In other fighting game playtests, I’ve talked about the ways in which
modern fighting games (or rereleases) have all sorts of modes to bring
you up to speed with how the game is working mechanically. In
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD,
there is none of that. No tutorial mode to walk you through how to
properly evade or use advancing guards, no “getting to know your stand”
feature, and no individual character challenges to teach you combos.
You
do get a tutorial in the form of a digital manual of sorts, and the
game mercifully provides in-game command lists for every character, but
outside of that, the learning experience is all on the player. This port
feels like it came right out of the Dreamcast era, with only a few
concessions to modernity.
So, what are those concessions?
Well, you get an “HD” mode, which is primarily a single sprite filter
(which actually looks quite nice in comparison to other, similar
filters), the option to turn blood from the US version’s white to the
Japanese version’s red, and the requisite online play. That’s about it.
