So I’ve decided to do another let’s play kinda thing. Instead of playing blatantly bad games however, I decided to play something that’s more sincere and lovable. I’m playing Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: 7th Stand User, which is a Jojo fangame made in RPG Maker 2000/2003 that’s considered to be sincerely good.

The game reminds me of one of the first games I’ve ever owned, which was a Game Boy Advance adaptation of the Duel City arc from Yu-Gi-Oh. In that game, you played as an OC friend of Yugi and the gang that was suddenly involved in their big adventure. This game seems to be about the same, with you becoming buddies with the eponymous Stardust Crusaders – though with a whole bunch of creative liberties, with what I’ve heard.

So, for those of you that haven’t gotten involved in Jojo stuff, a Stand is spiritual energy manifesting in a form that can fight for you. Or in gamer speak, they’re Personas but with a specific function. Stardust Crusaders is a bit weird looking back because a lot of the Stands in this part is way more straightforward than the wackier stuff later in the series. Like, the Stands aren’t even named after musical stuff yet.

Well, except for yours. After a Game Boy version of Stardust Crusader’s prologue, Avdol invites you, the player, in a dream to identify your Stand. There are 18 possible Stands, each with different attributes and movesets; aside from that, some allows you to take action outside of battle and a few of them talk. So right off the bat, there’s a whole lot of replayability, which is surprising.

The Stand you get is decided by a personality quiz, kinda like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon personality quiz. For the sake of this playthrough, I answered honestly and ended up getting the Wildhearts, which aside from Napalm Death, is the closest I’ll get to the perfection of Killer Queen. If you’re following along, I’ve transcribed the guide to the personality test on here because I hate Fandom wikia ads. Figure out your government assigned Stand today!

Onto the action, the rest of the first part of the video is your character going to school to witness the first two or so episodes of Stardust Crusaders, after being awoken by a mysterious voice going by Steel. In doing so, I remembered that the introduction of Stardust Crusaders was just as weird as the introduction to Golden Wind in that characters just have a whole bunch of powers that they only use once and stick to (comparatively) mundane powers afterward. Like hey, Kakyoin being able to take control of people’s bodies and harm people by injuring images of them is pretty sick. Huh? He just uses Hierophant Green’s tentacles and Emerald Splash after that point? Alright, Araki forgot, I guess.

I also decided to look into the band my Stand is named after and man, I picked a good time to start playing this game. After 10 years, the Wildhearts finally released new material earlier this year with Renaissance Men. This is their first track, Dislocated, and I kinda like it. It’s a nice, somber rock song that’s stated to be about mental health issues and losing somebody to it. I don’t listen to a lot of music, but these guys seem alright.

This series is going to be updating on a weekly basis; I’m not going to go ham like I did with YIIK, because that game is awful and I wanted it to be done as soon as possible. Currently, I’m planning to stick to the “canon” route unless something more interesting shows up. If you’ve played before, let me know of interesting choices (without spoilers, of course).