What is this? A tag team-based 3D arena fighting game inspired by the most famous shonen anime right now? Where have I already seen this? Fans of anime video game adaptations that have surfaced in the last five years may recognize Cursed Clash as a game. A lot of them, like Cursed Clash, follow a predetermined pattern. It’s unfortunate because Jujutsu Kaisen’s creative artwork and cursed techniques might be applied to a variety of game genres. Cursed Clash is a stripped-down, derivative fighting game that offers everything it has to offer in its entirety over the first two hours of play.
Cursed Clash is a reworking of the first two storylines from the franchise, and the production is visibly poor from the outset. A few anime clips can be shown on the menu screen, and the modes available were exceedingly frugal—especially by the standards of most contemporary fighting games. Online matches, a shop, and a story mode are all included. Players can purchase a variety of incentives, such as profile cards and character costumes, with money they earn from online matches and objective completion. Still, these were merely token incentives. A lot of them come down to accessories that can offer you an advantage in battle or cosmetic adjustments. Jogo and Mahito’s school uniform suit is one of the funnier costumes, but the more I study it, the more out of place it seems. It resembles putting the head of one model onto the body of another.
In fact, many of the 3D character models themselves appear unsettling and lifeless while they are at rest. Although they appear really nice in motion, this frequently occurs during transition screens. I had no performance problems when playing this on the PlayStation 5, other than a little lag when I tried to join an online match. However, particle effects and auras were useful for giving strikes that use cursed energy specifically an extra layer of complexity. Once a character has enough cursed energy, players can use successive combinations against their opponent to trigger the growth of their domain. I’m impressed at how meticulously many of the anime’s signature maneuvers are recreated. I was focused on the matches in the heat of battle.
In order to dodge attacks, players can block or sidestep. They can also use cursed energy to deliver powerful punches or dash to get closer. The fact that each character has their own unique fighting style and doesn’t feel like a carbon copy of the others is probably my greatest compliment. Gojo can shoot adversaries from a distance or pull them close with his blue and red curse skills, respectively. Todo can trade places with other players on the field by using his clap technique, while Megumi can call shikigami to enhance his strikes. It’s impressive after you properly consider your alternatives, though a touch out of balance.
There is a tag battle aspect in this game. Many fights are two against two, using an NPC or another player. The main objective is to repeatedly knock out a member of your opponent’s team. It makes no difference if it’s shared equally or is carried by just one person; the winner is the squad that wins by four knockouts. Players can engage in team combat or single combat with the team of their adversary. If they use combination attacks to hit opponents at the right moment, fighting together produces better results. But some characters are just naturally stronger at putting certain combos together than others. Geto has the ability to call out insects that immobilize the player for a brief period of time, making it quite simple for his comrade to execute a combination attack. Throughout my gameplay, I failed to find a way out of this. You could make sure this attack never happens, but since the in-game camera is uncontrollable, it’s simple to miss a block or get hit off-screen. Once more, I applaud the team for their attention to detail when carrying out particular assaults, but a better balance to take particular talents into account could have been used.
The issues with the game don’t end here. Everything seems to have been geared around having some parts of the combat look and flow as nice as possible, while other aspects were neglected. I’ve already talked a lot about the benefits of playing online matches. Online matches may occasionally feel unjust or unbalanced, but the presentation of the story mode might make it seem boring and dragged out. I’m glad the game offered an English dub using the original voice cast. Even yet, I can’t tell if the audio was simply lifted from the anime or if they recorded fresh lines specifically for the narrative mode, as the visuals seem to match. The audio mixing by default makes it difficult to discern what the characters are saying, even if they were fresh recordings. The badly done anime OST or droning background music always sounds louder. The story mode is broken up into several chapters, and in each one, the plot is presented with voiceovers from all of the characters over cropped stills from the anime. It is, without a question, one of the simplest ways to convey the story, and it essentially aims to minimize the original content. It’s possible that players who haven’t watched the anime previously won’t understand the significance of some battles or the intensity of certain situations.
It seems absurd that I could be “rewarded” with these kinds of cut scenes for completing the story mode, especially given how monotonous and repetitive the gameplay is in the story mode. It’s bouts that have certain objective conditions linked to them, such as using a domain expansion to defeat your opponent, using cursed energy to hit three targets, or using a combination attack. The mission system lacks creativity and relevance, with the exception of adding extra fighting scenes or making the action seem more involved than it actually is. I had gotten the hang of the game’s fundamentals after about an hour, and by the second hour, I was really bored. Purchasing the ultimate or deluxe edition of the game, such as an RBI baseball game, can net you some extras, but even while it’s entertaining for a little while, the cost is not justified in the slightest.
Nothing about this place pleases me as an anime or fighting game enthusiast, even if we’ve been eating rather well together for the previous few months. This game is, at most, only passable; at worst, it’s a tedious, albeit slightly refined, grind. If people stopped playing this game online quickly in favor of other fighting games that feel more vibrant and “anime” than this one ever could, that wouldn’t surprise me. To be honest, this one is not worth the money.
