
Anime games are in a weird spot. During the late '90s to mid-2000s we would get varied games like Berserk: Guts’ Rage, and Arc System Works’ Fist of the North Star. Aside from Dragon Ball — which in the last few years has gotten an RPG, 2D fighter, and even a Dead By Daylight clone — most anime series are relegated to 3D arena fighting games like My Hero: One’s Justice or the Attack On Titan duology.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is no different. Gone are the days of Capcom’s excellent 2D fighter Heritage for the Future, and Japan-only beat 'em up GioGio’s Bizarre Adventure; instead, console entries over the last decade have followed that same style with games like Eyes of Heaven and appearances in Shonen Jump crossover games like Jump Force. The one outsider was 2013’s All-Star Battle, which was a more traditional fighter. Nine years later, it makes its way to modern platforms in the form of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R, an updated entry that makes some good changes but ultimately doesn’t fix problems the initial game had.

If you're unfamiliar with the source, a quick recap: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a manga series created by Hirohiko Araki as part of Shonen Jump magazine. JoJo tells the tale of one family’s line, with each ‘part’ of the manga following a different member of the Joestar bloodline. Cyberconnect2 has faithfully collated all eight eras of JoJo into a single game for a true all-star battle.
All-Star Battle is a 3D fighter in the vein of games like Tekken, in which battles are fought on a 2D plane with the ability to dodge into the foreground or background. While the game doesn't have the mechanical depth of a traditional fighter, there is room to craft unique combos. It also offers an ‘easy beat’ system in which simply tapping 'Y' will craft its own combo for anyone who struggles with traditional button inputs seen in games like Street Fighter.
Over the course of the manga, new fighting styles were introduced. Stand users are the most prominent in the game’s cast, with users having two modes; one where the character themselves fights and another where they summon their stand to fight. Since stands did not exist until part three of the manga, there are also the Hamon users who play the most similar to typical fighting game characters, with Jonathan Joestar feeling like the game’s equivalent to Ryu. There are also character-specific styles, such as part seven’s cast being on horseback, and characters with Vampirism abilities. Each fighter feels unique, even including the characters with two separate iterations like Jotaro Kujo.

All-Star Battle R replaces the original game's story and campaign modes with the new All-Star Battle mode, which offers up 104 fights spanning each era of JoJo. These fights range from recreations of classic JoJo battles like Stardust Crusaders' Cairo-spanning finale and — the best part — Diamond Is Unbreakable’s finale of a businessman and teenager throwing shards of glass at each other, as well as dream bouts like DIO facing his estranged son Giorno. While you can jump around parts at will, some can get a little tedious due to a lack of stages representing them; with all 17 of the Battle Tendency fights taking place in one arena.
Each fight comes with its own unique set of challenges and modifiers based on what happened in the manga. Completing these challenges rewards you with extra colours, costumes, and collectables. Sadly, there is no quick restart for any of these battles, which becomes frustrating when there are challenges involving not losing a round during a bout, making you return to the menu and load in again. Overall, though, All-Star Battle Mode is a big improvement of the original releases' modes, merging their functionality into one in a satisfying way.
The game also offers an arcade mode, a barebones affair in which you fight through eight random bouts with no rewards to speak of. There’s also online battles with ranked and unranked modes. Sadly, the team has opted not to include rollback netcode in this release, using the same delay-based solution from nine years ago. When you have a good connection online is a solid experience; however, when it’s bad, it's borderline unplayable due to the horrendous input lag.

All-Star Battle R also includes 10 new fighters not in the original release, including a mixture of formerly huge omissions like Foo Fighters and Diego to some out-there picks like Ghiaccio. It’s worth noting that all but three of these newcomers were also included in Eyes of Heaven and reuse animations and models from that game.
A weird oddity in this release lies in its treatment of Stone Ocean (of which the anime is currently ongoing). All-Star Battle mode only includes one canon fight from the part. The Space Center stage and the ASB version of Pucci are totally absent from this release, with the developer opting to use a different version of the character with abilities from earlier in the story. While these are being added later on, it feels weird to remove content present in the original game.
Fan service is undoubtedly the strongest aspect of the game. It’s a total love letter to JoJo and its history. From the gallery modes and fully customisable character taunts — with a litany of quotes from the series, and even characters from the manga narrating the menus. However, gameplay is where the fan service really shines, in the way that concepts from the series are adapted to fighting game techniques. Small things like Diavolo’s dash being attributed to his time skipping powers and Josuke's super-filling the opponent's health bar before pummeling it back down had us giddy.

One aspect that is a bit of a letdown is the complete omission of music from the anime — tunes like Fighting Gold and Awaken, My Masters would have made for fantastic background music. And while the omission of the licensed tracks is understandable, the idea of fighting to Jodeci’s Freek’n You sounds incredible.
The Switch version runs at a solid 30FPS like the original PS3 release, as opposed to the updated 60 on other consoles, with the only noticeable downgrade from the original being the lack of NPC models in the background of some stages like Rome. While not a huge issue, it’s a shame to see the Switch version downgraded compared to much older hardware.
Conclusion
While you won't find an Evo-calibre fighting game here depth-wise, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R is miles ahead of your typical 3D-arena anime fighter affair. It would be a hard game to recommend to someone unfamiliar with the franchise, as without the fan service aspect you’re left with a basic fighter with some barebones modes. However, for those who adore JoJo, it’s an excellent example of how to do fan service right, and one where you can feel the love and adoration of the franchise's 35-year history flowing through every part of the package.
Comments 27
That title sums up the majority of anime fighting games to be fair.
This is definitely something I would want if I was even remotely interested in Jojo's....but I'm not so I'm probably going to give this one a hard pass. Does look very nice though.
Also the amount of copyrights on the screenshots is pretty funny.
Having a lot of fun with the demo! Highly recc for casual fun. The demo is all u need.
I'd love a One Punch Man fighting game like this
This was a nice thing to wake up to, I was waiting for this review! I’m a huge JJBA fan, so I’m definitely gonna go pick this game up at some point.
I hesitated on buying this but after playing the demo there’s just too much fan service here for me to pass up. I’ve read portions of the manga and watched the classic Jōtarō OVA series and enjoyed Araki-sensei’s outrageous stories and characters (and the bodacious fashion!) each time, and this game seems like a nice little showcase of that.
Yare-yare da wa, another game I somehow have to find time to play. 😅
Seeing Duwang on the front page of Nintendo Life fills my heart with joy 🥹
Decent fun game when released on PS3 back in the day. I’ll probably get this again
Recently got into JoJo via the anime on Netflix, so I got this game last week. It's a fun fighting game. No masterpiece, but very entertaining.
Interesting review! It looks like the game is geared toward fans mainly but there’s no reason why not pick this one up for a spin.
What does the “R” mean in the title? Is it common for sequel games in Japan to have this suffix?
I gave JoJo another try this year partly because of this game announcement. The first time the first series didn’t gel with me. This time I love it, I’m halfway through Diamond Is Unbreakable.
I’ve been playing the ps3 game so the lack of a physical version in the U.K. has put me off getting it at launch, I might wait for a sale and decide between Switch and Steam Deck for grabbing digitally.
Still only 1 Jojolion rep
@JoeDiddley There's definitely a physical version in the UK, though according to the games official site the standard version is only sold via a site called the game collection. Not sure how reputable they are though. There's a link on the official site here.
https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/jojo/jojos-bizarre-adventure-all-star-battle-r
Will probably pick this up once it's on sale physically.
part 6 spoilers
its a shame the later forms of pucci arent here since i absolutely adore MiH especially since new moon pucci was featured in eyes of heaven from day one, nice hes coming at somepoint but man did i want him day one
@Magrane It's mainly a Bandai Namco thing. They've been using it as a notation for their re-releases in Japan for a while now, this is just the only time it's made it over to America.
Hope Capcom get the license back and rerelease the HD original which got delisted from Xbox live (and previously on the Dreamcast).
@Dragwhite i mean unless they changed something from the original pucci's like whole playstyle revolves around upgrading whitesnake to MIH
@alexybubble thank you for the reply. To be fair, Konami’s Super Bomberman for the Switch also got the “R” suffix, and the Western devs back then said it stood for “ranger” or “returns”. Had a hard time accepting that but your explanation makes sense.
How can the Switch get a downgrade from the PS3 version? This has never happened with a port of this age before, has it? The resolution has got to be higher.
@somebread They have, Pucci only has Whitesnake in this version.
The full MIH Pucci is getting added later on for some reason.
@SMcCrae95 its a shame they didnt go all out and put all 3, i understand they split him in eyes of heaven too but i hope one day we get a full, white snake, c-moon and made in heaven pucci
Played it on the Switch. It's 30fps and has so much input lag it's basically unplayable.
I literally couldnt play it for more than 30 minutes. Every input is so delayed and sluggish it's just awful to play.
@GingerNinja Yeah, that's really weird. And very bad. And, I haven't seen any 7th gen port that was looking worth than the original game...
Man, how this version can be WORSE THAN THE PS3 ORIGINAL ONE?! That's unacceptable! Graphically, it's worse than other 3D/2.5 fightings! It is the 2nd worst 3D/2.5D fighting game on Nintendo Switch! Also, 50$! Really?! That's not worth it! Especially, Switch version! 7/10 is too high for this hackwork! Should be 4/10! It is one of the biggest disappointings of this year for Nintendo Switch users! Switch version should be called as All Star Battle D, instead of R. D - for Downgraded... I can't believe... That's disappointing, disrespectful, and unacceptable!
@Magrane It probably means remastered or something.
@Vivianeat
The demo is barebones. though.
Only five playable characters, missing play modes, and only one background arena.
Thanks for the review. Despite being a fan of the anime for the most part I may just download this when discounted. The lack of anime music is a huge miss. May well be paid DLC somewhat irritatingly.
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