JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R: Poses and Fighting Games

Damn, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R has style. I have played many fighting games, but video games that cover specific animes tend to fall flat for me. There have been exceptions, I loved the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games and Naruto Shinobi Striker, but most don’t give me a sense of their worlds. This game gives you a good understanding of what to expect out of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. from the different character designs, stages, modes, and fighting mechanics, there is a lot to go into about this game. 

First, I want to give a quick understanding that I am a relatively new fan of the franchise, only gotten into it a year ago, but I know JoJo is a beast of a series. It is weird, wild, and has changed much over the years. That is especially evident when you binge it and watch the art style change each season and the Bizarre world change too. But why is that important to this game review? Well, the game perfectly encapsulates the changes the series has gone through over the years and the current eight arcs of the series. Each character looks exactly like they did in each part, exemplified by Part 3’s protagonist Jotaro, clearly drawn differently when he shows up in Part 4.

The character designs carrying over wasn’t the only place that the style of the series transferred over from the source material: so are the fighting stages. You are probably thinking, ‘well, obviously they’re going to put in arenas from the series. It won’t just be a blank stage,’ but each stage has its own gimmick from a specific fight that occurred in the series you have to deal with, with some characters being immune to certain gimmicks, such as the Cape Boingy-Boing stage having traps that can go off, but they won’t appear if Koichi Hirose, the character that canonically set the traps, is in the fight.

As for modes, you have the standard fair of the arcade, versus, online, and my favorite; the All-Star Battle challenge mode. The challenge mode lets play through fights to unlock things, which is what I always enjoy doing in Fighting games.

The fighting mechanics are fairly simple and easy to use, but for some characters, they get pretty deep. Each fighter has specific light, medium, and heavy attacks, and for most, the combos are the same on each button, just increasing with the power of each level of attacks, which makes it fairly easy to play a good bit of characters. But with each part there are differences in play styles. There are Hamon, Vampirism, Ogre Street, Mode, Stand, Mounted, Bro and Mammomi, and Baoh Armed Phenomenon. Now, that’s a lot of different types, but most characters are Hamon or Stand users. For the most part, these styles really only affect the use of the power button (R1 on Playstation). For example, for Hamon users it’s a charge for your HH meter and an extra powerful attack level, and for stand users it summons the character’s stand to fight for them changing your standard move set. it gives a ton of ways to develop a playstyle for all types of players.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a series of reinventions, having started in 1987 and continuously running. This game is no different, especially since JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is a remaster of a game from 2013 by the same name, of course, just without the R. The game is a fun experience, especially for fans of the series and of fighting games looking for something with a lot to offer in terms of playstyles to master. I know it is staying on my PS5 for a while.