Jitsu Squad Review

Jitsu Squad tells the story of the legendary, hidden Kusanagi Stone which contains the soul of a powerful demon giving the possessor godly powers. The wicked sorcerer Origami and his army of cursed ancient warriors are on the hunt for the mysterious stone and it’s up to the Jitsu Squad, Hero, Baby, Jazz, and Aros to stop him.

Each character can attack, parry, grab and use a special attack. There’s a basic attack with the X button and depending on which weapon you picked up through your adventure, you can use Y to use it as a strong/alternative attack. This attack however has a meter so once it’s empty, you’ll need to refill it with a vial that can be found in some chests or destructible items.

As you progress through the game, you’ll learn new skills and techniques. For example, with Hero, you’ll learn an uppercut move (think Street Fighter’s Shoryuken uppercut but with a sword) or a Hadoken-like move where your sword launches a projectile. All of these moves are easy to pull off and implement in a combo.

Along with the basic attacks, Jitsu Squad has a few aces up its sleeve. You can call upon a screen-wide ally that will damage everything on screen. This attack can be refilled when picking up scrolls dropped by enemies or chests. You can also transform into a powerful temporarily invincible character that will deal more damage. These two can be really helpful against bosses or when there are too many enemies on screen.

In between certain levels, you’ll also be thrown into a bonus stage that feels like a carbon copy of Street Fighter II’s Barrel bonus stage but instead of barrels, you’re slicing and dicing sushi. Unless you’re aiming for a high score, it doesn’t bring anything substantial to the game. Neither is collecting gold and money during the stages.

Boss fights are definitely one of the game’s strong points. They are pretty intense, challenging, and overall fair if you’re careful. Halfway through each battle, the boss will enter a timed invincible sequence where you’ll need to avoid or parry their attacks as they cannot be damaged. The little issue here is that if you’re not careful, bosses can juggle you for quite some time, especially during their invincibility phase. Things get insanely harder toward the end. The multi-phase Shade boss fight: if you don’t master the art of parrying, be prepared to get your butt kicked and juggled.

The game doesn’t have any major nuisance, but a few annoying quirks. The first is that for whatever reason when it comes to health items and weapons, you need to grab them with the RB button instead of just walking over them like money. Why? It can be problematic if an enemy is near a health pick-up because you might grab the enemy instead. Oftentimes, once you’ve finished beating up everyone, a counter prompts giving you a few seconds to pick up whatever’s laying around. Another questionable and quite unnecessary mechanic. Also while combat feels fine, sometimes character movement can feel a bit stiff. Fair warning: Once I finished the game with Hero, I skipped the last cutscene and got a fatal error on Xbox Series X. I could load my save, but it was unusable.

The game looks great. Each level is uniquely designed with its unique color palette to ensure that each level feels new and refreshing. Character models are surprisingly detailed and enemy variety is decent, although along with level-specific enemies, the same generic enemies always return. My main gripe though is that sometimes there are so many enemies on screen that it can be problematic to notice when you’re getting damaged, so you need to keep an eye on your health bar often. The audio side of things is quite enjoyable. Voiceover work is fine; nothing special. The soundtrack is a fun and intense rock score that matches the intensity on screen. It’s good for what it is, but don’t expect to have it linger in your head while not playing.

Jitsu Squad is definitely one of my favorite beat’em ups I’ve ever played. The combat is addictive and surprisingly deep, four playable characters offer decent replayable value, and each level has its own unique challenge and boss battles. Bosses’ battles are fun, challenging, and fair. There’s nothing really inherently wrong that can drag down the experience aside from the short story mode which can clock in at about 2 hours across 8 levels. Any fan of action should definitely pick up Jitsu Squad. Highly recommended.