I played Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash and it’s even worse than I imagined

Gaming News I played Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash and it’s even worse than I imagined

While the Jujutsu Kaisen manga was set to end this year, the Gege Akutami universe hadn’t been the subject of many video games until then. A mobile game called Phantom Parade was recently released in Japan and was a hit with its mix of gacha and RPG with turn-based combat. But today the adventures of Yuji Itadori are being adapted into a premium game for all current media. So Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash was released on February 2nd and if I wasn’t convinced after playing it at Paris Games Week, unfortunately my fears were well founded.

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Long, hard and really uninteresting fights

Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is a 3D arena fighting game where you can compete against each other in 2v2 mode. The title is published by Bandai Namco and developed by Gemdrops, to whom we recently owed the excellent Star Ocean The Second Story R, ​​but above all by Byking, who we know for the My Hero Academia games, namely My Hero: One’s Justice and his Consequence. And considering the gameplay of the title, there is no reason to be surprised as the gameplay feels are quite similar. To create a very quick presentation, We find three attack buttons, including one for combos that allows you to fire different shots depending on the direction of the bat, as well as two others for special techniques

controller in hand, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is not very pleasant to handle. All characters are rigid, especially when they start sprinting, and are difficult to control. As for the fight itself, we can’t say that there is really a strategy, because the principle is simply to strike first and hit the opponent quickly enough once they get up to continue attacking. You can even just use the simple combo button to win without using the other moves. On the other hand, it’s quite frustrating when you’re suffering, watching your character fall hard and take time to get back up before you can control them again. Generally, The rhythm of the fights and the attack animations are very choppy due to a small pause after each action which affects the fluidity of the fight. The same applies to the camera, which tends to get stuck in elements of the exterior decoration and in the walls indoors, which does not help the readability of the confrontations.

After many games, It must be recognized that the fights are very long, since opponents have to be defeated several times to win. However, the system with this story about occult energy meters and their extraction techniques is intended to be more subtle than it seems, which would be much clearer if the tutorial itself was clear. The translation is quite strange at times and unfortunately it’s certain gameplay points that are the most confusing, which doesn’t help you understand the mechanics well. In any case, as already mentioned, we succeed just as well if we only use the basic attack, which allows us to create combos. So what’s the point of mastering the ins and outs of the game system?

An adaptation that clearly doesn’t live up to the anime’s standard

While anime-based games are rarely gems when it comes to gameplay, they often make up for it with their particularly generous fan service. Unfortunately, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash doesn’t even manage to do that with a lack of care and polish that I’ve rarely seen in this type of experience. This can be felt in the game menu, which simply plays excerpts from the anime via the game mode icons at the top of the screen. People on social media said it looked like a DVD menu, and they were right. Afterward, The pre-game interface is absolutely sad: the character models are aliased despite not being animated, and there isn’t even a character select menu. Instead, you select your fighter from a completely bare text menu. To conclude on the visual aspect, it should be mentioned that the PC version doesn’t even offer a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels.

But hey, what about story mode? Once again, as in most anime-inspired Versus games, We are entitled to fights with cutscenes that take the form of images from the anime that the characters are talking about. Where Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash does less well than the others is that it only presents parts of these images rather than in their entirety, which is much less readable. And obviously with this kind of experience The anime’s plot is too short to explore Gege Akutami’s work.

Apart from this story mode, The title offers online or local versus mode, as well as a cooperative mode in which you fight waves of plagues in the company of an AI or another player. Basically a mix of role-playing and survival game elements. To top it all off, a shop is also included where you can buy items, illustrations or even outfits to customize your fighters… and that’s about it content-wise. At least for those who only took the standard version. Deluxe or Ultimate Edition owners can enjoy Jujusta 2024 or Jujutsu RBI, a retro-style baseball mini-game which is reminiscent of the NES, which was inspired by the match between the exorcism schools of Tokyo and Kyoto.

Well, you will have understood, but Jujusu Kaisen Cursed Clash is a title that you should avoid even if you are a fan of the Gege Akutami universe like me. Aside from the music, which tries to stick to that of the anime, and the more faithful character models, there isn’t much to please anime fans. From now on, all you have to do is wait for the release of the global version of Phantom Parade and hope to play a good Jujutsu Kaisen game… assuming you don’t have an aversion to gacha. Jujutsu Kaisen clearly illustrates the problem with video games that are inspired by anime and manga.