For the first time in ever, i’m actually all caught up with Jo Jo as a whole (currently enjoying reading the print volumes of The Jojolands as they get released here), the Steel Ball Run anime finally started airing/streaming on Netflix this March, so i knew i had to cover some Jo Jo related stuff, and i had this sitting in my backlog for years, waiting for an occasion such as this.
A little game called Jo Jo Bizarre Adventure: Eyes Of Heaven.
I remember this being pretty much whipped by critics and fans alike at the time… which was almost 10 years ago, fuck. But on the upside, there’s definitely enough distance now for revalution.
Developed by Cyberconnect 2, better known for the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series and Asura’s Wrath, but also behind the good Jo Jo Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle, which they released 3 years prior as a PS3 exclusive, Eyes Of Heaven is definitely a non-canon adventure.
While i’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, some are unavoidable since the game sure as hell expect you to know all the main events and ending of basically all 9 series, even with them presenting a digest premise during the story, more as a memory jog exercise, don’t play this if you aren’t familiar with all JoJo series… well, aside Jojolion, which at the time of release of the game wasn’t concluded yet, not that it matters much, given the nature of the plot, but you won’t get much spoiled about that series since it doesn’t have much representation, direct or not.
It starts off during the climax of Stardust Crusaders, only to have Jotaro finish off Dio in a very manga inaccurate fashion, only for it to trigger some sort of “contingency plan” that involves 36 souls and its dying Stand, that almost immediatly results in dead allies reappearing as enemies, and old allies of the Joestar that should have been long ago like Speedwagon back in their Phantom Blood form/appearance, with the explanation to this being “anomalies” and time-space rifts being caused by a misterious figure called the Supreme One, his actions being able to cleansed-undone by pieces of a misterious relic of a saint that got broken in 9 parts.
Yes, this is basically a fanfic that meshes Stardust Crusaders with the Steel Ball Run’s “Holy Corpse” plot (and the Stone Ocean’s “Heaven Plan”) as an excuse to time travel to and fro the various Jo Jo series up to Jojolion, confront temporal paradoxes and offerung many “what if” scenarios and references to please the fans and “reverse” some characters’ deaths, for once, that kind of stuff.
To be honest, while the nature of the plot is obvious, it’s quite fun, and i did remember correctly of this being loosely based on a Jo Jo light novel, Over Heaven, which i haven’t red.
I love how eventually some of the time travel shenanigans end up creating absurd exchanges or convoluted scenarios that the characters themselves seem almost tired of dealing, like how after a while Jotaro just throws/strongly invites allies into Part 5 “pocket dimension turtle” Coco Large.
“just get into the turtle” or just whips out the animal as it’s faster than explaining the whole absurd time travel/dimensional shenanigans… well, because he just has old Joseph keep explaining the thing to everyone, but it’s extra funny as it’s an obvious shorthand to avoid putting too many characters on screen even during cutscenes, after all we never see the interior of Coco Large
The final is a bit too happy pappy but its also about what one would expect, no point explaining, you most likely guessed where it might go, and the plot is more than happy to rely on enemies or revived-as-enemies/turned evil allied characters that conveniently either lie down defeat so you can purge them back to their true selves, or get teleported away before you could get any chance to, the villain letting the heroes do things that don’t seem to play to his advantage, but in truth were because of some convoluted rules, those old tricks to extend the runtime as long as “needed”.
I mean, it’s about what you would expect with the idea being the various continitues/series meet each other, it’s that kind of plot, the “interdimensional portal tango”, as i call it.
In terms of gameplay, while it runs on the same engine of Jo Jo All Star Battle for PS3 (and it did release on PS3 too in Japan), Eyes Of Heaven is basically Cyberconnect trying to make an arena fighter, so basically a Jo Jo Ultimate Ninja Storm kinda dealio, with its own quirks and differences, like new systems like the Dual Combo that can result in a super-styled move.
The main one is that it’s now a tag team focused experience, and the arena offer more elevation, complexities and objects to interact with or use, with power ups hiding in crates but also more intriguing stuff like the ability to straight up use chairs or statues, or imbue them with a Stand in order to create a trap for anyone that goes nearby.
For reasons as such, it’s definitely not as immediate to grasp on unto,and to be honest it’s a bit a mess to get to grasps with at first, to the point a tutorial mode/trainer mode to properly explain some of the minuteries, but after a while it becomes clear there’s not much balance, even if you’re given typical and needed fighting game functions like cancels, air combos, dual supers, combo assists.
On the other hand i get why they don’t tell you anything besides the basics, since there isn’t THAT much else to explain in terms of actual combat depth or proper complexity.
Like, sure, there is a way to break out of an enemy’s combo… but for the most part is that kind of simple anime fighter when it’s encouraged/far more efficient to just have the IA eat combos, as like you it’s basically locked into that combo and the finishing blow until it’s done, simple button mashing the light attack button, you can’t really mix and match the strong attack into anything else for most characters, while holding a trigger button shows up what specials you can pull off.
the game is more focused on being stylish, chaotic, but while i think there are some peculiar things you can learn as some characters have unique fighting styles or even ones with similar ones have different specials that let them throw off the enemies, heal themselves, trap enemies, debuff the foe’s attack, and so on.
Some characters like Ndoul are basically long-range users since they need to hide, so there is potential for unique synergies between the character’s huge roster, with many new ones that weren’t in ASB, making for a total of 52, so, maybe, like for ASB as well, there is more complexity than it seems, but it’s hard to gauge that properly when it’s enginerred for a online only multiplayer and the servers are since long empty as hell, as expected, the IA will never properly challenge you to try more varied and advanced setups.
maybe if it had an offline multiplayer mode, it seems such an obvious thing to have for an anime fighter, but it doesn’t, and speaking of roster, they definitely prioritezed variety over proper trying to balance some characters and their powers/Stands, as some, like the aforementioned N’doul, are useful or properly viable only in terms of how this is a 2 VS 2 system… some other like part 3 Jotaro and Pet-sorry, ANIMAL SHOP (the game uses the copyright friendly Stand names in text…. not so much in voice over) are just busted.
It doesn’t help the single player story mode doesn’t really encourage that, since it has you facing CPUs that often just ignore some of the debuffs or status ailments like Fugo’s poisoning… again, most likely because once a combo is going you don’t have much in the way of breaking that up, and characters also take a bit too much time to recover from a downed state.
If nothing else, the gameplay does replicate more the feel of the manga/anime battles and how the Stand powers can operate in the enviroments, or for example how the fight against Hol Horse has you chase him around a lot as he relies on hit and runs.
Since there’s no offline multiplayer, especially now the story mode/campaign becomes the main attraction of the package…. and is structured in being mostly an ensemble of mostly 2 VS 2 (or 2 VS 1) fights, sometimes with some extra conditions like the Dual Combo and ultimates’ bars charge up faster, there’s no backstabbing bonus, etc.
Even with the different locations from all over the JoJo series and the roster, it becomes very repetitive, about what you’d think it would be, so for the sake of variety, there are some unique variations, like how in Part 4 Morioh you have to collect 5 pieces of the hive-ish Harvest stand, but mostly the occasional horde battles, where you have to fight a number of fodder ghouls-zombie-vampires in a limited amount of time, sometimes having to protect your partner character.
While it’s clear the game combat system was never made for this kind of gameplay…. it’s an attempt at variety, feeble as the results are, it’s the kind of slightly desperate attempt at variety that would be lamented if they didn’t attempt at, you can tell, but i did like the Darby poker matches, it’s cute, it’s faithful to Part 3 as there’s bluffing and cheating as mechanics…. even though maybe forcing you into these for story reason twice could have been avoided.
The other distraction between battles are the “exploration levels”, as the game calls them; it means you can wander in some of the arenas rappresenting an important/pivotal location of the various Jojo series, sometimes interact with the scenery and characters, for example the Part 4 Morio Town hub has Rohan trading you unlockables like cosmetics and personalization pieces for your profile card, and eventually potional poker matches/battles with Darby.
These are just the arenas basically untouched or slightly modified from ASB, and they double as fighting arenas as well as these small hub areas where eventually you can travel to and fro, so if you wanted to roam around a medium-to-big open worldish recreation of each Jo Jo series location….this just ain’t it chief.
Still, i’d say it’s marginally better than the attempts Cyberconnect2 did later in this regard in the Demon Slayer games (at least the first one, haven’t bothered with the second one yet), as in at least here the art style is gorgeous and you can gander and relive some of the important locations of the series, but there are small and it’s clear they realized they had to add something to do in them..
And i do mean “something”.
Don’t expect to see/hear “scenic events” or VN like situations: you can find optional “revenge battles” where previous combinations of fighters are back stronger, access extra and DLC missions/battles and replay previously done bouts, destroy crates to find items that vary from support item to customizable pieces for the profile card, extra poses and phrases, and after the midpoint you can also catch little fragments of the Harvest stand, as each nets you stickers collectables to trade with Rohan in Morioh Town, as said above.
Still, i think this is preferrable to just having bland menus to navigate instead, but i do wish they did expand the exploration areas, i understand reusing or reporpusing for the new gameplay stiles most of the arenas of ASB, i get using both for double duty, but these are tiny to explore, and it could have helped variety to built on these by expanding/adding new mini-hubs and offer some quests or side stuff. I mean, since it’s all non canon, who cares?
Speaking of role playing, in Story Mode characters have on a skill tree to unlock buffs and moves… which is just for a semblance of balancing out progression in this mode, since characters also have levels, and get exp and skill points by battling, but that’s more for a sense of balancing things out and letting you know some extra battles are reserved for the post-game.
If nothing else, Cyberconnect2 must have taken the complaints of the story mode in the original ABS release on PS3, often calling it “a joke”, since Eyes Of Heaven basically put all his “meat” in this department, with a Story Mode that takes 12/13 hours, after beating the story mode you’re sent back to the last “exploration stage” and can finish up the extra bits, replay all battles for ranks, exp and stuff, tackle the extra and DLC missions, which are free and i think still available to download.
It’s worth noting this is a PS3 game in terms of looks, it looks nice enough but it is indeed one of those late PS3 games that also got a PS4 version, and it’s also obvious it reuses a LOT (almost all) of assets and characters from All Star Battle, but it also adds a lot of characters that weren’t playable, repurposed or made new arenas for the gameplay shift to 2D fighter to 3D arena fighter.
In this case i think it’s doesn’t matter much since the art direction is still stellar as it was in ABS, the music is great, and the style is top notch, perfectly capturing the franchise’s appeal and pizzaz, and it runs pretty well, so instead of spending more paragraph to say it still looked (and still looks) pretty dang good even today, i’d rather harp on the other issue of Eyes Of Heaven, the lack of extra modes.
I wasn’t jesting before, it’s absurd and pitiable there’s there’s no offline co-op, free battle is you fight the CPU, change some rules or sit in the chair and watch the computer fight itself… an that’s about it, but at least it does give you all characters and abilities right away if you wanna go for it and doesn’t really force you to play the story mode to unlock stuff.
Aside from those there is online battle with free, ranked, leaderboards, a personalization screen for some of the victory poses, phrases and your profile card, alongside a glossary for terms and etc.
Online is a ghost town as expected, and apparently (from what i learned from reviews at the time) the netcode was quite ass, the game was quite unstable and laggy as fuck in terms of online multiplayer, so i’m willing to bet the mode become barren of life even faster than usual for anime fighters, even though this wasn’t made to capitalize on a new shonen sensation fresh off Jump.
Overall, JoJo Bizarre Adventure: Eyes Of Heaven it’s a “shame” because it’s almost good, it’s a decent game that looks great, has a sizeable story mode, a big roster of characters from all over the Jo Jo franchise, but it suffers from lacking in terms of modes, as having no real offline multiplayer does preclude players to see the hidden layer of complexity that help make this more than the average 3D arena anime fighter, and could lead to some interesting sinergies due to the quirks of the various Stands and abilities are replicated with some nice ideas…. but that would require fighting other players in a competitive fashion enough to make these quirks matter more than simply trying to bait people into the “mash Quick Attack combo” that’s the bread and butter of these 3D anime fighters.
This issue might have been fixed by giving it a port on Steam, hence making multiplayer viable again, but at this point it seems unlikely, Namco Bandai preferred remaking/updating ABS instead for modern platforms, if they want to make another 3D arena fighter based around the Jo Jo series… they’re most likely just gonna make a new one instead of porting this.
I think there’s some fun to be had with it still, i did enjoy it for what it is, but i will have to recommend it just to the big Jo Jo fans that are fully caught up at least with Steel Ball Run (since the game is beyond spoiler heavy, just saying) and willing to wait for a sale or search a copy used online, the PAL release at least isn’t too pricey yet.
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