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The Lowdown
Pros: Slightly better graphics than a GBA title and voices from the TV
show.
Cons: A poor control scheme that doesn't use the DS well.
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
 Purchase
at Lik-Sang
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Tomy has a long
history of producing Naruto games. There is the ever popular Naruto:
Gekitou Ninja Taisen series that fills a much missed fighting genre on
the Gamecube. They also created the Saikyou Ninja 2D action series, that
originated on the Game Boy Advance. Naturally, a Naruto game was DS
bound and its no surprise that its an extension to the Saikyou Ninja
series. What is a surprising is how they mucked the game up from the
decent design that Saikyou Ninja 2 had.If you've been watching Naruto
for the past few months Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshuu 3 picks up the
same story arc. Its Konhoa village against Orichimaru's legendary sound
four. While the game parallels the story there are some major tangents
from it, too. Without spoiling the series too much, Sasuke is playable
in the game. Avid watchers will probably question this inclusion, but
Sasuke fans will be pleased they can play as him. Besides playing as
Sasuke and of course Naruto, you can pick Sakura, Rock Lee and Neji as
playable characters. Once you select your playable character you can
pick two other support characters from a much larger list. This includes
Kiba, Shikamaru, Shino, Kankarou, Kakashi and Gaara. With a formed three
man cell you'll go out to battle eight different stages, each with a
boss battle against one of Orchimaru's minions at the end.
Even though you have three characters in the team, you only control
one in each level. Levels are really basic mix of platform style jumping
and beat-em up fighting. You can deal punches and kicks by pressing Y.
Pressing it three times does a simple combo that you'll see over and
over again. Another useful attack you can do is an uppercut, that
launches enemies in the air. It is kind of disappointing that there
aren't a wide variety of moves. If you have to compare the move list to
the NES game Double Dragon 2, the NES game has more combos than Naruto
DS.
Most of the time a simple combo doesn't work out, using signature
chakra moves are much more useful. By tapping on the bottom touch screen
you can call in a character to attack. While there are a bunch of moves
you can see they fall into two categories. Attacks that hit one enemy
and attacks that hit all on screen enemies. For instance TenTen's
special attack shoots a wave of kunai on the screen that wipes out
almost all enemies. Kiba's gatsuga and Temari's summoning move also hit
everyone on screen. While these are useful for clearing out a large
group of guys, its less useful during boss fights. Kakashi's chidori,
Garra's desert funeral and Hinata's Byukagan combo are extremely
damaging moves that can level a bosses' life meter severely. After using
a super move the chakra meter for that character will deplete to zero.
This prevents players from using them over and over, but with a total of
three super attacks you have plenty of chakra between the team to spare.
The character you're controlling can unleash special attacks by
holding down the L button. Holding it down for a second or two will
cause your character to do the replacement technique (where they turn
into a log) to avoid an attack. Holding it past three seconds will
activate a chakra based special attack. When this happens the bottom
screen switches from a status meter to five flames in a circle. Here you
need to pull out the stylus or don the thumb cap to spin the flames in a
circle. Spinning the flames causes your chakra to charge up to do a
different move. Each character has three different moves, with the
second move being the hardest to unleash. You may wonder why, but it's
honestly due to the poor spinning mechanism. It's easy to do nothing and
activate Naruto's first super the Naruto random. It's kind of easy to
spin the flames as fast as possible to do the level three move, Rasengan.
However, to get the flames spinning just right to get the second move
where Naruto summons the frog boss to hit everything on screen is tough.
Spinning the flames really is a ridiculous waste of the touch screen to
activate different moves. It makes your main character's chakra attack
essentially unreliable and would have been much better if you could do a
button combo. Once you select a special move you may or may not get the
kanji wheel to appear. The kanji wheel is just another pain, where kanji
spin around and you need to select the correct ones to do the super
move. If you select the wrong kanji you cancel the super move. After
that some moves require additional pointless input. For instance
Sasuke's Grand Fireball requires you to blow into the microphone. Neji's
108 strikes forces gamers to poke chakra points. While they are kind of
neat references, the control just doesn't feel right. More often you'll
just wonder why these are here, instead of thinking of these as neat
inputs.
A mixed up control setup is just the beginning of this game's
problems. It's even worse for jumping. Naruto and pals can do a basic
jump by pressing A and a double jump by pressing A twice. However, even
with a double jump a lot of time you're blind to where bottomless pits
are. The levels are designed in such a way that they're entirely out of
sight. At best you'll see a red sign with kanji warning you. However,
while you're jumping the screen scrolls upwards and you'll lose sight of
where you need to land. The set up is frustrating, especially since the
DS does have two screens. One screen could be used to show what's below,
but instead it's wasted with status information. Even more frustrating
than blind jumping is that when you're hit you have no way to recover
from it. Say you're hit in midair, you're stuck in the falling animation
until you hit the ground. If there happens to be a pit below, you're
toast. Think that's bad? Here's something worse. The levels are designed
as a huge stage normally progressing upwards high up on mountains or
rooftops. It's easy to get hit and be launched off the top of the
building only to fall all the way back to the beginning of the stage.
The jumping mechanics are skewed, but the bugs don't end there. You
can actually be hit through walls. It's cheap and unpolished gameplay
that allows a punch to go through and damage you. It's worse when it
knocks you back or off a ledge. Another in game problem occurs during
boss battles. If you pull off a chakra attack while they are doing one
your attack won't work. Speaking of super move bugs, you can actually
use your super move to hit off screen enemies. While you can do that,
certain frames of animation will cancel out a super move from working.
An example of this is against the large ninja. If they fall down or have
another enemy walking on the same frame your super move won't work.
A game with so many bugs should at least have a better presentation.
Naruto DS doesn't deliver in this area either. Most of the graphics are
lifted straight out of Naruto: Saikyou Ninja 2. Naruto, Sasuke, Lee and
Sakura's animations are nearly the same from the previous game. Most of
the specials are look the same as they did in the GBA titles. On top of
that the enemy sprites are also reused, which makes this game feel more
like an expansion pack than a fresh game. The graphics are more akin to
a GBA title than a sharp DS game, which is a disappointing underuse of
the system's hardware.
The only true use of the DS's features are some of the mini games
that occur before boss battles. The first game has you draw a line,
representing Shikamaru's shadow to hit Kabuto. Another short game has
Choiji spin and hit the mud wall to get out. While these are kind of
neat, there is no way to play select them outside of the main game. A
good feature would have been to allow players to play them after beating
the game. The only other thing you can option besides the game is to
pick a picture to doodle on with the DS' touch screen. It's mildly
entertaining, but it's no replacement for a mini game.
In a lot of ways Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshuu 3 is a letdown. At
eight levels the game won't last long. It's easily beaten in a single
day, if you're willing to put of with frustrating mechanics. The
game tries to make use of the DS hardware, but essentially fails at
being an enhanced GBA title. If you must play a portable Naruto game
checkout the Naruto RPG or wait until Tomy gets the formula right.
Story aside, there are some parts where knowing Japanese may help.
During the mini games there are simple directions, which could make
learning the games easier. Also there is the character wheel that
appears when launching a super move. You don't need to know Japanese to
select the correct character, but knowledge of kanji could be beneficial
here. For the most part, the gamers should have no serious language
barriers with this title.
US Bound?
This is likely to be released about a year later when Naruto is
popular in America.
Overall
The awkward control scheme and all the bugs make the short eight
levels unnecessarily difficult. Only the most serious Naruto otaku need
to pick this game up.
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