A few years ago CyberConnect2 graced us with the fantastic JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle, a phenomenal piece of fanservice that, while pretty barebones when it came to modes, was a massive loveletter to fans of the franchise, with all sorts of neat details and finely-tuned animations that stayed true to the source material. Honestly, had CC2 added a bunch of characters, a better story mode and called it a day I would've been just fine and would've loved the game. But they decided to change what wasn't broken, and the end result is.... well, your mileage may vary on this one.
As opposed to ASB's traditional approach, Eyes of Heaven is a 2 on 2 arena fighting game. The camera is placed behind your character's back, and you're free to roam around medium-sized environments, filled with traps and a few interactive objects, such as boxes you can throw or place a trap on. Square is your basic weak attack string and you can use triangle to end the string with a stronger attack. Circle is used for sidestepping, X jump and R2 dashes towards your targeted enemy(If you aren't targeting one, you'll just dash), R1 is a unique function depending on your character and, finally, L1 is a modifier. Holding L1 and then pressing Square, triangle, Circle, Square, R2 or L2 produces different special attacks. L2+R2 can be used to cancel your attack string(Up to two stocks, recharges over time) or to Burst out of an enemy's combo(Up to one stock, recharges over time). Getting the hang of the controls can take a while, but it's doable, plus, you can turn on Easy Beat combos, which makes you Square mashing automatically end on a special move. Special Moves run on cool down, but they are fairly quick, so you'll never feel like you are out of options. Lastly, the game is 2 on 2 at all times, so super moves have been tweaked to work as two-parters... which means a lot of detail was lost, like the faces characters would make when hit by Gold Experience's punch. R1+L1 is your super move, which can only be done when the gauge is full, and the touchpad can be used to enter 'Double Combo' mode, which runs on a separate gauge from the Super, and lets you cancel special moves into each other for a short while, as well as ending with a finisher if you land enough hits on an enemy.
Fights end once an entire team has been wiped out, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Each combatant has 3 life bars, and once they lose an entire one they'll drop on the spot, a few moments of mercy invincibility. That said, Dual Combos and Super Moves can go through that mercy invincibility. Once a team member is down, the survivor will get a bonus health bar and buffs to aid him against to enemies, but, trust me, it's not completely over-powered and is entirely manageable by two fighters. The entire roster from the first game is back, save for guest Baoh, which is a bit disappointing, but a fair amount of fan-favorites made it in: Trish Una, SpeedWagon, Weather Report, Diego Brando and even Petshop. The game has almost no DLC, which is a huge plus and most costumes can be purchased on the in-game store. That said, Part IV Jotaro and about 5 costumes(Towel Giorno and Taco Joseph included) are first-print DLC only.
Once again, the game falters on the Modes front, but not for the same reasons as the previous game. There's no offline VS or offline Co-Op, which is absolutely inexcusable. There is a Free Battle against CPUs, though, so it's alright. Where the game really shines, though, is on it's phenomenal Story Mode. It's a lengthy story, told via in-game cutscenes, that have all the JoJos and their allies team up against Dio Over Heaven, a souped up version of Dio that can trash Giorno and Jonny Joestar. The first few scenes are a recreation of Part 3's ending, and it was so good that it kinda made me wish we would get a faithful retelling of the manga, but this new original story isn't half bad. That said, the game focuses mostly on Jotaro, which sucks if you favorite character is someone else, at least my boy Giorno got a few more lines than other JoJos. The game does present a few interesting interactions, like Teen Jotaron with his daughter, but most of the REALLY interesting interactions, like and old-but-not-senile Joseph meeting Josuke, or heck, even old Joseph telling Caesar and Lisa Lisa who he is. Basically, it's a GREAT idea, with a good implementation but with quite a bit of sweet, sweet juice left to be extracted.
Not only is the Story fairly interesting, but there's a ton of it, it even features bonus battles. Every fight in this mode, mandatory or optional, rewards you with money, for the in-game shop, or unlocks costumes, colors, quotes or victory poses from the store for free... if you fulfill special conditions or earn a high rank. In this mode you'll also earn experience points so that you can level up and develop your characters through skill trees. Pretty neat!
The gameplay is a bit give or take, at first I hated the game, like, honestly thought it was very bland. But I started warming up to it as soon as I stopped thinking about the game as a Fighting game, but instead treated it like an action game. You are playing this game to experience its surprisingly good story, you're playing it to have fun with all these JoJo characters brought into the third dimension with a gorgeous art-style(Although character models seem a bit simpler than they did in ASB, understandable since there are more of them on-screen at the same time) so it doesn't matter if the game is competitive or not, all that mattered was bringing JoJo to life. And they succeeded. Again.
7.0 out of 10
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