameplay tweaks that make it an even better fighting game.
▍A Unique “Stand” Twist Gives Depth to Gameplay
For those who have an affinity for traditional 3D fighting games such as Virtual Fighter, you will be happy to know that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R adapts a similar formula but with a unique “Stand” twist. The standard attacks, combo, block, and dodge moves to be expected from fighting games are here, but characters can also summon their stands to assist your fights.
The character you select pre-battle as your assist partner can be summoned during the fight to either dish out a support attack alongside your own or save you from death if you get trapped in a lengthy combo, burst-style.
The mere presence of assist attacks adds new depth to the gameplay. Imagine that you could precisely unleash a Dio time freeze punch to complement your combo or even taunt the other player and take away their meter gauges. All these tricks are possible because you are in the bizarre world of JoJo.
A couple of new gameplay additions have also been added to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R, such as hit stops and jump dashes that give that game more competitive depth.
▍Multiple Modes Completes the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R Experience
Unfortunately, the demo that we played only provides a short line-up of playable characters, while JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is supposed to have 50 in the roster, with new ones such as Yukako Yamagishi, and F.F. that are not available in the original All-Star Battle game. The experience will be more complete with more character combinations. Players can also customize each fighter’s looks with 850 different options, which means that there will be quite a bit of variety when you head online.
The story and single-player content are also intriguing, considering that it is a new element that is added to this upgraded version. But depends on how it is curated, it may well be those copy-and-paste stills that fans have already watched from the anime series. Anime fighting games vary wildly in quality, but the thoughtful gameplay does give the thrills that you are pursuing from a typical fighting game.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R is set to release for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch on September 2.
