Anime... Fight... Bandai Namco... Cyberconnect2... Finished Intro...
How do you want a more complete intro?
Well... OK, OK. But it will cost you 4 years of absolute servitude in the name of the Leek Cult!
So, as I was saying in a civilized way upon awakening, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a manga that spanned the decades from the 80s to 2021.
OVAs followed, and then a more recent animated series, reigniting the Jojo frenzy. It is quite naturally that video games have followed during these 40 years with in particular a fighting game on arcade terminals that could not be more popular and successful. The game that interests us here is a fighting game developed by the eternal duo Cyberconnect2 and Bandai Namco. Where there are anime, these two are never far away to make a fighting game out of it...
I'm not going to give you a summary of this looooooong saga, I personally stopped at the 3rd part which, in any case, must be the most appreciated and the most popular of the 8, so it would be making me hoarse for nothing from you talk about what you already know.
I will, however, tell you a bit about the original game of what we are testing here. Yes, you read that right, young white beak with a look not serious enough to be a Joestar: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle R is not a brand new all-new original title, but a remaster of a game released 10 years ago on Playstation 3 with its additions, modifications and others Ora ora ora ora oraaaa!
Entitled Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle, the title was a fighting game that offered to pit around forty characters against each other, DLCs included.
In R, the figure rises to 51 fighters, even if one wonders what some are used for, so much the users of Stand have a strong advantage on the others. Don't look at me with those fried whiting eyes, it's just a fact: characters with a Stand have a clear advantage in terms of range, combos and abilities.
So don't tell me what I didn't say: characters that use a different style are interesting but fall short of the others in terms of victory potential.
Especially since, although the gameplay has been revised, the heavy and stiff animation style characteristic of the series is still there, making the fights relatively clumsy. It's a style that will appeal to some, personally I prefer dynamic and straightforward fighting games like Street Fighters Alpha 3 or Marvel vs Capcom 2.
Visually, although tweaked from the original version, the game remains relatively timeless thanks to the strong cel shading and more serious colors than what we are used to seeing on other anime (like DragonBall Z or One Room). We find the combat postures of our favorite characters and the animations are up to what we are entitled to expect from Cyberconnect2 in this area.
However, where the disappointment points the tip of its nose is the gameplay.
But before expressing why I'm personally disappointed and why you might be too, it's worth explaining a bit about how the game works.
3 buttons for hits (weak, medium and strong), one for dodging, one for stand activation and the others will be used for button combos.
The special moves are Street Fighters style and the backgrounds are interactive. Until then, not too many worries, we are in relatively classic.
Except that the variety of shots is not there. Each character has more or less the same controls, certainly for their own results, but we end up with biased sensations on many aspects. The fact that we have a punch power layout and not kicks and punches strongly limits the possibilities of approach and combos.
The player thus falls into a kind of dangerous and soporific automatism over the fights against the completely non-existent AI on the first three degrees of difficulty and absolutely abusive on the last two to achieve a kind of primary anti-game at times, excessively shady blocks to others, which does not help to get my foot in the game when I wanted to. Really.
Especially since the characters have their original class with re-recorded dubbing and we find their favorite shots without difficulty.
But, although the atmosphere of this game is extraordinarily faithful, we remain unsatisfied despite good ideas in terms of gameplay.
Too rough to be able to jump into the competitive universe (and in a sense, for me, that's good), but not deep enough to keep you going for hours and hours non-stop every day.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle R is therefore placed in the category of those games which, without being on the list of must-haves, risk coming to tickle the joystick from time to time between fans whether they share a sofa or that they prefer to stay at home and send their Stand for games via the Internet.
- Xbox (version testée Xbox Series X)
- PlayStation
- Steam
- Nintendo Switch
