Heritage for the Future/DIO

This is the appearance DIO takes for the final chapters of Stardust Crusaders. A majority of his "open-handed" attacks are now properly clenched into fists (his light and hard attacks), signifying his better control over the body. The World is also fully revealed.

This DIO comes with 2 different versions, one being a playable 'Greatest High' DIO, and the other being a boss DIO.

In the Story Mode, DIO will wear his jacket for the first round in the final battle against him, and his abilities will be limited. Upon being defeated once, he will shed his jacket and declare it to be the final round, regardless of how many rounds the player sets.

Moveset and Gameplay
His moveset now resembles Jotaro's, with a few touches of his own. In contrast to Jotaro, DIO is more effective with his Stand on. His Stand combos are effective at dealing a lot of damage to the enemy in a short time. As such, DIO specializes in quick disposal of an enemy.

His Blazing Strikes can be manipulated to hit low, where the enemy must guard low. This makes his attacks unpredictable, keeping opponents on their toes. His Space Ripper Stingy Eyes attacks, now with different commands, are now completely unblockable, though the animation is notably slower and lack any ability to cause a Stand Crash right off.

His Road Roller, though weak in JoJo's Venture, now deals greater damage in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. His Chi no Shoukan (Bloody Summoning), added in the second game, requires the enemy to be hit before he sucks their blood. The scene when he connects with the move is considerably graphic, with a cutscreen of the enemy's face being punctured by DIO's fingers.

While he does have considerable damaging potential, he does have handicaps; His super moves cannot be integrated into combos in such a way that they will chain together. However, his super moves have a degree of invincibility, which increase his effectiveness in close-quarter battles, even when predictable. DIO players tend to rely on frame traps or mistakes from the enemy to inflict damage. To be able to use him well, DIO players must have the reflexes to perform their super moves at the right moment and often with right judgement.

His The World - Time Stop is particularly deadly at 10 levels of power. He can deploy a lot of knives (particularly the Active Stand version of the Super Move) repeatedly, especially point blank on the enemy, and perform Road Roller before the power gauge goes below level 1. If the enemy is big in size, the more the enemy will take damage from the knives. It is a gamble though to successfully perform The World against a human player, but the damage it inflicts is worth the effort.

His time stop ability can be foiled by attacks that bring total invincibility to its user, Vanilla Ice being one such character. True to the manga and anime, Jotaro also can usurp the timestop from DIO if he does his own timestop command in the right moment.

Trivia
If DIO is hit by Alessi's Stand, he will turn into Nukesaku.