Review: Naruto: Rise of a Ninja

by Iamthemonkeyhead

I’m going to talk about a slightly older game and I’ll tell you why. Have you ever been a fan of a game nobody else knew about or had experienced and it was frustrating to you that the developers weren’t being paid for their effort? Maybe not? Well I have. All the time! First it was with Enter the Matrix, a buggy, light, underpolished game that attempted to parallel the Matrix storyline. I thought it was incredibly fun despite what everyone said. Psychonauts was another one of those games that nobody picked up because they were afraid quality experimental gaming, or maybe even having fun, might give them leprosy. Well here comes another one, and its name is Naruto: Rise of a Ninja by Ubisoft.

I am personally not a big fan of anime, nor had I ever watched anything Naruto-related but this game hooked me from the start. From the kickass animation, to the quality cell-shading, the engaging story or the clips taken straight from the anime, this game was made with love. After doing some reading on the game I found out that it’s based on the first 80 episodes of the TV show.

You are introduced to the world of Naruto as a world of demons and ninja techniques, called Jutsu, that can be described most basically as ninja spells. The story goes that Naruto is an outcast because a 9-tailed demon fox, the most powerful, malicious demon in the land was imprisoned inside the baby Naruto’s body when it attacked the Leaf Village, his home town. You start the game after failing the exam to become a ninja and realize that everybody in the town hates you because of the demon fox. After stealing a powerful ninja scroll and running like crazy through town to escape your pursuers you meet your new sensei and the real story begins. Naruto embarks on a quest to become the best ninja there is with his two friends Sakura and Sasuke. Craftily told through cutscenes from the TV show itself, the game does a decent job of keeping you up to date with the story. Toward the end, however, the storytelling gets a little lazy and random characters pop up, cutscenes feel incongruous and eventually you aren’t really sure what the hell is going on unless you’re familiar with the series.

Luckily, the game itself plays extremely well with very few hitches in frame rates. It is basically a cross between an adventure/platformer game, a fighting game and some very light RPG character progression. You run around the game, hopping on rooftops with great agility and listening to people tell you to get lost for a large part of the game as you look for coins, perform timed runs, hide and seek games and deliver Ramen (the game’s food and health packs) all in the attempt to make the villagers like you and help you out in the larger quests given to you by your sensei. You are also required to leave the safety of your town to travel to various other locations where you encounter platforming and puzzles to solve with your Jutsu, collectible items scattered about each level, and battles with bandits and bosses. You can also play the fighting mode on its own versus a computer opponent or online. There is a mode called The Forest of Death Exam where you fight your way up a ladder until you reach the top and keep fighting until you’re defeated which not only introduces something fresh and interesting, but also adds a good deal of replayability.

At this point it’s worth mentioning the fighting system is fantastic. You will use this 1 vs 1 fighting system every time you encounter an enemy. There is a lot of strategy and enjoyment to be had, and the system itself is very well balanced for such an eclectic set of moves. Every character has a different fighting style and their combos vary, with Naruto probably being the best all-rounder. There are sets of light moves that keep your opponent close as your chakra (see: mana) charge and then heavy moves to knock them far away and onto the floor so you can perform your Jutsus in battle.

Jutsus are activated by pulling the right trigger, moving both analogue sticks in the correct compass directions and then releasing the trigger at the correct time. The higher your level Jutsu the longer you can charge it while your opponent is down. Once activated, you will go into a quicktime style event where both you and your opponent must perform offensive and evasive maneuvers using button combos and the analogue sticks. If you performed well, you will probably beat the living heck out of your opponent, giving you a substantial advantage in battle. Mind you, after all of this effort is put into beating your opponent to a satisfying pulp they have a rage mode that can be activated to make them temporarily impervious to damage as well as extremely powerful. Once you manage to avoid or trump their rage mode you can generally win the match easily. As a fighting system, it is nowhere near as deep as Soul Calibur or the like, but still remains strategic and very fun, especially with all the variations in character move sets.

The characters themselves are rendered with love and as true to the anime as possible. The graphics, colours and expressions on the characters are all very bright and exaggerated making the world really come alive. And though there is nothing that will really take your breath away in the graphics they are still quite pretty and more than adequate. Ubisoft did a great job keeping the anime mood with bright lighting and even making semi-realistic environments look natural and congruous.

The cutscenes taken from the TV series are fantastic, if a little poor in resolution. They are, for the most part, well-chosen ways to tell the story and definitely have a little humour, a lot of emotion and tons of action. I looked forward to the cutscenes the entire time I played and there were some really emotional moments followed by awesome fighting sections.

The sound keeps up pretty well with the graphics due to the great voice acting on all the characters from what I can only assume are the original voice-actors. Environmental sound effects are heard when they’re supposed to and character shouts and remarks are heard even while simply exploring. For example if you sprint with Naruto and you hit a wall he will stumble around with the sound of birds tweeting about him and remark something like “It’s a good thing I have a thick head”. The soundtrack keeps up with the voice acting as well and never feels invasive or out of place as you proceed through an area or talk to a character. The only problem with the sound I noticed would be the change in quality from the animated cutscenes transitioning to the game but this is a small hitch.

The game does have more serious hitches in areas where it tries new things by overdoing them or delivering them poorly enough that you may just shout at your TV. For starters there’s a tree jumping action sequence where you guide Naruto as he jumps from branch to branch, aiming for checkpoint markers in a minigame you must perform to travel from one forest area to the next. There is nothing wrong with this sequence the first few times, but they are unskippable and inevitable. You must perform the sequence to travel in your quests and you will be doing it a lot. They are often a bit longer than you can tolerate and sometimes a little bit clumsy, where you will likely end up with your character falling through the branches and into a battle with bandits before you can resume your branch-hopping shenanigans. The game further exacerbates this by making you run back and forth through tree leaping action sequences as you perform quests and return to town to get a new quest then have to return to the forest. I’d advise against playing this game with kids around because you may be dropping a few F-Bombs.

Other problems with the game lie in the massive amount of collectibles and search quests. There are hundreds of standard coins you can find hidden about the forest and town, plus a hundred or so golden coins you can find by using your Jutsus to reach secret areas. Nobody likes scanning every single corner of the game world for coins they missed. There is even an achievement for finding everything in the game. Why would anybody make that part of finishing the game unless they were psychotic? It’s either a lazy idea or a sadistic one. There are also lovelorn villagers all over town hidden on rooftops and down alleyways that you must somehow ‘satisfy’ by making them faint using a Jutsu to turn yourself into a sexy girl. This is all fine as you do it, but as far as I know, nobody has been able to find the very last one. I have 99% villager happiness in my village and I found the only angry one who is supposedly lovelorn (a woman, by the way). The game doesn’t let me make her happy and there is no way to figure out what you’re supposed to do. It’s just frustrating and poorly executed.

Finally, the biggest problem I had was with the Jutsu execution sections. The game really expects you to be some kind of Xbox ninja, giving you about half a second to react to a quicktime button press. For example one of your sensei has a Jutsu where he charges at you and at the last moment gives you half a second where you can counter should you press the correct button. If you ever did hit it correctly, it was probably a lucky guess. I’m not sure who Ubisoft was marketing the game for, but thirteen year-olds aren’t Jedi and neither am I. At least not yet…

Overall these setbacks are not something that should stop you playing the game. It is, after all, all about fun and this game really does keep you entertained for a good 6 or 8 hours with the main story alone. There are a lot of things that keep gameplay from going stale and the implementation of minigames, exploration and Jutsu are a really nice change to the standard platforming/fighting game fare.

This game really is for people looking to just have a casual gaming experience on the few hours off they have. The length and replayability, as well as the under-execution of a lot of ideas in the game keep me from recommending you purchase it with 100 percent confidence. I would say try before you buy unless you’re already a hardcore Naruto nut but I know that a lot of over-18’s will be surprised by the fun and quality of the game regardless of whether or not they think blonde ninjas are cool.

 

Visuals – 7.5/10
Sound – 8.5/10
Gameplay – 9/10
Longevity – 6/10

Overall – 7/10