Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven Jump Festa 2015 Demo Impressions

Hey guys it`s SteelBallJack and I managed to pull myself from my work yesterday to attend Jump Festa 2015!
I played a few demos, took a LOT of pictures and had a lot of fun in the process.

Anyhow onto the big news, after waiting in line for over an hour I got to play JoJo`s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven on the PS4 (PS3 versions were not available). Please keep reading to hear my impressions on the game’s playable demo.

First of all, the controls are very similar to ASB but with some changes and additions, which includes:

L1 + R1: Dual Heat Attack,
L2: Forward Dash (Dashes towards the enemy when locked on),
R3: Lock on to enemy character in view,
L1 + X/O/Square/Triangle: Special Attacks.

These are the main changes with a lot of other special changes that I will explain in the following.

The demo features four teams to choose from, which consist of Jotaro and Kakyouin, Joseph and Caesar, Stroheim and Joseph or Jousuke (4) and Jotaro (you only get to play as the first person on the team so there is no changing to your partner, or at least thus far) and 2 stages (Battle Tendancy`s Fight Island and Steel Ball Run`s Rocky Mountain Town).

The demo has 2 levels, the first stage is against a different pair from those you chose to play as (in my case I chose Josuke and Jotaro and I was fighting against Joseph and Caesar), the game plays out looking similar to J-Stars in terms of view (but with fields half the size of J-Stars fields) and the battle system is similar to a fully 3D ASB as expected.

Extra note: If you defeat Caesar before Joseph in a Joseph/Caesar team then Caesar will fall to his knees put the antidote ring/Caesars headband in the blood bubble followed by Joseph crying out “CAAAEEESAAAARRRR” from the original material. Although seeing this scene was very exciting, it also made Joseph much more of a challenge as he doesn’t flinch and his power increases.

When you win your first battle by defeating the first team you head straight to the `Boss Match`, in this demo`s case, the boss is Diego Brando. At first Diego Brando will be riding upon his horse Silver Bullet, but once you do a lot of damage to Diego he will turn into his dinosaur form and will deal a lot more damage to your team. During the battle other dinosaurs will attempt to intervene and attack you and your partner.

Now the way to end battles is not as simple as reducing their health to zero, but once you have completely drained their health, you will need to stand within the red circle around their downed body and to hold Triangle to perform the `Final Attack`. Hold the button until it has filled up the gauge (in which you will perform an ultimate pose as the katakana gogogogo flies across the screen), then your character will do an automatic finishing attack which removes said downed character from the battle.

If your filling of the gauge is interrupted by an attack from the said characters teammate, you will need to do it before the downed opponent gets back up (which can happen if the teammate steps within the red circle and helps them back up).

Each team will have a unique Dual Heat Attack (a special attack which involves both characters). Because I chose Josuke (4) and Jotaro, my dual attack had Jotaro and Josuke appear on screen as Jotaro said “Let`s do this together!” as we beat the enemy down. I took the final attack (which was a shortened version of Josukes ASB Great Heat Attack).

Once I beat each match, an awesome chat between Josuke and Jotaro was featured in the results screen (similar to ASB but with something said by both characters). Each special pair will also have a unique chat.

Each battle roughly took me less than 5 minutes to beat and the game itself seems to be a lot more casual then ASB. I managed to get a nice air to ground combos before using my special L1 + single button attacks to push them back and deal more damage. After locking on, using the L2 dash really does help but the animation could not be cancelled to an attack at my will, so I ran straight into my opponent as I waited for the dash to finish.

A lot of assets including attack animations/poses and special attacks are taken straight from ASB but the new animations added to the character work very well within this new 3D field environment. When you and your opponent attack the same enemy you will become confused to who exactly is doing damage to the opponent as the attacks, of course, are very flashy. I was never personally downed but I can see the `Final Attack` animation from opponent characters to be lengthy and may annoy people.

I hope you enjoyed my Eyes of Heaven impressions and please stay tuned for more translations and news right here on ShonenGameZ!!

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