Jitsu Squad Review

Developed by Tanuki Creative Studio and produced by ININ Games, Jitsu Squad has you play as one of the four animal fighters that make up the so named "Jitsu Squad". You get to select from Hero Yamagawa — a raccoon ninja; Baby O'Hara — a bunny kunoichi (female ninja); Jazz — a frog monk; and Aros Helgason — a warrior warthog. Our anthropomorphic heroes are on a mission to retrieve a powerful artefact known as the Kuganagi Stone that holds a powerful demon. This stone can give unlimited power to the person (or creature) that possesses it. An evil sorcerer named Origami — who seems to be a floating head and hands — has recruited warriors to retrieve this stone, and in return, he promises them power. You will fight through eight different worlds in this side-scrolling beat 'em up trying to hunting down Origami and his army of Emaki Ninjas, "Yakuzo" members, and undead zombies. All are trying to stop the disciples of Master Ramen — a wise owl — from getting to their boss and retrieving the stone.

When you start playing Jitsu Squad, you select a difficulty and how many people are playing. When I tried to play with three players at the same time, the game would freeze as soon as we picked up a scroll that was dropped by an enemy. We tried multiple times with no luck, so instead, I opted to play through the game on my own. The character that you select in the beginning is the one that you will play all the way through the game. I thought that once you completed a stage, you would get to choose another one of the squad members to play as, but I was never given the option to change. 

Jitsu Squad has a huge variety of enemies to fight. Even if the type of enemy is the same (like one of the Emaki Ninjas), they will be wearing various outfits that fit the theme of the stage that you are currently playing in. To fight these enemies, you have a variety of attacks that you can use, some as simple as punching, slashing with a sword, or throwing kunai at them, but as you play and find treasures, you will also find secondary weapons that you can pick up and use while battling such as bombs, throwing stars, or boomerangs. You will have a limited number of these items available before they are depleted. Another attack that I found to be handy was grabbing hold of an enemy and jumping on top of them to attack them repeatedly. This uses the same button to pick up/grab items and treasures. 

As you defeat this cannon fodder, the enemies drop scrolls that will power up your fighter and teach them new abilities you can use during the stage. One ability gives you the power to turn into a witch and fly around. Another turns you into a street construction worker armed with a jackhammer. It was always interesting to see what crazy abilities you would learn from some of these technique scrolls. My favourite was the Vulcan Assault, allowing you to summon and control a huge caterpillar equipped with miniguns to summon to mow down all the enemies currently on the screen.

Your character has a meter at the bottom of the screen that fills as you defeat enemies. Once it is full, you can transform into a new human-like fighter with powerful attacks. You are only in this form for a limited time, so be sure to take advantage of this strength. I usually reserved this power for when I was fighting the boss of a stage, which are more challenging than the hordes of enemies constantly coming after you in the level.

Jitsu Squad is a great-looking game with smooth animations and tons of cool characters with silly personalities. Each stage has its own theme and beautiful levels, with brightly-coloured animated backgrounds that were fun to look at. The fighting stage shows pandas training in the background to become fighters, we see some running on a treadmill and others practising fighting moves. Little touches like this add to the game, and make the world feel alive. Add in a soundtrack full of guitar-heavy riffs, at times mixed with jazzy beats, and it creates music that fits the action-packed, energetic game that never slows down.

The controls in Jitsu Squad were alright. Each character's basic attack can be strung together to create combos. Most of the time, it just felt like I was frantically button-mashing as the screen filled with enemies. Some of the combos require you to have a slight delay between hitting buttons, it was tricky to do as it seemed like I was constantly being interrupted by the foes on the screen hitting me. So, for the most part, I relied on the basic attack, my secondary weapons, and tried to parry the attacks from the enemy. I found having the button to pick up items and grapple the enemies assigned to the same button frustrating at times. If you were trying to pick up a weapon or treasure and an enemy happened to be near, you would jump on the enemy instead of grabbing your loot.

Once you complete the eight stages and defeat the final boss, you will unlock a tag team mode, where you can play through the game with another player. I was confused about how this mode differed from selecting two players at the start of the game. Once I tried it out, I saw that instead of taking control of one character, each player selects two and can switch between both. I am looking forward to playing through Jitsu Squad with someone else, as I can't wait to show them all the great references you find in the game. There are great references to Game of Death starring Bruce Lee, one of the enemy ninjas is playing a handheld Game Boy-like system, or when you visit the arcade, you can see cool movie posters and games playing on the machines in the background. Between a few of the stages, you will have a bonus round to complete, where you try to destroy the sushi that is falling from the top of the screen and rolling across the floor to get as many points as possible. Unfortunately, throughout the game, this bonus stage was always the same. It would have been nice to have this switched up.

If you are a fan of side-scrolling beat 'em up action-fighting games, Jitsu Squad is a fun game to check out. It's not very long, but with multiple difficulty modes and characters to select from, this will keep you busy for a while. I hope for a patch to fix the glitch I ran into trying to play with my kids. The newly unlocked tag team mode, with one other player, has each person select two of the characters to battle through the stages with. For the short period of time I played this mode, I didn't seem to have the same issues with the game freezing, so hopefully, it won't be an issue like it was before.