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I really wanted to like this game. I really wanted to play through it until the end but sadly, I got kinda bored with it. The main reason for my boredom (in which I actually fell asleep somewhere between hour 9 and 10 while a friend was playing) is because of all the filler missions. Granted, Naruto games with a story mode always have some random “protect the wagon” mission that’s never happened in the series, or there’s a list of D to S ranked missions to complete that’ll range from “play the game for 5 hours” to “defeat ultra ridiculous uber sharingan Itachi with at least one health bar in tact.” However, for some reason, the missions in this game were just painfully random. I could tolerate looking for some flowers or pearls or whatever Jiraiya needed to get some girl into bed with him, but soon we were fighting “Potato Chip Ninjas” who were stealing potato chips, or something like that, and just… come on, potato chip ninjas?! Even the filler in the anime did better than that… kinda…?
Though I guess if you want to experience all of Naruto, playing through some filler and wanting to strangle the creators until they come up with actual plot is part of the deal? I guess there’s a reason why I skipped those 100+ episodes after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. I understand that without random missions the game would be really short, but… potato chip ninjas?! And to top it off, in the mix of all of these random missions you actually play through the filler episodes that were in the anime before the Sasuke and Naruto hospital fight (anyone remember episode 102 with the Tea Country… anyone?) I sat there waiting for those bonds to be broken, because the game promised me some broken bonds, and we got there and it was great and Sasuke left then suddenly… more filler missions! Though some were semi-plot related (looking for the ingredients to make Chouji’s pills) but after so many hours of random missions it was about 2 in the morning and I couldn’t take anymore.
The PS3 Naruto game, Ultimate Ninja Storm definitely spoiled me, because the random missions there were plot related, in a way, because you really did see them chasing after a cat in the anime and you really were seeing Konohamaru trying to be epic by hiding in a box.
There’s little things that bugged me with the game. For the love of swiss cheese, why can‘t the characters jump onto the water?! They can run across it, but they all seem to be allergic to water like Sonic the Hedgehog because if you try to jump onto it you sink in and lose health. And why does the Japanese version still use English sound effects in the middle of a fight (so instead of hearing Naruto’s Japanese VA yelling and grunting and screaming “Rasengan,” you get the English one, then it switches back to Japanese), I thought I was losing my mind when I swore up and down that I was hearing Maile Flanagan instead of Junko Takeuchi. Speaking of the fighting, I don’t particularly care for the fighting system. I do like the tag team switch-ups you can do so you have up to three people to go through, but I don’t really like the random encounter, sort of Final Fantasy-ish vibe I got.
I wanted to run and jump around, throw shuriken and paper bombs, but the combat is so basic and I hate that it’s this one-on-one battle with Bandit Ninja A in this one small area when the environment during normal game play is so huge! I also wasn’t a huge fan of the art, sometimes it wouldn’t be that bad but other times it was just kinda… I don’t know, I would sort of question if this was really next-gen graphics. It really doesn’t help that I played the PS3 one first, which has stunning graphics; it beats the 360 graphics hands down. There’s something about the art during the fighting sequences, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it just doesn’t flow that well to me. Sometimes the faces look really bad, like when Naruto does his Rasengan, the shading is a bit off or something on the opponents face and all of them, be it man or woman, have the exact same facial expression--just add blonde hair and you have Tsunade, now add black hair and white skin and you have Orochimaru.
What saddens me the most is that I can see that they worked pretty hard on this game. The team ups, the music, the training mini-games, the fact that you pretty much play through every episode of Naruto that leads up to the final Sasuke and Naruto battle, but still in yet I don’t care for this game. I’m not sure if its because I played the PS3 one, I don’t think it is because there’s definitely some things that this game does better than the PS3 version; the larger plot that lets you play each and every moment that took place in these last moments of the first part of the series--I was surprised when I started walking through the Uchiha massacre via Itachi‘s sharingan, the focus on all of the characters, the fact that the map is so huge instead of having you stay in Konoha, even the fact that training isn’t just tree hopping and climbing shows the effort that went into this game.
I understand why he would leave in this game.
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7
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10
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7
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7
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7
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7.3
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The filler takes all the fun out of it, and I got tired of the one-on-one encounters with random ninjas and I swear I was looking for an “escape” icon so I could just leave and get the rare flower petals or whatever-the-frick it was that I needed to deliver before the story could progress. All and all, if you really want to try this game either a) rent it, b) borrow it from your Naruto obsessed friend who had it reserved and bought it day one c) play the demo… a lot, or d) wait for a price drop.
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