With the success of Jujutsu Kaisen, an anime that made its premiere in 2020 before spawning a prequel film, a second season, and the announcement of a third, comes the highly anticipated release of Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash, a 2v2 action-brawler. Collaboratively developed by studios Byking and Gemdrop, and being a fan of the anime myself, I cannot thank publisher Bandai Namco enough for providing MKAU with a copy of the game for review.

In the Jujutsu Kaisen universe, all living creatures emit Cursed Energy, which develops on the back of negative emotions. Some living creatures can control the Cursed Energy that flows through them, making them Jujutsu Sorcerers, but more often than not, the continuous release of Cursed Energy results in Curses being born – a spiritual race that aims to destroy all living beings.

The story of Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash recaps the first season of the anime, covering Yuji Itadori’s first consumption of one of the fingers of Sukuna, a special-grade Curse known as the King of Curses who sealed his power away into each of his fingers upon his death. Consuming one of his fingers has made Itadori a Vessel of Sukuna, allowing the resurrection of the Curse. From here, the game dives into the story through a slide-show format coupled with a voice-over of the dialect. Most missions include either a 1v1, 1v2, or 2v2 playable fights between the central characters of that mission’s story.

Like any fighter game, the objective of the gameplay is to defeat your enemy. With a roster of 15 playable Sorcerers and Curses from the story, your Cursed Energy builds by landing combo hits, getting stronger as you fight, and allowing you to unleash devastating techniques and abilities to win. Playable with either a controller or KBM, combos are easy to master – they’re pretty much the same for each character, typically using 2 to 5 input combos and not relying on strings. This makes the game easy to pick up if you’re new to the fighter/brawler genre.

There are four different modes in the game. There is the previously mentioned Story Mode, a Free Play mode that allows you to team up with and battle against CPUs, an Online Battle mode which is a 2v2 matchmaking mode with a ranked option, and an Online Co-op mode that allows you to equip weapons and charms to your character and fight with another player/CPU to defeat waves of enemies, giving you XP points to level up your characters with. The Story, Online Co-Op, and Online Battle modes reward you with in-game currency; Juju Points. These allow you to unlock some customization options such as cosmetics and player card customization items, or weapons and buffs, usable in the Online Co-Op mode.

As exciting as the multiplayer modes sound, local multiplayer isn’t a thing. It’s a crazy and really disappointing decision considering the genre, but to make matters worse, the online matchmaking isn’t good. I’m not sure if it’s due to a low player count, given this release isn’t long after the release of other highly anticipated games, or if the matchmaking is just broken for me. I managed to find a few ranked Online Battle games, which disappointingly were also really laggy, and not once did I get into any of the other online modes.

The art style is typical of an Anime-to-Game title, reminiscent of Naruto Ultimate Storm and other brawlers of the genre. Arenas and character customization take inspiration directly from the anime, with fights taking place in some of the biggest locations, complete with environmental destruction, such as trees falling or structural damage to buildings.

Characters can be dressed in a selection of attire pulled straight from their in-universe wardrobes before taking to the arena where the effects used represent Cursed Techniques and Joint Attacks look so powerful that they almost leave you feeling like you’re in the midst of it. This all comes with some wonderfully immersive sound effects, such as the damage and the quip lines of our fighters, but it’s then let down by a backing track that I had to turn down after a while – It got too repetitive.

If you’re OK with not playing online, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash is fine, I think it just has a really low player count. The lacklustre story appears as a dubbed PowerPoint presentation, leaving me to skip through so I could get back into the action. I was not engaged enough to pay attention, and even if I hadn’t already seen the anime or read the manga, I feel like this would still be the case – it was just flat-out boring. The Online Battle mode was fun when I could find a game, but I had the most fun while playing the offline version of the Co-op mode because again, I wasn’t really able to find a game in the online mode. I’m hoping that future updates will bring some more life to the game so I can experience the game at its full capacity.

Written by: Emily France