JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Starlight Lineage is a crossover 2.5D fighting game released for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 developed by CyberConnect2 collaborating with Arc System Works and published by Bandai Namco, and a spinoff of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure manga series. The game works has a spiritual succesor to the previous 3 fighting games based on the series: Heritage for the Future, All-Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven.
Gameplay[]
Has mentioned before, Starlight Lineagedevelops from the roots of the previous fighting games of the franchise, mainly focusing on All-Star Battle and using the other two games in certain puntual aspects;the game is a tag 2v2 fighting game where both players can switch between their characters at any moment as well to call them for assist. The game use 4 main buttons being the classics Light (L), Medium (M) and Heavy (H) attacks, apart of the special Style button (S) that are unique to each character and an Evade (E) button, there is also a button for call your partner for Assist (A) and when you mantain the button pressed you can tag them, the taunt button also has an important function. Like most fighting games the win condition is deplete the opponent's health meters using your attacks, there is only one round with 120 seconds at base (thought it can be changed both the time limit and the number of rounds freely).
The game also haves multiple mechanics, some of them more deep than others:
- Heat Beat: The name of the autocombo of the game, mashing the light button follows to a combo that usually consists of Light Attack, Medium Attack, Heavy Attack, Special Move, Heart Heat Attack; note that the Heat Beat versions of these moves are slightly weaker than the regular attacks. It can be disbaled in the selection screen.
- Ultra Heavy Attack: An almighty attack made for break defenses, use half the meter and is performed pressing H+S, compare to BlazBlue's Guard Crush. The more you charge the attack the more Guard Meter depletes (or if the opponent doesn't block apart of hard knockdown leaves then Guard Crushed, has a drawback the move is slow specially for charge it at maximum.
- Evade/Stylish Evade/Evade Cancel: Using the Evade button you can shift between the back and front layers of the stage dodging the opponent's attack, have in mind that certain moves covers more than one side and wouldn't be evaded unless you do a Stylish Evade that is basically a perfect-timed Evasion that freeze the opponent and it can be do in chain since ignores the recovery of the evasion. There are also Evade cancels that can be performed on block or soft knockdown with the third part of a meter for each consecutive evade, its basically a forced Stylish Evade with the same functions but that requires meter.
- Golden Cancel: Pressing all 3 attack buttons (not counting Style/Evade buttons) simultaneously and expending a stock of meter to make the character immediately and completely stop their move, marked with a flashing pose and a small freeze to the rest of the screen. This gives the player a chance to instantly act out of their canceled ability for any number of purposes, including but not limited to: executing more attacks and stringing longer combos on their opponent, making a move less punishable, executing a sudden Throw to surprise a defending opponent, using their HHA or even chaining an extended combo into their GHA for a strong finisher.
- Strike-A-Pose: When you taunt a knocked opponent for the first time you can trigger a special move that reduce the opponent's meter in 1 bar, while if you mantain holding the taunt button and Down you can charge your own meter.
- Dual Heart Attack: You can consume the maximum amount of meter stocks (4) to use a Dual Heart Attack, a combination of both character's strength into a deadly attack. Certain characters have unique animations for Dual Heart Attacks if their are paired with a particular ally.
- Tag Tandem: Holding A+S allows you to do a Tag Tandem where for a certain amount of time the screen freezes and you can "program" a combo that your partner will perform, depending of the amount of meter used the more inputs can you press, the programmed combo works has a Free Combo where almost all attacks cancels into any other so be creative! If the partner is hit however the combo would be interrumped and the partner apart of receive damage would simply leave.
- Dramatic Rush: When two multihit attacks collide the game enters into this mode where both characters would fight to see which one success their attack, you need to quickly mash the buttons to win.
- Menacing Mode: When you have less than 20% of health and only one character left you automatically enter in this mode, their attack increase and the meter refills passively, certain moves also gain armor propierties in this mode.
Fighting Styles & Traits[]
All characters are classified into different battle styles that variates the way their Style button works, at the same time some characters also counts with special traits that gives them certain passive abilities, there are characters who shares more than one Style (thought most of the time one of the styles is only used has a trait).
Roster[]
The roster makes use of most of the original models of All-Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven thought they are tweaked thanks to the support of Arc System Works adding better shaders and textures to improve their look. This allows to have a bigger roster selection to an amount of up to 70 characters.
| INITIAL ROSTER | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Joestar | William A. Zeppeli | Robert E. Speedwagon | Tarkus | Bruford | Dio Brando |
| Joseph Joestar | Caesar A. Zeppeli | Lisa Lisa | Rudolf von Stroheim | Straizo | Santana |
Stages[]
Starlight Lineage stages follows the original concept of All-Star Battle having 3D stages with certain hazards, but also evolves it adding more interaction with the stage like transitions between stages and obstacles, these interactions can be turned off during the stage selection thought. Performing a high damaging attack to finish an opponent under certain conditions triggers a Dramatic Finisher.