| Game Title: | Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash |
| Developer: | Byking, Gemdrops |
| Publisher: | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
| Release Date: | 2nd February 2024 |
| Platforms: | PS4/PS5/Switch/XSS/XSX/XOne/Steam |
Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash is a game based on the famous Shonen Jump Manga with the same name. This is the series' first home console game title and was released around the time the 2nd Season finished airing. The game is a 3D Fighter Arena like Mye Hero Academia: My Hero One's Justice or NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja Storm Series.
Story
The story mode of Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash has 6 chapters (+1 extra chapter for EX Battles). The first 5 chapters consist of the whole story of the first season, while chapter 6 focuses solely on the story of Jujutsu Kaisen 0 The Movie.
Story mode consists of JJK Season 1 & JJK 0 Movie stories
Recently they just released a new story DLC which added the first half of the Season 2 story.
Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc
To be honest, we think that the game did a very good job of recapping the anime. It does include the important story of Season 1, plus the slice-of-life part area as well. Unfortunately, we can't say the same thing about the story presentation.
The story presentation is one of the worst parts of this game. One of the reasons is that they showed very good in-game engine cutscenes in the opening section of the story, and then they switched it into a slideshow presentation. This game only has 4 in-game engine cutscenes including the opening sequence. Three other sequences are the one where Gojo uses "Purple" against Hanami, Yuji × Nobara vs Eso × Kechizu, & Yuta vs Geto. It was done beautifully and we find ourselves wanting for more of it, only to be disappointed by those animation slides.
To be honest, the developer is ABLE to make a good in-game engine cutscene, but they just don't. Byking itself already has good experience making Anime 3D Fighting Games (My Hero Academia: My Hero One's Justice & My Hero One's Justice 2), so they do have the experience.
Beautiful In-Game 3D Animation with great face expression & effects
One of the reasons we can think of is probably the budget and time limit, making them cut corners with Animation Slides. It's too bad, but that's the reality of anime games. One Piece, My Hero Academia, Dragon Quest, Naruto, and Gintama games also suffer from the same story presentation problem.
For example in the story part where Yuji × Aoi vs Hanami, it's basically just another animation slideshows + battle sequence. But in these battle sequences, if you can activate the Coop skills between Yuji × Aoi, you will get an animation sequence that stays true to the original script (what's not good about this is that you can do the same sequence multiple times, making it less impactful to the story sequences that you are experiencing at the moment).
Todo & Itadori vs Hanami
Or the usage of Ultimate Attack against certain enemies like the battle between Fushiguro vs Special Grade Curse as you can see down below.
Then again, this only works for people who actually know the story of Jujutsu Kaisen, and if you are a newcomer to the series, you might not have an idea how this is accurate to the original manga/anime.
Gameplay
As we mentioned above, the game is a 3D Fighter Arena kind of fighting game, focusing on 2 vs 2 battle (Although you can make it 2 vs 1, 1 vs 2, or 1 vs 1).
We believe the reason for this is that in the manga/anime, there are a lot of scenes where 2 characters are working together while fighting their opponents. By using the right characters, you can recreate the anime scenes with the Joint Attack.
Nanami & Itadori Joint Attack
The gameplay is very clunky and super mediocre at best. Each character basically has 6 different combos + 2 Cursed Energy Techniques + 1 Awakened Move + 1 Joint Attack (Depending on your partner the joint attack will show special attack animations).
The Cursed Energy Techniques has 3 different stages and each stage uses a different Cursed Energy gauge bar, which means you have to strategize when and how to use the Cursed Energy bars because enemies will only receive damage through Cursed Energy attacks (The normal combos are only being used to raise the Cursed Energy gauge level). As you can see down below, Yuji's Divergent Fist turns into Black Flash on Cursed Energy Level 3.
Check out the 3 Level of Itadori's Cursed Energy
While it seems like the game is difficult to navigate because of the very floaty movement, not to mention the lag between each combo, and the long invincible time of your opponents. it actually focuses heavily on the "Just Guard" and "Just Evade" systems to thrive in the battle. Because when you actually received a combo from your enemy, there's no way that you can cancel the combo or counter it. The only thing that you can do is make sure you are not getting hit by the combo by Guarding or Evading.
The real problem in this game is not just the clunky movement, but there are also balancing issues of characters. Apparently, each character has different Parameters, which means some characters hit harder than others, and also have longer Health bars than others. This is extremely bad, especially for a game in which half of the trophy achievements are based on Online Match. As far as we know, Gojo has like around 500 Health points, while Jogo has around 360 Health points.
Every playable characters
The character's roster is also a little bit too small, although that's to be expected. This always happens with the 1st game of an anime series. These characters are basically those who make appearances in the First Season of the anime, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 The Movie, and the first half of the Second Season. (Where is Mechamaru, Miguel, the Headmasters, etc.?). They did add a few new characters like Mai Zen'in & Noritoshi Kamo through updates and DLC, but they should have been available in the first place.
In the end, when you are fighting on a 1 vs 1 battle, this game is decent at its best. But with 2 vs 2, it's frustrating from time to time. Most of the time you'll get ganged by 2 other characters at the same time, although we appreciate the Awakened Move & Joint Attack as those stay true to the original manga/anime. But it is by no means a good fighting game, with all the floatiness, and not being able to counter or cancel a combo, compared to other anime games with the same genre, this is definitely not something that we'd consider as good. It could have been better to be honest as they did have interesting systems like the Joint Attack & Cursed Energy Level.
Graphics & Performance
As we mentioned already several times above, the in-game graphic of the game is probably the strongest selling point of the game. It does a good job of showing the character's facial expression, also the details in the character models as well.
Face details and the effects are awesome
The game also has a very good performance, it runs on a constant 4K 60fps on our PlayStation 5. You can see the chart that was provided by the official website down below.
Performance & Resolutions on each platforms
For PS5 & PS4, the game runs on 4K 60fps, while others vary depending on the console's performance. PS4 & XOne is 1080p and up to 60fps, while Switch is up to 30fps with 720p on Handheld mode and 1080p on TV mode.
That being said, we believe that Byking & Gemdrops did a very good job in terms of the Graphics and Performance, although unfortunately, it's not 100% optimized on Switch. Also, all of the animations in-game (besides the Slideshow presentation), were done beautifully.
Sounds
This game has a banger BGMs, that one is true, and we believe a lot of people can agree to that.
The Verdict
To be honest, we have a love/hate situation with this game. We agree that the game has very good in-game graphics and character details as well. Unfortunately, they didn't deliver on a bigger portion of the story presentation & gameplay.
It totally feels like a half-baked game targeted at Jujutsu Kaisen's fans who want to enjoy the story on a different media of entertainment. For first-timers, instead of playing this game, I'd recommend you to watch the anime for a better experience.
In terms of story, we believe it does a good job at recapping the story, but feels like a wasted potential. If they had utilized and maximised their in-game assets, we believe that we could have something good for the story mode.
While this game promotes Online matches, unfortunately, this is not the kind of game that people would want to play competitively or even online with all the clunkiness.
In the end, if you really love Jujutsu Kaisen and want to play as your favorite characters or recreate scenes from the anime, then this game could be for you. Other than that, it's not suitable for newcomers.
We finished the story mode & the DLC of Hidden Inventory/Premature Death in around 8 hours. While clearing all the mission tasks and getting S Rank on every Story missions.
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