Pitiful.
Before Ultimate Ninja Storm, there was Ultimate Ninja. During the PS2 era there were two brands of Naruto games kinda competing with each other: Clash of the Ninja and Ultimate Ninja, while Clash of the Ninja tried to be more of a traditional fighting game, Ultimate Ninja went for the fanservice.
Now then, when it comes to fighters, I usually say: 'Story doesn't matter', but this being a licensed game, it kinda does. There's two story modes, Master Mode and Hero Mode. Hero Mode goes through a very condensed version of Naruto's pre timeskip story. It's told
mostly through dull anime stills, with the
occasional in-game cutscene. It also glances over a lot of details, Naruto and Kiba's fight is skipped entirely, and while Neji and Naruto talk about destiny, before their fight, there's no backstory as to WHY they are talking about, which is hilarious when you
consider that they actually make you fight the Sound 5(Well, Tayuya, Kimimaro and Sakon anyways) twice. But in order to access most of the fights in here, you have to play through Master Mode and collect Memory Pieces(Even funnier, the counter bugs out eventually, so even though it says that you have '0 pieces left', you've got more, so you can simply unlock the last Hero Mode nodes with 0 Memory Pieces).
Master Mode is a
disappointing mess. It starts off with a filler substory before starting with the cannon story. At first you'll wonder why they did it... and it's because the 'real' story mode is incredibly short. Y'see, Namco Bandai was so desperate in releasing a Naruto game, that they couldn't even wait for the 'Rescue Gaara' arc to end, so the game starts with Gaara's kidnapping and ends before it finishes, as a matter of fact, it ends after Naruto VS Itachi. The story mode is so bland, that they actually make you fight Kisame
FIVE TIMES STRAIGHT in order to make it seem lengthy, and then, right after that fight, you get to fight Itachi
THREE TIMES STRAIGHT. And then it ends.
Pathetic. Master Mode also offers free-roaming, which is interesting, and a very basic 'combat system' exclusive to this mode, in which you simply mash Circle. Eventually 'random encounters' will become a norm, and they are a drag. They are not challenging, fun or even fun to look at, they are just there to waste your time when going through areas. There's also sidequests if you are
willing to endure this torture. The character roster is also disappointing as well, among the grown up Chunin 9, you only get Team Kakashi and Team Guy. There's no adult Sasuke, no adult Kiba, Sai, etc. Very disappointing. But Bandai Namco just couldn't wait for the manga or anime to just advance further, they just had to get this game out.
For what it's worth, I kinda liked this battle system. It takes place on a 2D plane, excuse me, 2 2D planes, which you can switch at will by tapping up or down twice plus X. While it only uses the circle button for melee attacks, like Ultimate Ninja Storm, this engine is much more
entertaining, allowing you to make combos and juggle opponents. Playing this game is surprisingly fun, although it took me a
little while to get the hang of it. However, I did not like the mini-games involved in battles, for instance, clashing attacks engages a Rock-Paper-Scissors mini game, and landing a Ultimate Jutsu starts a mini-game in which you and your opponent must press buttons, if you do worse than the enemy, they might even
interrupt your move altogether! All these minigames I could've done without.
A needless cash-in, that's what this game is. Even more disappointing is the fact that Japan and Europe actually got Ultimate Ninja 5, which features the entire grown up Chunin 9 characters, and I'm guessing it concludes the Gaara storyline. At least the fighting is somewhat fun, although I could do without the mini-games. Oh! And the game froze twice on me during Hero Mode, and you can only save your game by exiting the mode and then pressing start, which made it a bit of a drag having to save more frequently just so that I wouldn't have to replay anything in case it froze again. Why not add an option to save
while on Hero Mode?
5.0 out of 10.
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