Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash - Switch Review

The acclaimed anime series Jujutsu Kaisen has made its way to the Nintendo Switch system in the form of the 3D fighting game Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash. Play through the story mode and learn the reasons behind Yuji Itadori's mysterious demon curse. Or, play the versus mode offline or team up with friends in online co-op as one of 15 iconic characters from the hit show and battle it out in a series of 2 vs 2 battles in 3D arenas, using a plethora of cursed techniques to decay and decimate your foes.

The Good

One of the most unique features in Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash are the cursed technique abilities that each character has and how they play into the gameplay mechanics. In combat, you can attack with a basic combo, and while it can cause some damage, it won't cause any real significant damage to your enemies. Instead, you’ll need to extract cursed energy from them by using an extract attack. While attacking, you can change the attack, which causes the enemy to be thrown into the air or pushed further away from you, giving you some much needed space. These attacks allow you to fill up your cursed energy gauge quickly, giving you an opportunity to use one of your powerful signature moves. 

There is a team health bar located at the top of the screen. With each defeat,  the team's health bar loses a segment. Defeat your enemies enough times to deplete their team's health bar to win, but this also applies to you. Sometimes, you’ll need to complete an objective to win a match; these instances happen normally in the story mode and the online co-op rush modes. 

There are 15 characters from the anime available to play from the get-go and each has their own distinctive play-styles, cursed attacks and awakened abilities. It's a decent sized roster, and there are a lot of unlockable costumes to unlock over the course of your play-time, adding some incentive to keep playing.

There is a story mode available that allows you to play through the anime story arch of Jujusten Kaisen. You’ll be able to play as all the fan favourites, such as Yuji Itadori, Nobara Kugisaki, Sukuna, Jogo, Panda, Satoru Gojo, etc.

I'm really enjoying the story mode in Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash, which has been adapted from the events of the first season of the anime. The story mode is fully voice acted and uses still art with some effects thrown in for good measure. Playing missions that see you fighting cursed spirits and iconic sorcerers, locations across multiple chapters, and bonus chapters is really fun, as is unlocking new content. Growing your relationship with the cast is also very enjoyable.

There is an online mode included that allows you to play online versus with random people across the world, which was pretty fun, but my favourite mode was the online co-op. Thankfully, I wasn't alone, as my good friend Tyler had bought the game also so we were able to play a lot of the online co-op (rush mode), which sees you fighting and completing missions against increasingly tough enemies. Earning rewards and experience will level up your character in an almost RPG like manner. It was fun but deeply challenging as the skill level increased as we continued to play, forcing us to use new strategies to win!

TL;DR

• Cursed techniques
• 15 Characters from anime
• Story mode
• Online co-op

The Bad

One of my biggest issues with the game is that if you get hit, there’s no way to break out of an extended combo, meaning you can easily be juggled, taking huge damage as a result. There were a lot of moments where I would get hit repeatedly and have no downtime to recover or escape; this was compounded when two or more characters were present. This leads on to my next point. It can be very easy to be overwhelmed when projectiles and fists are flying around. You can switch between targets but there are times when even that can be difficult and being attacked off-screen will be unavoidable. There’s just no time to switch when things become overwhelming. 

The final issue with the game was the vs mode offline. The whole set-up is so awkward to navigate. Not being able to see the whole roster when selecting a character felt so strange to me, especially for someone new to the anime.

I also felt like some of the characters were unbalanced and some had an unfair advantage over others. Characters could certainly do with some tweaking.

TL;DR

• Being juggled and overwhelmed by multiple foes
• No proper character selection in VS (offline)
• Some characters feel unbalanced

Final Score: 6/10

I did enjoy my time with Jujitsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash, especially the online co-op mode; however, the combat can take a while to understand. Things aren't perfect here as there are some balancing issues and, while it's not going to re-invent the fighting genre, there is some fun to be had online if you can get over the game's short-comings.

Thank you for checking out our Jujitsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash Switch review, thank you to Bandai Namco for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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