Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is the latest fighting game developed by famed creators of mediocre licensed games CyberConnect2. Based off of the popular Shonen Jump manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, this one-on-one fighting game pits major characters from the series' hundred-plus volume run against each other in a duel to the death. Previous to this game, only the third arc of the manga and a Capcom fighting game for the Dreamcast had received official release in America. The manga does have a hardcore fanbase on this side of the Pacific, though, thanks to the efforts of fan groups translating the manga as it is released in Japan. I’ll admit a bias here, straight off the bat. I’m a HUGE JoJo fanboy. I follow the manga monthly, I’ve read every light novel that’s been translated, and I fully intend to buy every volume as it’s released in the United States, both physically and digitally. I’m willing to buy products I already own for free to support this. Twice! So, clearly, my judgement may be a bit blinded in this review. This review is based on the Japanese import version of the game, so my opinion is also influenced as I cannot read kanji or hiragane. To understand the text in the game, I used publicly available fan translations.

One might say that All Star Battle has a “Story Mode”, but it is honest-to-God one of the laziest single-player campaigns in fighting game history. One may criticize Street Fighter for it’s cheap-looking cutscenes, or MvC3 only using art to show it’s story, but this is truly terrible. There aren’t even cutscenes in the game! The story is an incredibly bastardized version of the manga, cutting out tons of characters and making absolutely no sense unless you have background knowledge of the manga. And the presentation is simply through tiny text boxes on the loading screens between levels, which are mostly not even voice acted. Even the structure of the fights reeks of laziness and cheapness, such as Part 6’s Story mode, which condenses 17 volumes of manga into 3 fights between the protagonist and the main antagonist, characters who didn’t even meet until more than 6 volumes in! The entire mode seems to exist so one can unlock characters, which is a practice that is only disruptive to enjoying a fighting game anyway.

The selection of characters also frustrates me greatly. Most of the characters in the cast list are from the most popular arc, Stardust Crusaders, leaving a depressingly limited collection for the other, more fan-preferred arcs. Some of the character choices are simply bizarre as well, such as adding in a minor antagonist from Diamond is Unbreakable, but cutting out one of the most popular protagonists from Battle Tendency. There are dozens and dozens of great characters from Stone Ocean and Steel Ball Run that would have been excellent for this game, that simply weren’t playable. I understand that not every character is suited for fighting games and making them work mechanically could be a challenge, but Smash Brothers gets a lot of fan-favorite characters in as Assist Trophies because they don’t have fully fleshed out movesets, and I would have appreciated a similar feature.

“Now, Evan,” I hear you say, “perhaps they didn’t want assists and the like because they wanted it to be a serious fighting game, more like Tekken or Street Fighter than such casual fare as Smash Brothers.” I strongly disagree. This game is a wonderful party game. The visuals are absolutely spectacular, and you can see that the gameplay visuals are really where all the money went. Every single attack looks and feels like a panel ripped from the source material, and it is great fun seeing such ridiculous, iconic visuals represented so gorgeously. Unfortunately, the visual splendor comes at a price. The frame rate is absolute garbage, sometimes dropping below 20 frames a second, and the gameplay is not well balanced in the slightest. Some characters are completely useless, while others can literally spam one move to attain infinite combos. The game is so blatantly designed for teenage anime fans with no interest in actual fighting games. It's a very simple, though fun, party game, and really shouldn't be considered a serious fighting game.

The excellent voice cast from the 2012 anime returns to reprise their roles, and the vocal performances are perfect. Every line is delivered with the emotional force of 100 big rig trucks, and it makes matches as lively to listen to as they are to watch. This is assisted by the excellent soundtrack, with themes that both perfectly match the characters and are just plain fun to listen to.

I can’t honestly call JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle a “disappointment.”

CyberConnect2 is a mediocre developer, and I don’t know why I’d expect anything of high quality to come out of a licensed game based off of an anime, anyway. It would be nice, though, to have such a gorgeous game based off of one of my favorite animes have such a poor combat system, giving priority to fanservice over depth. There is fun to be had in All Star Battle, but it is very limited.