Jotaro Kujo defeated DIO in a battle that shook the heavens at the end of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. Unbeknownst to Jotaro and the rest of the Joestar Group, a new menace has its eye on them, as well as others in the Jojo’s Universe. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes Of Heaven tells that story, but is it compelling enough to keep fans entertained?
Game Name: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven
Platform(s): PlayStation 4
Publisher(s): Namco Bandai Entertainment
Developer(s): CyberConnect 2
Release Date: June 28, 2016
Price: $59.99
It has to be said that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven takes a completely different approach from the previous entry in the Bandai Namco series of games, All-Star Battle. Instead of it being a straight up 1v1 fighter, it takes the approach of the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games, being an open world brawler with interactives. That surprised me more than anything as I was going into the game, but didn’t really put me off too much, as I am familiar with the Ultimate Ninja Storm style of gameplay.
In terms of controls, you have your basic attack button (Square), your powerful attack (Triangle), and your jump (Cross), and sidestep (Circle) buttons. Guard and Homing Dashes are tied to the triggers (L2 and R2 respectively.) Battle, unfortunately, isn’t as simple. You have special attacks that are bound to the face and trigger buttons while holding down L1, as well as a unique ability that is used by pressing R1.
Some abilities are available at the start of battle while others have to wait for a little while to activate. An example is Jotaro Kujo’s “Star Platinum-The World” ability, which takes a good while to initiate. While Father Pucci’s Pale Snake can be activated at the beginning of the match. Dual Combo mode is activated by a touch of the touchpad, where players need to fill up a meter by landing successful hits on your opponent.
Once the meter is filled, a cutscene finish is performed, which does a moderate amount of damage. Dual Heat Attacks are performed by pressing L1 and R1 with at least 1 available stock. Some teams (like Josuke from Diamond is Unbreakable and Koichi Hirose,) have special DHAs which correspond to their relationship in the main continuity.
Story Mode is the most fleshed out mode of this game, and it’s a considerable amount of fun. The story picks up during the conclusion of the fight between Jotaro Kujo and DIO, as Jotaro is burning up DIO’s note. As Polnareff, Jotaro and Joseph Joestar are bidding each other farewell, Avdol, Iggy and N’doul, all of which should be dead per Stardust Crusader’s story, appear in front of them, and proceed to attack them. Enter Robert Speedwagon, who explains the story to the 3 men, and thus begins another bizarre adventure across time and space.
Without spoiling the story too much, you end up going through all 8 parts of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Universe. From Phantom Blood to JoJoLion, encountering characters from each Jojo storyline. The story mode also has RPG elements, where you level up your characters. You’re also abble to upgrade moves and stats via a sphere grid-like system akin to Final Fantasy X. Lengthwise, a complete playthrough is about 10 hours if playing straight through, without taking the extra DLC missions into account. It’s a short game, however, it can feel tedious at times, especially with the cutscenes.
Some of the cutscenes don’t seem to advance the story much or are just confusing. The endgame, truthfully speaking, is amazing, as you start to piece together the craziness from the earlier chapters. It’s a disjointed story, but not disjointed to the point where it’s something that you can dismiss. The best part of Story Mode, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the Poker Game that you play with Daniel J. D’Arby. If you’ve seen Stardust Crusaders, you know the deal. Cheating your way to victory is too good in that mini-game. I wish that you could play that outside of the main story mode, however.
The versus mode is straight forward. If you’ve played Ultimate Ninja Storm before, it’s no different here. Choose your characters, load your presets and go. Speaking of presets, Customize mode is extremely deep in what you can do. You can customize win poses, Dual Combo sets and more. Colors, Dual Combo sets, and Victory sets are unlockable through Story Mode. Just be prepared to play through the game a few times to get what you want for your character.
Unfortunately, I was unable to get matches online, as the servers were, for all intents and purposes, barren.
The visuals, though. Let’s talk about those. They’re beautiful beyond words, and I’m still going to try to quantify them. Every animation is smooth like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the colors are extremely vibrant. The styling is 100 percent true to Araki’s designs. It’s a perfect piece in what could be considered a middling, at best, game.
The only gripe I have about this game is that the battle system isn’t the cleanest. Between the janky camera and the stage design, the battle can get quite confusing at certain points. Other than that, the game is still playable, if not all that much enjoyable.
*Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven was provided to us by Bandai Namco Entertainment America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.
Summary
For a game that shows an insane amount of promise, it falls flat in a lot of ways. While the visuals are fantastic, and the story, albeit flawed, is engaging, there isn’t much else in the way of options or offerings that can be had with this game. It’s a great “sit back with the homies and play” type game, but other than that, it’ll be collecting a bit of dust on your shelf when you’re done with it.
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Eyes of Heaven is fantastic in a lot of ways, middling in others.
