JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R (Nintendo Switch) Review

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is many things, but a hardcore and technical fighting game with rollback net code is not one of them. Hopping online and getting into bouts with other Hamon users will yield extremely sluggish and delayed fighting. Sadly, the online systems from PlayStation 3 are carried over in All-Star Battle R on Nintendo Switch and all other platforms, including PC.

JoJo is already an unusual fighting game due to the emphasis on elaborate and complex character animations with stylish posing and key-frames. The side-effect is that the inputs feel slightly delayed or sticky. This makes it so gamers will have to think ahead a bit and commit to some of the broad and sweeping attacks. In All-Star Battle R, there are some noticeable adjustments to the gameplay to make the kinesthetics feel more fluid. Playability feels sped-up and this does help; the inputs feel snappier than they did on PlayStation 3.

Regretfully, the frame rate is still set to 30 hertz on Nintendo Switch. These are the same parameters that the game was designed for initially, but it is hard to ignore the fact that the other releases of All-Star Battle R on current gen consoles are set to 60 fps. It won't affect the experience too badly in this instance, but it is noticeable to anyone who plays fighters casually. There is a buffer in place for the inputs that make them flow more naturally.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is not a technical or complex fighter with a high skill-ceiling. The attacks are very simple to execute and, in this re-release, there is an assist mechanism that allows even grandma to execute long combos by button mashing. Merely tapping the same button consistently will string the attacks automatically into a powerful move. To balance it out, the auto-assist has a cool-down mechanism to force noobs to mix it up slightly and not overdo it. The hit stops are more liberal now, so players will have more of a chance of fighting back and not getting stun-locked.

There are a lot of characters in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R - roughly 50 combatants across eight arcs - and there are six different fighting styles spread out among the cast. It can be a lot to take in at first, but after a while it becomes apparent that the quantity is trying to make up for the lack of depth. Each character doesn't have enough moves to make them varied enough to stay fun to play as over and over. It all comes down to whether the player is a fan of JoJo or not.

All-Star Battle R will floor fans with its all-encompassing representation. This new version includes 10 extra fighters that were in Eyes of Heaven. While their animations and geometry are clearly recycled, the deft art direction that honours Araki keeps the visuals congruent and on model. The music, the voices, the costumes, the bold and gaudy style; JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R's aesthetics are perfectly represented. Everything looks and feels larger than life, and the stark pen and ink textures make every character ripple with intensity.