It feels like nowadays, any up-and-coming anime property getting a console game based on it is hit with the “arena-fighter curse” – your anime game is gonna be a 3D competitive brawler with limited combos and you’re gonna like it. In some cases, this can be a great choice – games like the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series compensate for their basic gameplay with high-octane speed and an absurd amount of playable characters. Likewise, the long-running Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm delivers breath-taking story-mode cinematics and beautiful super animations that add immense flair to an otherwise basic arena fighter. Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash does neither of these, unfortunately, and instead flounders as yet another bare-bones, forgettable arena-action anime spinoff.
From the jump, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash feels incredibly bare-bones. There’s little fan-fare to the title-screen, and the main-menu is just footage of the opening from season 1 of the anime playing behind some basic menu options for multiplayer, story-mode, and free-battle. There’s no spark or style here, and when other anime-fighters like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle can pour a metric-ton of passion for the source-material into just one menu, it stands out when a game like this doesn’t put that same effort in. It’s uncooked all the way through – booting up Story Mode drops you into the middle of an early fight in the series, but then flashes back to one of the first fights, and then immediately flashes back to that same fight from a slightly different perspective…yet never shows you how the story actually begins. It’s a messy, rushed recap for people familiar with the source material, and worse yet, it’s all told via unexciting screencaps taken directly from the anime.
It’s hard to forgive the shortcomings here, when Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the most stylish anime & manga series of the modern era. It has jaw-dropping fight scenes and characters who ooze cool and dress sharp. Plus, there’s a stacked roster of heroes and villains that is especially expansive when you dig into the supporting characters or recent debuts in season 2 or the latest manga chapters. Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash, bizarrely, capitalizes on none of this – it’s roster of playable characters and the story scenes it adapts are limited to purely content from season 1 and the Zero prequel movie. It’s a decision that makes this game feel immediately outdated upon release – anyone who’s a fan of the series can go on for hours about the importance of characters like Toji Fushiguro or how cool Maki Zenin is in the latest arcs of the manga. Yet, Toji is nowhere to be found in this game, and Maki looks as she does in the very first season of the anime. Even within the limitations of a “season 1 and Zero only” roster, there are baffling exclusions – where are Mei Mei and Miwa Kasumi? Why no Miguel? Why can’t I play as secret metal-head Yoshinobu Gakuganji?
The gameplay in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash doesn’t make up for things, either. You’ve got basic attacks on three of your face buttons, two special attacks on your shoulder buttons, and an ultimate attack you can use once per match. It’s an incredibly limited amount of options, which isn’t necessarily an issue – other arena fighters have had similarly limited movesets but made up for it with fast movement or impactful animations. This game, unfortunately, moves at a snails pace and never comes close to matching the striking, frenetic, gorgeous animation style of the anime – basic attacks are slow and laborious, and your special moves have little impact to them. Even your ultimate attacks, a usual treat in anime fighters like these, instead come across like basic attacks or unfinished animations.
With that lack of style comes an equally concerning lack of polish and balance – characters with ranged attacks can simply outperform those without them, and the quickness with which you can block combined with the sluggishness of dodging or recovering from knockdown results in matches that go on far, far longer than they should. The length of matches is especially drawn out by the default 2v2 team battle that Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash makes you do – it’s the default mode in all online play, and even the default mode in local Free Battle. Also, for some reason, Free Battle has no visual character select screen at all. You just navigate a soulless list of character and costume names.
Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is, from top-to-bottom, a soulless product. It has none of the charm or style of the anime & manga series it adapts. By limiting itself to characters and ideas from the first season of the anime – which is already 4 years old at this point – it also immediately comes across as outdated and barebones. Fans of the series deserve far, far better than this basic cash-in on an incredibly popular franchise that doesn’t seem to understand why exactly that franchise is so popular to begin with.
