Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

In anticipation of the release of this game, I recently went back to finish 2008′s Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, which was an incredibly flawed to the point of tedium, primarily a fighting game, mashed with a sandbox type hub world, with far too many collectiables, and unlockables. The fighting was fun but beyond that, the non-fighting quests activities were terrible. Assuming that the team would keep an eye on the feedback, and from all of the epic battles that occurred in the Shippuden series, UNS2 had all kinds of potential to be an excellent game, and not just for fans of the franchise.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 picks up roughly 3 years after the events of the first in the series (this is inline with the break in episodes in the anime as well). Starting with reformed Team 7′s search for former comrade Sasuke, who abandoned the village at the end of the first on a mission of vengeance. Sadly, I don’t think this was really communicated well to people who didn’t play the original. That is pretty much the case throughout the game in that it really isn’t fleshed out like it is in the anime and manga, which as a fan is ok because knowing that story it’s easy to piece it together because they do follow the story closely with the exception of some minor details that I’m sure were changed for game purposes. One problem though with the story telling in the game is that the objective of your mission is primarily going to be ‘win a match’, which on it’s own isn’t a problem  but sometimes you are controlling the losing side of the battle, and your objective is to win. When you win under these circumstances it isn’t explained. Again, if you’re familiar with the series this isn’t a big deal but in my opinion it makes it hard for me to recommend this game to non-fans. Therefore, if you are interested in this story at all, I’d say go ahead and watch the anime or read the manga instead.

The core of this game is the fighting, which makes up the “Free play”, “online battle”, and most of the story mode. On the surface it sounds rudimentary, you have 1 melee attack that you can spam for combos, insert some thumb stick directions to vary the attacks, and more importantly the timing of said attacks (more on that in a minute)  and a ranged attack, and a jutsu button.

Support Attack

The key to the battle is managing your chakra, for those not familiar with the term this basically amounts to energy used to perform special moves, things like jutsu (read special moves), special ranged attacks, and chakra dashes (an easy way to close the gap or create some distance from your opponent) all take various amounts of chakra. You also have the ability to spend some chakra on a ‘substitution’ with a well timed block, meaning hitting block exactly when your opponent makes contact. This is where the strategy of the varied combos come in to play; in a lot of cases your ability to pull off these substitutions determines the outcome of the battle. Chakra can be regenerated but you can not block or move while doing so leaving you very vulnerable. To compensate for that, you often (depending on where you are in the story) have support characters you can call in that may help buy you some time. You also have items bound to the d-pad that will do things like clutter the environment with explosives that can buy you some time as well, but you can do things like increase your speed or attack power, or restore some chakra. Going further, if you use your support characters enough during the course of the battle you will enable “support drive” with means for a limited time your team members can jump in and out automatically, also, sometimes you can power up your chakra beyond the end of the meter to enable “awakening” which effectively changes everything about your character, they’ve got different jutsu’s they’re faster and stronger. The penalty to this is that when it expires, you become weakened and take more damage. Now all that said, it’s not impossible to get through the story mode without using a lot of that stuff, but as I’ll get into in a few, you are doing yourself a disservice if you do because it is honestly a treat to watch, the animation and camera work really create some cinematic experiences.

On top of all that subtlety, there is a very nice collection of characters to use, 42 of them actually once you’ve actually unlocked them all, which after my 30hrs in the game to this point I’ve yet to do entirely (3 left, Minato, Killer Bee and Lars from Tekken). That aside, these characters fall into different categories, there are those who like to get in close and punch it out, while other like to stay at range, and even odder, those who use puppets, yes puppets… these characters are particularly strange to use since you can move the puppets indepentantly of the character itself, which has proven to be pretty challenging for me to get a hang of. The difference is very obvious when you’re playing

Now I’m not trying to say that this is a fighting game that can share a stage with Street Fighter or any other fighter with a strong competitive following, it obviously doesn’t have that same sense of mastery and balance, but what this is, is a very fun, very accessible fighting game, that looks like it was ripped straight from the anime. Each match plays out with animation and style that I could not describe as anything less than complete fidelity. Fans will recognize the combos and jutsus and with all the little things like churning chakra and exploding tags and kunai scattered across the battle field. Unfortunately the battle field is always a very empty area, it would have been neat had they included things in the environment that could be used to hide behind or as protection, it really could have added some neat mechanics like using Neji or Hinata’s bakugan (special eyes that can find chakra) to hunt down the opponent in these scenarios, but I digress.

As great as I think the fighting in this game is, it is the story mode itself that falls completely flat on it’s face. Without going to much into the old game, they removed everything I thought was neat about the hub world from UNS (namingly direct action to the missions from the menu, and the ability to explore konaha as a sandbox). Replacing those features with, very linear classic JRPG-esque rooms with quest giving NPCs. Once you get a quest you generally have to go on some very long walk through areas you’ve already been for the most part, initiate a battle, win, then walk all the way back. If that weren’t tedious enough, along the way there are countless of respawning loot items that you need to stop and collect which are used to fulfill “order deliveries” at the Konaha shops which will unlock items that you can then purchase and use in battle. There are also collection quests and some hide and seek quests, but not nearly as bad as some of the variety quests from the original. There is however a payoff for sticking with it at the end of each chapter you encounter an epic multi-phased boss fight that is taken straight from the series. Sometimes they introduce some new mechanic that is only used for that section of the encounter, or some series of quick time events that results in some really fun to watch animations.  These fights are easily the highlight of the game, and it is a shame that it is surrounded by so many poor design decisions. On the plus side, you do get to play through the story as a variety of characters which really does help mix it up. There are also points where you can select who fights based on who is currently in your team, which can also be selected (this is how you play through the end game after the final confrontation).

Sasori Boss Fight: oh yes, you're in control here

Ultimately I’d have a hard time recommending this to anyone short of the hardest of fans. Those who have the ‘stick-to-it-ness’ to play through the story will rewarded with a handful of epic boss battles, and a nice full roster (I wasn’t even able to find a cheat code, not that I condone that sort of behavior) to play a very pretty, fast paced, fun, and accessible fighter. As a fan, I had a fair amount of fun with this, though I’m not convinced the reward is worth the effort.