JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R (PS5)

Note: This review contains spoilers for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Ten years after the release of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle (ASB), a PS3 fighting game based on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (JJBA) by Hirohiko Araki, developer CyberConnect2 would release a remastered version for modern consoles, fittingly subtitled All-Star Battle R (ASBR). This release would not only commemorate the 35th anniversary of JJBA, but also the 10th anniversary of its anime adaptation, which at the time was in the middle of adapting Part 6: Stone Ocean (this is important for later). Although the game received positive reception from critics and fans, its online scene sadly decayed in the time between the game’s release and this review. Despite this, we still wanted to document our thoughts on ASBR as fans of JJBA and the original ASB, especially now that all of the DLC characters have released. In that regard, ASBR is definitely a great way to experience ASB, although its differences in presentation may affect your preference.

Before I begin, I’ll note that since I have already gone in-depth about the game’s systems in our Second Look of the original ASB, this review will mostly cover the differences in ASBR. However, I will still include the premise of JJBA for the sake of completeness.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki is a multigenerational epic about the Joestar family’s continuing battle against evil. As of this writing, the manga is divided into nine Parts, each one following a different Joestar, all of whom have a name that can be shortened to “JoJo”. In Part 1: Phantom Blood and Part 2: Battle Tendency, battles are usually conducted with Hamon, a breathing technique that can produce energy identical to the sun. Starting from Part 3: Stardust Crusaders, most battles involve Stands, a physical manifestation of a person’s life energy whose appearances and abilities reflect the user. The current Part in the manga, Part 9: The JOJOLands, is not represented in this game and, as such, has no bearing on this review. For the sake of simplicity, we will also be using the original Japanese names of characters and Stands rather than the localized English names.

Another reason I recapped the premise of JJBA is due to how ASBR reimagines the original ASB’s Story Mode. Rather than recapping the events of the manga through a string of fights, the new All-Star Battle Mode instead gives each Part its own page(s) filled with two types of panels that each represent a fight between two playable characters. Normal Battle panels are based more directly on canon fights (ex. Jonathan Joestar vs. Robert E. O. Speedwagon, Iggy vs. Pet Shop) while one labeled as Extra Battles are non-canon “What if…?” scenarios (ex. DIO vs. Giorno Giovanna, Okuyasu Nijimura vs. Vanilla Ice). Completing enough panels on a page unlocks a relevant Boss Battle panel for that Part (ex. Jotaro Kujo vs. DIO, Giorno Giovanna vs. Diavolo), which will in turn unlock a reward on completion. As in the original ASB, each panel has its own Secret Missions that grant bonus rewards, though this time players are rewarded with content originally locked behind ASB’s Campaign Mode, meaning that unlocking everything does not require online play. CyberConnect2’s reverence for the source material also strikes again with vampires and Pillar Men, as using those characters in daytime stages still requires clearing their associated Boss Panels.

All-Star Battle Mode (with Stone Ocean content added back in).

Now, remember when I mentioned earlier that ASBR originally released in the middle of the Stone Ocean anime’s original run? Well, in an effort to shield players from anime spoilers, CyberConnect2 held back certain Stone Ocean content from the base game until the third and final batch of episodes dropped on Netflix, which included Enrico Pucci (Final) (the version of the character present in the original ASB), the new character Weather Report and the returning Kennedy Space Center stage. While I can understand the motive behind this move, and they at least added the content back in for free, it’s a bit silly considering the original ASB included this content without issue, not to mention the game still freely spoils elements of Part 7: Steel Ball Run anyway. This may also present an issue down the line when the ASBR servers inevitably shut down and players can no longer access this content, as was the case with the original ASB and all of its DLC.

Speaking of content, one of the main draws of ASBR is that it not only includes (almost) all of the characters from the base version of ASB, but also all of the original DLC characters (Lisa Lisa, Old Joseph Joestar, Iggy, Vanilla Ice, Shigekiyo Yangu, Yoshikage Kira, Pannacotta Fugo, Narciso Anasui, Ikuro Hashizawa) unlocked from the start. As an added incentive for pre-existing fans, ASBR also introduces eleven new playable characters, about half of which were backported from Eyes of Heaven, another JJBA game from CyberConnect 2: Robert E. O. Speedwagon from Part 1; Mariah and Pet Shop from Part 3; Jotaro Kujo (Part 4) and Yukako Yamagishi from Part 4; Prosciutto and Pesci, Trish Una and Ghiacchio from Part 5; Foo Fighters and Enrico Pucci from Part 6; and Diego Brando from Part 7. Alongside the new characters, ASBR also includes new Stages, with some previously seen in Eyes of Heaven: Cairo Bridge from Part 3, Cape Boingy-Boing from Part 4, Colosseum from Part 5, Everglades from Part 6 and Rocky Mountain Village from Part 7.

As of this writing, ASBR also has two waves of paid DLC, which added seven new characters to the roster. For the sake of completeness, these characters are Rudol von Stroheim from Part 2; Keicho Nijimura and Yuya Fungami from Part 4; Risotto Nero and Leone Abbacchio from Part 5; Parallel World Diego (written as Alternate World Diego in the DLC listing and Diego Brando (THE WORLD) in-game) from Part 7; and Wonder of U from Part 8. Since we purchased all of the available DLC characters, we can report that they felt like worthy additions to the roster and added their own levels of unique and satisfying variety to an already fun and varied game.

I’ll also mention that although we didn’t play any online matches ourselves, we are aware that ASBR doesn’t feature rollback netcode, a staple feature of modern fighting games with a thriving community, which does deal an unfortunate blow to the potential longevity of the game.

I can, however, give you some additional info through this card.

Gameplay remains very similar to ASB, but with a few tweaks. The most noticeable ones are a doubled framerate from 30 FPS to 60 FPS and the subsequent improvements to gameplay and walking speed. Looking more closely (and with some assistance from the JoJo wiki), however, one may notice the addition of hitstops, dash jumps and input buffers. Other adjustments, such as an increased cost of Hamon moves, the increased power of Taunting and the increased power of GHAs based on how much of your Heart Heat Gauge you had filled up at the time, alter the pace of gameplay compared with ASB. There’s also a new Stylish Guard system where players can buffer a Stylish Evade, though using it effectively relies on how well you can predict your opponent. I should also mention that like the original ASB, certain character introduced in ASBR (Mariah, Pet Shop, Foo Fighters, Weather Report, Rudol von Stroheim, Wonder of U) have a special gauge or set of icons based on their abilities. For example, Stroheim’s gauge tracks the charge level of his UV Laser attacks while Wonder of U’s Calamity Level determines how powerful certain moves are.

By far the biggest gameplay change, however is the addition of an Assist system, in which the player can summon a second character for aid during a match. Each character has a unique assist attack that can act as either an offensive Assault Assist (indicated by circular pink nodes) or a defensive Reversal Assist (indicated by diamond-shaped blue nodes), though players can only use them a certain number of times and they have a cooldown between uses, which prevents spam during a match. Since Assists are bound to same button normally used for grab moves, R2, grabs are instead bound to L2 when Assists are in effect. While Assists do add a new layer of depth and strategy to the game, players who prefer one-on-one battles can turn Assists off during character selection, which we ended up doing after a few matches.

Although we mostly played one-on-one battles, we did still experiment with this new system so we could see if it had any special quirks. While just about any character can assist another, we did notice that you cannot pair Pucci and Pucci (Final) together. We considered that perhaps this interaction occurred because both Puccis are literally the same character, but that excuse falls flat when you consider that you can still pair multiple versions of Jotaro, Dio and Diego together. At this point, I can only speculate that it either has something to do with some interaction within the game’s code or CyberConnect2 made some arbitrary decision. In a neat attention to detail, however, Prosciutto and Pesci can’t have an assist because they already count as two characters (and using them will disable the Stage Hazard for Naples Station).

If you do enough comparisons between the roster as presented in ASB vs ASBR, you’ll find a number of balance changes apart from certain mechanical tweaks I had mentioned before. A particularly noticeable change, however, comes from how they rebalanced Pucci (Final). While he can speak the 14 phrases faster now, which makes transforming Whitesnake into C-Moon more viable, Made in Heaven will no longer slow down the opponent or speed up the clock. Though it’s sad to see a neat meta detail disappear, this change actually makes sense in the interest of having a more level playing field as opposed to Made in Heaven acting as a “win more” strategy. They at least maintain the idea of Pucci (Final)’s time manipulation by having him briefly blink out of existence during a dash, although they didn’t change anything else about his moveset from the original ASB, so a number of players may end up preferring regular Pucci instead. Also worth mentioning, at least in a minor capacity, is that interactions between Bites the Dust and Pucci (Final) are also the same in ASBR.

One other noticeable change, this time with Diavolo, caught us off-guard due to the countless matches we poured into the original ASB. Outside of his GHA, he has a counterattack that takes advantage of King Crimson’s time skip ability, though the behavior of this counter had changed. In ASB, this counter briefly freezes the opponent in place and lets Diavolo unleash a counterattack of his own or put some distance between him and his opponent (an annoying move, sure, but easily broken by a grab). In ASBR, however, Diavolo only dodges the attack, but has a chance at a counterattack immediately after. Since we didn’t find the original version of this counter too busted before once we knew its glaring weakness, we could only conclude that they had changed this move to match its depiction in the anime as opposed to the manga.

This isn’t the only change ASBR made in the name of anime accuracy, compared to ASB’s more manga-accurate interpretation of the same material, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

We noticed a couple other interactions during play that we felt worth noting, if only because they existed in ASB, but we didn’t notice them until we played ASBR. A minor one is that if an HHA or GHA would otherwise Retire the opponent, but also triggers a Stage Hazard, the Hazard’s animation will play before the game registers the win.

The other, admittedly more niche and specific one, involves Time Stop characters (Jotaro Kujo, Jotaro Kujo (Part 4), DIO, Parallel World Diego). During frozen time, the opposing Time Stop character can immediately start moving again by inputting their associated command (Down, Down, R1). Afterwards, if the HH Gauge of the first Time Stop character runs out, they’ll freeze in place until the HH Gauge of the second character runs out. This likely won’t come up during normal play, and most players may not care, but you can easily loop it during Practice if you understand the timing for each character’s Time Stop move.

What more fans may care about, however, is the treatment of Part 8: JoJolion. While CyberConnect2 would later add the main antagonist, Wonder of U, as DLC, Josuke Higashikata 8 and the Wall Eyes stage remain the only JoJolion representation in the base game. CyberConnect2 might get a pass here based on what little representation Steel Ball Run already had, but what’s really odd is how nothing apart from dialogue and poses got updated from ASB despite JoJolion concluding its ten-year serialization about a year before ASBR launched. This means that players returning from ASB will see that Josuke 8 still has the exact same barebones moveset, which makes his implementation feel lazy, especially with no acknowledgement of Soft & Wet: Go Beyond, not even in any (non-existent) special interactions with Wonder of U (contrast with Steel Ball Run, where each character has their most powerful move and a special animation plays when Johnny Joestar’s GHA collides with "D4C -Love Train-").

If you wanted an updated Josuke 8, prepare for disappointment.

ASBR also saw some much-needed visual improvements that enhance the experience over ASB. For one, the Command List looks much cleaner, as now players don’t need to scroll through multiple pages to look for a specific move and can read the full description of any move all at once rather than wait for the slow horizontal scroll of text. Unlike ASB, players can now preview their costume and color selections before they commit, bringing it more in line with other modern fighting games. Keep in mind, however, that we noticed situational interactions where Player 2 cannot get the same color selection as Player 1 even if they wanted to, specifically: Pucci vs Pucci (Final) (they count as the same character), Diego vs Parallel World Diego (they count as the same character) and Abbacchio vs Narancia and/or Mista (Narancia and Mista appear in Abbacchio’s GHA). As a holdover from Eyes of Heaven, win quotes also have more flair with the addition of brief animations during victory poses.

It's at this point that I’d need to address how in contrast to ASB’s manga-accuracy, ASBR skews more towards anime accuracy apart from the aforementioned change in one of Diavolo’s moves. This includes graphical changes like updating character models on characters from Parts 1-6 to bring them more in line with the anime character models and colorations. Anime-only fans may not notice this as much, but manga readers or fans of the original ASB may have their own differing opinions on the model changes.

The trend towards anime accuracy also notably involved recasting characters from Parts 3-6 with their respective voice actors from the anime. While those used to the voices from ASB may find this change more jarring, it does make some sense from a business standpoint and the original game already had all of the same voice actors from Parts 1 and 2 since the game and anime were both developed at the same time. For a similar reason, it makes sense that the time stop and time skip noises now sound closer to how they did in the anime. Easily the more contentious part, however, is the delivery in all of the re-recorded lines, including from those who had already recorded lines for ASB. Compared to the original game, the performances sound more subdued like a relative lack of energy or volume. One big exception, however, is Joseph Joestar, who now also mocks his opponent’s voice during his "Your next line is..." taunt.

We also still recommend turning off the Guide Character setting after the first time you hear their dialogue, as the characters involved can slow down the flow of menus.

Since we addressed the accuracy of the translations in ASB, I also feel this review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning any fixes made in ASBR. As is the case with some localizations of JJBA, some characters now keep their original names, most notably Jean Pierre Polnareff, who previously had his name changed to Jean Pierre Eiffel (a change that only emphasized his French background). New characters, however, still came with some localization changes, like changing two of Wonder of U’s attacks, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, to Obla dee, Obla da and Dee dududu, De dadada respectively. While the localizers made a minor consistency fix in changing an accidental instance of Crazy Diamond (the original name of Josuke 4’s Stand) to Shining Diamond, they also reduced the more meme-y translations from ASB and fixed both Jolyne’s "1000 throws" line (previously changed to an innuendo) and Joseph’s win quote against Lisa Lisa (previously localized as a reference to The Room for some inexplicable reason). Unfortunately, Joseph’s childish "Damn meased to pleat you" line is retained from ASB and while they did fix Ermes Costello’s interaction with Joseph’s "Your next line is..." taunt, they did so in a way that retained the outdated Jersey Shore reference.

There are other cases where the localizers couldn't help themselves.

Although we can’t speak to the accuracy of all of the lines ASBR, since we have a rather limited knowledge of Japanese, these changes stuck out the most to us.

Whether or not you’ve already played All-Star Battle, All-Star Battle R, while perhaps not as deep as some of its competition, is still a fun fighting game, especially if you can play it with friends. With the delisting of ASB and all of its DLC, it’s also the best way for JJBA fans who never played the original to get the full package and then some, though the various tweaks made for the sake of anime accuracy may not sit as well with those who prefer the more manga-accurate original.