A Bizarre Adventure into Importing: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle

I've been a big fan of Japanese games for as long as I can remember. Over the years there have been numerous titles I've wanted to play, but had no way of doing so due to a lack of localization. A combination of the language barrier and high cost has kept me from importing games. It's especially a problem since the majority of games I would want to import are all heavily text based. On top of that most consoles are region locked and I'm not totally irresponsible with my money, so I can't justify buying a Japanese console.

This past June however, I imported my first game. It was Captain Rainbow for the Wii. The Wii is region locked, but if you use the homebrew channel you can play games from other regions. While I may have imported it I still have not played it. Captain Rainbow is very story based and pretty much incomprehensible without English text. The reason I got it was because there is an English fan patch in the works and the $20 price tag was too cheap for me to pass up. Hopefully I'll get to play it in early 2014, but that's not why we're here today.

Some time within the last year I began to see trailers for an all new Jojo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game developed by Cyber Connect 2. They're the studio behind the incredibly animated Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Something about the trailers caught my attention  and I hoped that it would be localized here. After a bit of research I found out that it had/has little to no chance of ever seeing a release outside of Japan.

What is it?

When I made the decision to buy Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle I knew very little about the franchise it was based on. I had played the original Capcom developed fighting game on the Dreamcast, but it was just a weird novelty fighting game to me. I have now consumed a fair deal of the Jojo universe and know a whole lot more about it.

The series is a still ongoing manga (Japanese comic book) written by Hirohiko Araki that began in 1987. There are 8 parts each with their own protagonist. They all focus on the eternal battle between the Joestar family and the immortal vampire DIO. Each part takes place in the time frame when it's written, so the current part 8 was started in 2011 and that's when it takes place. For some reason each main character's name has Jojo in it somehow. For example the original main character's name is Jonathan Joestar. Both names start with Jo. It's a really weird series. Who knows why that's the case.

These are the 8 protagonists. They are all part of the Joestar bloodline.

Recently a new anime was started that has gone on for two seasons. It covered the first two parts of the manga. These are the two least known entries of the entire series. The characters use a special energy called Ripple (Hamon in Japanese) in order to do what are essentially magical karate attacks. The series started to gain most of its popularity during the third part. This is the part that the Dreamcast game was based on. Chances are if you've seen any Jojos it's from the third part since it's the only part that was translated to English in both manga and anime form.

Instead of using ripple the characters instead began to wield stands. Technically though stands are the manifestation of an individual's ripple. You could even say that it's their persona. A stand is essentially a ghostly figure that gives the user supernatural powers. So yeah, they're basically ghosts that stand behind a person and help them pummel others. It's all pretty confusing, but that hasn't stopped me from diving head first into the series. I've now watched the first season of the anime and just recently finished reading the third part of the manga in its entirety.

This is my favorite character Jotaro. He's the main character of part 3 Stardust Crusaders.

I really find the series to be interesting, because it's so off the wall crazy. DIO threw a steamroller on top of someone just because he could! That's why it saddens me that there is such a slim chance that the series will ever make it outside of Japan. It's quite literally a copyright nightmare. Perhaps you noticed that the bad guy of the entire series shares his name with the band DIO. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Characters throughout the series and their stands share the names of famous western bands and musical acts. These are just a few of the ones I can think of : Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Cars, Doobie Brothers, Lisa Lisa, Devo and Vanilla Ice. No joke, one of the villains in part three is named Vanilla Ice. Part three of the manga was translated into English by VIZ Media, but almost all of the names had to be changed. Araki the creator of the series is strictly against name changes, which is one of the main reasons why no other Jojo related things have left Japan. If they can't change the names then they're going to get their pants sued off.

Hong Kong Dollars

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle came out on August 29th. I had the game that same day. Leading up to the release I began to watch every single video about the game that came out. Everything about it was so unknown to me, which made it supremely interesting. The animation was gorgeous and the characters looked so weird. At that point I had only watched the first season of the new anime and had never even looked at any of the manga. It was about a week before the game came out that I made the decision that I had to have it.

This is the video that put me over the edge.

Originally I had pre-ordered a physical copy of the game, but as of the release day it still had not shipped. I cancelled my order and decided to purchase a digital copy. In order to do that I had to buy some digital PlayStation Network cards, because US credit cards don't work on the Japanese PlayStation Store. I quickly realized that Japanese PlayStation cards were ludicrously overpriced and bought some Hong Kong PlayStation cards instead. They were a fair amount cheaper and for some reason the Hong Kong PlayStation Store is in poorly translated English. It may have been one of the shadiest things I've ever done on the Internet.

A friend instructed me to go to the website Pcgamesupply.com, because he had purchased Hong Kong PSN cards from them before. I bought two 200 Hong Kong Dollar cards and an 80 Hong Kong Dollar card. This gave me enough to purchase the game for 449 HKDs. I gave the site my credit card information at which point they charged me the $79 for the cards. Yes, I paid $79 for a $60 game. That's how overpriced the stupid PSN cards are. Not even ten minutes later I was able to view pictures they had taken of physical PSN cards in order to get my codes. I punched them in and began downloading the game. I've had the game for around two weeks now and I regret nothing.

It's an All-Star Battle

I didn't read the third part of the manga until this past week. Despite a lack of knowledge I still managed to fall in love with the game.

All-Star Battle is a straight up fighting game. It is almost void of all story and the main menu is entirely in English. That means I can navigate to where I want to go fairly well and learning how to play isn't too hard because it's fairly similar to other fighting games. The weird game specific things I figured out as I went along. What's crazy is that it's not a very good fighting game. It's fairly unbalanced and broken in a myriad of ways, which makes it pretty fun. It probably helps that I'm not good at fighting games, so I'm not good enough to have issues with specific characters and game mechanics. It's an ignorance is bliss type of scenario. All I know is that it's fun to hit the other character and it's even more fun to hit them with a crazy floating stand.

The character doesn't even need to punch the enemy themselves if they don't want to.

As I said previously the game is beautifully animated. What makes it even better is that something insane happens all the time. When I was messing around with the game at first almost every single attack was mind blowing. I now know just how insane everything in the series is and this game captures that very well. Everyone makes super flamboyant poses and screams out craziness. It's especially weird to hear someone yell Red Hot Chili Peppers in English during a constant stream of Japanese. The entire game is pure unadulterated Japanese madness in a way that I haven't been able to experience in years. This kind of stuff doesn't usually make it's way to the West anymore.

There are just over 30 characters in the main game with more coming as downloadable content. It's nice that each character feels unique, so I might actually buy the additional characters. Apparently I'm not the only person who thought it was a good game either. In its first week over 400,000 copies were sold in Japan.

The characters and animation in the game look beautiful.

That isn't to say that there haven't been any complaints about the game. The story mode is terrible and I'd probably be more upset if I could read or speak Japanese. You basically go through a series of fights with spoken text in between. You can beat it in two hours maximum. It's kind of disappointing considering how much effort CC2 puts into the story for their Naruto games. The killer for a lot of people is the campaign mode though. In campaign mode you can unlock alternate costumes, colors, taunts, and poses for the characters. At first it sounds awesome, but for some reason progress is gated like a free to play game. You fight against computer controlled versions of other people playing the game and computer controlled bosses in order to unlock everything. Each battle uses one bar of a battery and when that battery runs out you have to wait real time for it to refill. As of right now it takes 55 minutes to refill the whole thing, but eventually that's going to turn into 3 or 4 hours, which is far too long.

These things don't bother me very much, because I don't know any better when everything is in Japanese. Sure it's annoying that I can't unlock everything all at once, but it's keeping me playing the game. Plus it's not like I'd be able to sell it back since I got a digital copy. For my first imported game I think that I did pretty well. I didn't have any problems getting it and I am totally on board with everything it has to offer. It was my gateway into the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure universe.

I think this game is fun. You should check it out.

If you find any of this interesting I highly recommend you check out videos of the game. It's complete and utter madness, but it's surprisingly fun to play and even watch. I'm going to be purchasing all the DLC and since this is an import game I might write up something new for each piece I download. People need to know if the characters are worth downloading or not!

Update: During the Toky Game Show it was announced that Jojo's All-Star Battle would indeed be coming to America. I can't wait to see what they change. I'm generally intrigued to see how well it will sell here. Looks like I'm going to have to buy it again. At least now I can get a physical copy.

     -Manny

Game Time - August 2013

Guess what? This installment of Game Time is a few days late and I apologize. However, you will now be able to enjoy hearing all about my gaming exploits in the month of August!

So, I made an impulse decision to buy the Wii-U on launch day. I deeply regretted my purchase until I began what could be referred to as my Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate addiction. After about 300 hours of play I weaned myself off of the game and left my Wii-U to collect dust. Normally I'd say that's hyperbole, but the thing does get dusty pretty quickly.

This past month I actually booted it up once again in order to play the highly anticipated Pikmin 3. I had a delightful time playing the game, even if it was far too brief. I'm going to be honest when I say that I don't think that even first party Nintendo games are enough to save the system anymore, but that's not the point! The point is that I booted up my Wii-U to play a first party Nintendo game that wasn't a mini game collection!

Other than the mini-gameless fun I had on the Wii-U I also played the PS3 a fair bit. Tales of Xillia came out at the beginning of the month, so I got my Japanese action RPG on for about 50 hours. The game was good, but I was disappointed. Get ready, because I'm going to complain about it quite a bit.

Last but certainly not least I had a lot of fun playing Dive Kick. The ridiculous fighting game parody finally got released. I dove, but I also kicked.

I have new September games I should be playing right now, so let's get on with it. It's Game Time!

Pikmin 3 

Nintendo hasn't exactly been churning out quality products on the Wii-U, but they promised me that Pikmin 3 would be worth the wait. It was even delayed, because it needed more polish. Now we're almost a year into the system's life span and Pikmin 3 is the first real game Nintendo has released for the thing after its initial launch. They seem to think that Pikmin 3 is going to lead the charge into this coming holiday season and boost the Wii-U's sales. I don't want to be a downer, but I don't think it's going to.

I really liked Pikmin 3, just as I liked the previous two games in the franchise. If you also enjoyed those games then this one will be right up your alley as well. That's because it isn't a whole lot different than its predecessors. You still gather up the cute little plant critters and throw them at things in order to complete tasks. You can have 100 Pikmin following you at a time, but more can be stored in the spaceship known as "The Onion" in case you ever need to pull some out. When the Pikmin defeat an enemy or find a colored pellet they will bring them back to the onion in order to create new Pikmin for you.

Pikmin like to chill out in the Onion.

The main difference in Pikmin 3 comes from the fact that you now have control over three characters. They crash landed on the Pikmin planet while searching for a way to save the denizens of their starving planet. It just so happens that the planet Pikmin 3 takes place on is rich with gigantic fruit that they can use to make juice. You are tasked with gathering fruit while trying to find the necessary parts to fix your spaceship and return home. These are three new characters Charlie the captain, Alph the engineer, and Brittany the biologist. If you liked Captain Olimar do not fear, because you still get to hear about him and Louie in diary entries scattered throughout the world.

With three characters at your disposal the game places an emphasis on multitasking, but not enough of an emphasis to make it a necessity. Like the previous two games you are given a time limit for each day. You have until the sun goes down before you have to get back on the ship and fly into orbit. There will often be numerous things you want to get done in a day and while three characters makes it easier I often found myself only using one at a time. You can have someone get a fruit, while someone else is destroying a barrier.

Even though you have three characters you probably won't use them all.

At the end of each day the game will show you all the fruit you acquired and then squeeze it into juice. Depending on the size of the fruit it will make a certain amount of juice. In order to continue playing the game you need one jar of juice per night for your characters to consume. This is supposed to add a sense of urgency, which is why you would want to be multitasking. However, you become overrun with juice very quickly and it doesn't really matter if it takes an extra day to complete a task. I beat the game in around 40 days and I still had a ridiculous amount of juice left over.

Pikmin 3 tries to move forward, but it's ultimately stuck in the past. There really isn't any reason that the game should have the day night cycle anymore. All it does is artificially gate your progress. To make it a bit more annoying you have to go through all the fruit squeezing and hear one of the crew members diary entries every single night. It's cool at first, but it gets a little tedious after a while. One thing I will say is that the graphics are amazing. Well, not all of them. The main thing that impressed me was the fruit. Whenever you get a fruit you can rotate it around and look at it, and they all look amazing. Something about them looks so real and delicious, while the rest of the game just looks average.

The fruit in Pikmin 3 looks ridiculously good.

I don't really know how I feel about Pikmin 3. It's a fun game and I liked it while I was playing it, but that was only for around 13 hours. The game was super polished, but there isn't a lot of reason to go back and play any more of it. On top of that it's almost the exact same game that the previous ones were. I normally don't care about that, but there just wasn't a whole lot to get really excited about. I can't tell if I'm getting old and jaded, or if Nintendo isn't releasing the kind of magical console games they used to. Their handheld games on the other hand are still out of this world so I don't know what they're doing,


Tales of Xillia

The first Tales game I played was Tales of Phantasia on the PSOne. I never finished it, but I thought it was pretty good. The first Tales game I played to completion was Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube and to this day it remains one of my favorite games. For one reason or another I didn't really continue on the Tales train so I missed out on all the PS2 iterations. I've read a lot about the series and I've played a bunch of the more recent installments. Xillia looked to be one of the best in the series, so I went ahead and picked it up.

I'm not going to say that Xillia is bad, because I enjoyed it. However, I was certainly disappointed. It starts off very strong. You can choose to follow the story through the eyes of Jude the medical student, or Milla Maxwell the lord of spirits in human form. I chose Jude, because in battle he uses his fists and that's badass. However, shortly after I left the first town I stopped thinking that everything was so great.

I like punching stuff in battle

Tales games are known for being filled to the brim with content. You can get tons of sidequests and most of them are actually worth your time. The battle systems are action oriented and very fun. Tales games tend to have have fairly similar anime-esque stories, but the characters often overshadow the played out plot. Xillia does have a fun battle system, but I can't really say it was filled to the brim with content, or that the characters were very good.

Something about Xillia made me miss the way JRPGs used to be, or more specifically I wanted this game to be more like Tales of Symphonia. I've seen a lot of people say that Xillia is their new favorite Tales game, which I just can't understand because it seems like a stripped down version of what these games used to be. There is no overworld map. Instead you travel from town to town by going through huge wide open plains inhabited by way too many monsters. Sure, you can battle the monsters, which is fun. It just gets annoying after a while, because the battles are so stupidly easy. Even boss encounters were a walk in the park the entire way through the game. I could have turned up the difficulty, but the normal difficulty should not be the easiest thing in the world. If I changed the game to easy I probably could have smashed my face on the controller to get through the battles!

The battle system in Xillia is great.

Hardly any of the sidequests were worth it and the game lets you know every time you can do a new one. Despite that I still missed quite a few. The game also marks off whatever NPCs you can talk to on a map making exploration in towns mean absolutely nothing. Upon completing the game all I had left to do was beat the secret dungeon and secret boss. I had done every other thing available to me. This all wouldn't have been so bad if the plot and characters hadn't worn me down by the end.

I tried so hard to like Jude as a character, but I just couldn't do it. The entire time he tries to define his purpose in life, but just ends up coming off as a wishy washy tool. He follows Milla, because he feels obligated to take responsibility for his actions despite the fact that there was nothing to take responsibility for in the first place. Oh yeah, he's also inexplicably in love with Milla even though she's a freaking spirit and he knows that... Then you have my favorite character Alvin who was pretty cool for most of the game until about halfway through when they take his character and smash it to pieces. I won't bore you with the details of that though. What sucks is that there were parts of Xillia's plot that were genuinely surprising, but I just couldn't get behind any of the characters to form a bond with the plot.

Oh Alvin, why did they have to ruin you?

This is a problem I have when I play a lot of modern games. I get stuck thinking about how much better games used to be, or how the last iteration of a game was in comparison to the new one. This game made me think that maybe I had just grown out of the Tales series. In order to test that I fired up the Xbox 360 and started to play Tales of Vesperia. I am now near the end of Vesperia and I think that it is better than Xillia in every possible facet except the battle system. Vesperia may in fact be better than Symphonia, which means a lot coming from me. Xillia wasn't a bad game by any means I just didn't connect with it at all. It's a fun JRPG on a console that hasn't seen a lot of them.

DiveKick

When I first saw DiveKick I knew it was supposed to be a joke, because that's what it was conceived as. It's still pretty funny to me, but I think that at some point it evolved into something much more than a joke. For anyone who doesn't know what DiveKick is I'll explain it, because it's a fairly simple concept.

It's a stripped down fighting game. Each fighter starts on the opposite end of the screen. Like all fighting games the goal is to defeat your opponent, but the catch is that there are only two buttons. One is used to dive into the air and the other is used to kick down. If you push the kick button on the ground you can push yourself backwards. If you kick the opponent then they die and you win the round. All it takes is one kick.

This is a real video game.

See, DiveKick started off as an inside joke of the fighting game community. Some of the characters in the game are even based off of prominent people in the fighting game community such as Madcatz community manager Markman and CEO tournament organizer Alex Jebaily. Hell, the games creator "Keits" runs Shoryuken one of the main fighting game websites on the internet.

Seeing the game in action is even a joke. It looks like a bad flash game. All of the characters say stupid things and the announcer is downright hilarious. In spite of that somehow the game transformed into something amazing. I don't know if it was intentional or if I'm just looking too deep into the game, but it's basically a fighting game distilled down into a form that anyone can enjoy.

At some point the characters in DiveKick got a little out of hand.

I like to watch fighting games, because I find them exciting. Playing them on the other hand does not always feel the same way. I'm not as good as a lot of the people I play with, which can take away a lot of the fun. That's not to say that I've never had fun playing fighting games. It's a thrill when you're having a close match and one more hit could decide the match. That moment is literally all DiveKick is. If you get hit you lose the round. More than that it takes away all the bullshit systems that most fighting games have and is just pure mechanics. Well, not exactly you still have super meter and can do special attacks by pushing both buttons, but it's still almost just pure mechanics.

DiveKick is an interesting game that doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. It's a fascinating concept and it could be a bridge that gets people into more involved fighting games if seen in the right light.

GTA is coming 

Recently I feel like all I do is hate on the games I've been playing, but that will certainly not be the case next time I write one of these.

On September 17th I will be playing Grand Theft Auto V. There is no question in my mind that it will be incredible. I have some pretty bold statements I could make about it, but I'll save those for the next installment. Rock Star seems to be making something special and it could be a game that people will look back to as one of the finest games this generation.

Other than that you can look forward to hearing all about the stupid amount I played One Piece Pirate Warriors 2.  I started playing it last night and it sure is another Dynasty Warriors One Piece game. I might play some other games too, but GTA V is most likely going to consume every waking hour of free time I have. I can't wait to get back to Los Santos!

See you next month.

    -Manny