What is this? A 3D arena-based fighting game with tag-team mechanics based on today’s most popular shounen anime? Where have I seen this before? Cursed Clash is a game familiar to fans of anime video game adaptations that have appeared in the past five years. Many of them, including Cursed Clash, have an expected formula. This is a shame because the creative visuals and cursed techniques in Jujutsu Kaisen could be used in many different game styles. As a package, Cursed Clash is a simple, derivative fighting game that has everything it has to offer within the first two hours of play.
Cursed Clash is a retelling of the first few installments of the franchise, and right off the bat, there’s something undeniably cheap about the presentation. The menu screen features several clips from the anime, and the display modes feel extremely spare, especially by most modern fighting game standards. There is a story mode, shop, and online matches. Many rewards are available, from profile cards to alternate character outfits that players can purchase with money earned from online matches or by completing missions. However, even these rewards feel lackluster. Many of them focus on cosmetic changes or items that can give you an advantage during combat. Some of the costumes were funny, like Jogo and Mahito wearing school uniforms, but the more I looked at them, the more I felt they didn’t match. It’s like taking the head from one model and pasting it onto the body of another model.
In fact, many of the 3D character models themselves look lifeless and out of place. This happens often in transition screens, but they look quite nice in motion. While playing the game on PlayStation 5, I didn’t experience any performance issues other than a slight stutter when logging into an online match. But the particle and aura effects are great for adding crunch to special attacks that use cursed energy. Players can activate their character’s domain expansion once they have accumulated enough cursed energy by performing consecutive combos against their opponents. I commend the level of detail in recreating many of the iconic movements from the anime. Amid the heat of battle, the matches caught my attention.
The player can perform blocking or side-step attacks to avoid attacks and dash attacks to close the distance or perform powerful attacks with cursed energy. Perhaps my biggest compliment is that each character has their own distinct fighting style, with no one feeling like a carbon copy of each other. Gojo uses his blue and red curse technique to draw in enemies or snipe them from afar. Megumi summons shikigami to enhance her attacks, and Todo can use his clapping technique to switch places with others on the field. Once you fully explore your options, it’s impressive, if a bit unbalanced.
This game features card battles. Using NPCs or other players, many battles take place in a two-on-two format. The main goal is to knock out someone on your opposing team multiple times. It doesn’t matter if it’s divided equally or on one person’s back; If one team gets four kills against the other team, you win. Players can fight together or fight one-on-one with their opponent’s team. Fighting together will yield more powerful results if they attack their opponents at the right time with combined attacks. However, some characters inherently perform certain combos better than others. Geto can summon insects to hold the player in place for a few seconds, thus making it very easy for his teammates to perform combo attacks. In my time playing, I haven’t found a way to get rid of this. You can ensure this attack never hits, but since you have no control over the in-game camera, it’s easy to get hit off-screen or miss a block. Again, I commend the team’s attention to detail when executing specific attacks, but there could have been better balance to address specific abilities.
This isn’t where the game’s problems stop. It feels like everything was done to make certain parts of the combat circuit look as cool as possible while everything else was pushed to the side. I’ve talked a lot about rewards for online matches. While online matches can sometimes feel unfair or unbalanced, story mode can feel dull and drawn out due to its presentation. I appreciate the game giving us an English dub with the original voice cast. However, I can’t tell if they recorded new dialogue for the story mode or if they just ripped the audio from the anime because that would fit the visuals. Even if they are new recordings, the audio mixing by default makes it difficult to distinguish what the characters are saying, with buzzing background music or poorly implemented anime OSTs always sounding louder. The story mode is divided into chapters, and each of these chapters focuses on using stills cropped from the anime to present the story with some voice acting from all the characters. It’s without a doubt one of the laziest ways you can tell a story, and for the most part, it tries to condense the original content as much as possible. Players who have never watched the anime before may not appreciate the intensity of certain scenes or the importance of specific battles.
The fact that these are the types of cut scenes I could have been “rewarded” for going through the story mode is funny, especially when you consider that the story mode gameplay is also bland and repetitive. These are battles with specific mission requirements attached, such as defeating your enemies by expanding the domain, landing three hits with cursed energy, or performing a combo attack. There’s nothing innovative or relevant about the mission system except to end the fight or make things sound more exciting than they actually are. About an hour into the game, I had mastered all of its mechanics, and by the second hour, I felt pointlessly bored. You can get some rewards by purchasing a deluxe or deluxe version of a game, such as the RBI baseball game, but while the game is fun as a brief novelty, it’s not. Can justify that price.
Considering we’ve been weighing in pretty well as fighting game fans over the past few months, nothing here satisfies me as a fan of anime or the genre. At best, this game is just okay, but at worst, it’s a repetitive, somewhat polished game. I wouldn’t be surprised if people soon stop playing this online game in favor of other fighting games on the market that offer a more dynamic and “anime” feel than ever before. Honestly, save your money for this.