having to transition from the sweet color scans to the old crappy scans was the worst, because you could follow everything well enough that you didn't wanna drop it, but style and verbal characterization like this was almost completely lost.

Yeeeeeeeah, Part 5 was nowhere near as badly mangled as the glory that was Part 4 Duwang.
It's mostly a product of its time, there just wasn't as many Jojo fans to do the scanlations back then.