Jojo All-Star Battle R

 R-r-r-r-r-r-r-raise?

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is obviously a brand I've talked about quite a bit on this platform, for the obvious reason that I'm in love with the anime and I think it's a truly fantastic series with great designs, great humour, incredible music and intelligent action. It puts most of the biggest and best action related shows on Western TV to shame, with gusto. But I've gone several weeks without even mentioning the fact that a brand new Jojo had released! What's up with that? (Or to be more specific, a re-release of a old Jojo fighting game that has seen some improvements here and there.) Well that was because I really wanted to sit back and see how it was received by the competitive fighting community, of which I am not actually a part. I wanted to see how everyone reacted to the improvements made towards netcode and all the wiggly bits that casual fighting game players know nothing about to judge how well the team improved upon the original game, as well as to see the sort of traction this game would pick up now that Jojo is currently bigger than it ever has been. (Despite the very best efforts of Netflix to sink the series.) And I'm landed somewhere in the middle.

For one the game has no Rollback Netcode in it whatsoever, which as far as I understand it means that the game is subject to poor connectivity issues making the better connected side have an advantage over the other. Rollback Netcode, as far as I understand it, makes sure that the game will recognise when a connection isn't the strongest and rollback to a period of mutual stability so that one side is never wailing on the other with no possible retaliation. It's rather baseline standard in modern fighting games as connection shortages can happen even in most modern cities of today, 5G ain't as wide spread and adopted as everyone wants to believe. Not having that is a major blow to the accessibility of what is otherwise a really easy to pick up and play fighting game for everyone and whoever didn't want to put the effort in might just find their prospects of the game hampered by their own laziness.

And another incidental problem that I've noticed which should be absolutely unthinkable in any fighting game from any age, is that rage quitting robs the enemy of a win. That's right, you can rage quite out of any fight and it won't count as a win for the enemy. It won't be a loss either, but that's a supremely petty tool you're putting in the hands of losers that are absolutely going to abuse with that. It's galling to think no one at any point in development bought up that possibility, and even more so that this is a freakin' remaster where the possibility still was not addressed. That's... actually quite a shame. I say this as a raving fan of Jojo; the team really should have done better by this franchise in the raw fundamentals of what a fighting game needs to facilitate. This is not Gang-star...

But putting aside where the game falls short, how about we look at what it does well? Bringing the character rooster up to 50 with ten new characters, changing the 3d models to fit closer with the anime run and, curiously, recasting the voice talent of the game to match the actors from that anime. I say 'curiously' because this led to rewordings of all salient lines related to old cast members, such as the back and forths that Joseph used to do. And if you don't know why that is important: Joseph had a back and forth with every character in the game, meaning that this rerecording also effect Funny Valentine and characters from his part even though Part 7 is probably still years out from being made at this point. They also removed and replaced the Story Mode, with the only shame being that they didn't turn around and try to do an 'Eyes over Heaven' style unique story to replace it. That would have been dope. Maybe we'd have got to see what King Crimson Requiem would have been or something easy as fan service-y.

Jojo as a brand lends itself increadibly naturally to the concept of being a fighting game, both thematically and practically. Thematically this franchise is literally a string of boss fights one after the other; yes, in every Part except for the first one those fights are typically solved through intelligence rather than brawn, but if you translate the Jojo formula over to gaming then a fighting game or a beat-em up like 'Gio Gio's Bizarre Adventure' the game is really the only option available to you. (Yes, I am aware of the existence of two fan made Jojo RPG games, as wall as a TTRPG that was never localised outside of Japan. I'm choosing to ignore them for now.) As for practicality, the world of Stands is already divided by strength, speed and, most importantly, range. Jojo fans are primed to instinctively understand how characters use their Stands before they even play them, thanks to the developers sticking closely to the general rule of use for adapted Stands. Close range stands have in-your-face movesets, long range stands dominate from a distance; it's a match made in heaven. (No pun intended.)

And that gameplay has actually been heightened by this re-release which actually fixed some of the fundamental issues of how the original played because yes... there were some problems that impeded the gameplay. For one there was a stamina system which was created to try and balance some of the Stand Abilities but just ended up being a hassle to maintain. That was scrapped and thrown off into the bin where it belonged. And for two there were some air attacks that were missing for characters. Essentially what the team were trying to do was bring the gameplay up to scratch with contemporary fighters, and if only there was a concerted effort to make sure the back-end also lived up to that promise, we'd have a real contender on our hands!

Jojo has such huge potential in the world of gaming that I think just goes so underutilised. Personally I think that if a studio had the willingness to sit down and create a truly visually appealing 3D anime style of animation (which is definitely totally possible, just look at the Persona games) that could be used as the foundation of a video game retelling of the entire Jojo saga. It wouldn't be too crazy of a concept either; just a gamified retelling of the events of the manga with more action-tipped showdown scenes that end is contests of marshal brawn rather than wits. It would be a great opportunity to explore some more clever ways that under appreciated Stands could be used as well. Some of the idle ideas I've personally had for a Mista Versus Kraftwerk boss fight are just wild. And a huge Maelstrom version of the Dark Blue Moon fight with Jotaro? I'm telling you, a strung together collection of distinctly dynamic and interactive boss fights that get progressively more creative and challenging would fit this brand perfectly.

Eyes of Heaven is the next game I have my eyes on to be ported to the modern world, especially since that game has it's own narrative and version of Dio's Stand that I just need to see bought into glorious HD. (It's printed with Dio's name all over it's face; for no discernible reason!) I just really wish that these remasterers would spend a bit more time nailing the fundamentals for games like these, as there really is no reason why even a dated fighting game can't be bought up to modern standards. Fighting game mechanics don't age like other genres do, this could have been the revival to exemplify that as a sore part of the Jojo arc of fandom. Man, I'll never understand why these people don't listen to the sage advice of storied and studied Jojo historian and life-long fan, Mike Ehrmantraut: No half measures, Waltuh...