Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Review

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The long running Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure series is instantly recognisable thanks to it’s iconic character designs, flashy over the top art direction and the fact that scenes it’s fantastic anime adaptation are shared everywhere online in anime communities as it’s become the fuel for so many memes over the years. It’s actually pretty shocking that the massive popularity of the series hasn’t resulted in more video game adaptations, especially since it’s setting lends itself so well to the fighting genre and couple have easily had yearly releases tying in with the anime series at this point. But now with Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R we’ve received a solid fighter that not only focusses on a single Jojo ‘part’, it celebrates the whole series. Really delivering on the ‘All Star Battle’ aspect.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Review

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is a remastered re-release of 2013’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle that originally released for the PS3. All Star Battle R is more than just an asset upscale thrown in on top of the original game, there’s a fair amount of new changes, modes and characters thrown into this release to make it well worth it for fans of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure whether you already played the original release or planning to jump in for the very first time.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R features a character roster of 50 characters with 10 of those being brand new characters not featured in the original release at all. I was surprised by the large roster of diverse characters available to select from especially given many games in the genre typically launch with a much more condensed roster. There are also at least 4 more additional characters confirmed coming as part of the season pass too. The models for the majority of characters have been remade to closer reflect their anime counterparts, now that many more seasons have been adapted compared to when the original game released and the original Japanese voice actors also reprise their roles from the anime which is always great to see in video game adaptations. And yes, they deliver plenty of the iconic lines the series has become known for.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Review

The new All Star Battle mode replaces the original game’s story mode that featured text based retellings of certain key sequences from the series allowing you to replay some iconic fights featured in the series, along with some tougher boss encounter stages and what-if style encounters that have characters from various Parts interacting to provide some fun match ups and fan service. This is the mode where I spent most of my time and had a lot of fun while doing so. The game also features a fairly standard Arcade mode with some fun modes within, Vs and Practise modes, along with an online mode which I’ll discuss more shortly.

When it comes to the fighting itself there have also been a number of improvements within the remaster. Firstly, the game now runs at 60 frames per second, providing an all round smoother and flowing experience, secondly, the experience is faster thanks to the addition of dashing and hit stops so you’ll notice the fighting is faster paced when comparing to footage of the original game. The third biggest improvement comes in the addition of the assist tag battle system which allows you to have a secondary character assist in battle that can be tagged in to assist in some pretty crazy and over the top combos and strategically used to gain the upper hand if used at just the right time.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Review

The combat system itself is build upon a fairly standard light, medium and heavy attack design and there’s also an ‘Easy Beat’ option that can be turned off but allows combos to be automatically performed by pressing the light attack button. This will be really helpful to onboard new players into the game or those that may be new to fighting games that may not want to jump straight into learning manual combos. Each character also features different styles or stances based on the Jojo Part they’re from. These different stances can really change the way a character plays, providing some real depth to mastering each character and allows you to spend plenty of time optimising the nuances of each fighter rather than some fighting games that have every character have the same moveset types and combo triggers to pull them off.

When it comes to the online play, this was something that pulled me out of the all-round fun experience I’d had up until that point. I found the online component to be very inconsistent when it came to performance, often lagging when it was indicating that connection was great and then not lagging at all when it appeared to be worse. There were times while reviewing that I had to wait excessive amounts of time to find a game which seemed weird as the game has just released. I’m not huge on online competitive play when it comes to most fighters so this isn’t make or break for me personally, but I know it’s a very important component to a lot of the fighting community, and with the longevity of video game fighters often coming from their online and competitive scene I hope that this is one aspect that can be patched or enhanced in future.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Review

Overall Thoughts

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is a solid remaster of the original game, packed with brand new features and characters and is a real love letter to fans of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The overall art style is very reminiscent of Hirohiko Araki’s original manga and has plenty of nods to the original manga and anime thrown in that fans of the series will really appreciate. While the game runs really well in the various offline modes, I did find it’s online component to be a bit of a letdown due to it’s current inconsistencies. But for players looking to play locally with friends or family or prefer to play fighting games solo, this remaster offers a really solid, fun and over the top experience Jojo fans will be looking for.

A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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8

Played On: PS5

  • + A love letter to Jojo fans
  • + Really replicated the look of the manga
  • + Large character roster
  • + Plenty of quality improvements over the original


  • - Online mode currently really inconsistent

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