| ARTICLE |
Got a Tip?
RSS
AtomNaruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4
Each year, around November, Tomy releases its yearly installment of Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen. Four picks up with one of the new features in GNT 3, the three player battles. This time you can pick a “three man cell” and switch fighters mid battle. When you press “Z” you use up a ¼ of your chakra meter, but you immediately switch to the next fighter in your line up. The new set up leads to a couple of new strategies. If you want to be defensive you can switch an injured fighter out of harms way and let him/her restore a little life while resting. If you want to be offensive you can take advantage of automatic chakra recovery. Any team member that isn’t fighting restores chakra at a fixed rate so you can do Neji’s Kaiten super move then quickly switch to Rock Lee for an Omote Renge. This is a fast, but cheap way to get an early edge on your opponent.
Tomy also half-fixed the team attack featured in Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3. Before forward and Y would result in a taijutsu combo with your team. If you happened to have a team that gets along (i.e. any of the assigned teams) you would give a massive amount of damage. The same team taijutsu attack is still used in Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4, but there are some custom team animations. If you have Team 7: Naruto, Sakura and Sauske you’ll do a combo that starts out with Sasuke’s dragon fie followed by Sakura’s shrunken attack and end with Naruto’s Rasengan. If you have Garra, Temari and Kankurou lined up you’ll start off with Temari launching the other fighter in the air with her fan then Kankurou does a mid air swipe with his puppet Kursou and Garra ends the combo with a sand strike. If you have Shikamaru and Temari together, Shikamaru will use his shadow bind to lock up the opponent so Temari land a clean hit with her fan. The team attacks are cool to watch, but you’ll see the same taijutsu combo from GNT3 way to often. Tomy could have added in a bunch of different combos with two characters or at the very least have a random taijutsu combo show up instead of the same combo from GNT3.
Most of the characters are ripped straight out of the last Naruto game too. You’ll see all of the major characters returning like Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Lee, Kakashi, Guy and all the other Konohoa teams. The only main change to the fighting system is that most characters have a quick counter attack by pressing back and A. When you do this move you’ll stand still and wait for your opponent to strike first. After they try to land a hit your character will teleport behind them or sidestep the strike to set you up in an offensive position. Some characters like Kakashi had a defensive pose in the past where he would pull out his book to read, if he was struck in this pose he would teleport behind the opponent and use the ten thousand years of pain attack. Out of all the characters Naruto was tweaked the most. You don’t need to wait until you have 30% health to do the Rasengan super, you can do it anytime by just pressing down and Y. Also Naruto now launches out a fully functional shadow clone when you press back + A. Although, the brainless shadow clone is unlikely to help you, it doesn’t jump in mid combo or help you prepare a super move hit. In the game you can still do replacement jutsu by pressing R or L, but this takes up nearly ¾ of your chakra meter.
Plenty of Naruto fans will probably forgive small improvements in the fighting system just to set up a battle between Kyubii Naruto and Cursed Seal Sasuke. Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 offers some new fighters to play with. This is the first time Kabuto and Kisame appear in the GNT series. New villains like Kimimaro, Jiroubou, Kidoumaru, Tayuya and Sakon are ready for battle. Kidoumaru can launch an enemy up in the air and grab him with a spider web. He can also throw a sticky web on the ground to stun a character for a few seconds. Tayuya is more like a ranged fighter, she can summon spirit fighters with her flute while attacking from a far. Those are pretty much all of the new characters in the game except for one more “secret” character that you’ve seen in another Naruto title. Unfortunately if you want to try out the new characters you need to spend time and lots of it unlocking characters. The Geiktou Ninja Tasien series has always had players spend a massive amount of time unlocking things. Previously the system had you spend money, which was given after every fight to get fighters. This time you need to complete missions to add fighters to your roster. The mission system is inherently flawed. You don’t have story scenes to play out, that’s in story mode. Instead you have to do tasks like beat score attack without using a super move… with every character counting as a “different” mission. Or fight in survival move for ten fights and again each different character counts as a unique mission. The system is extremely tedious and down right boring. In fact you won’t be able to jump into mission mode from the start, you’ll have to beat one chapter of the story mode first. The opening story mode chapter has you play Team 7 in a battle against other rival Konoha teams with a fight against the Sound for the finish. Later on you’ll get to play other teams like Gaara’s squad and even a separate mission with Itachi. At least Tomy did a good job on picking missions fans will love.
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 doesn’t even bother to add much “new” content for your $50. You’ll fight on the same battlefields, with the same characters listening to the same music from Naruto 3. You’ll be spending hours to unlock the same characters with the same attacks and combos. Does this make Naruto 4 a bad game? In the eyes of fans no. They’ll still enjoy the story mode and really dig it when they finally unlock all of the characters. Plus Naruto 4 really is one of the few good fighting titles on the Gamecube. If you have four players you can jump in a 4 player battle and the three on three team battles rock. Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 manages to emulate the three player tag team fighting from fighting game legend Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The system is great, but everyone probably agrees that Tomy could have done way more with this title.
Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 2
The menus are a little tougher to navigate through since the main menu opens up a sub menu with options like “time attack”, “survival” and “score attack”. The other problem importers may encounter is that they won’t be able to read the missions they need to complete, but a FAQ should clear up any confusion.
US Bound?
If the Naruto series is still running strong you can bet that D3 Publisher will release this in the US, but be prepared for a long two year wait.
+ Pros: The three on three battles are sweet, plus there are a handful of new characters to tryout.
- Cons: Nearly everything in the game: character models, levels, music, and moves are borrowed from Naruto 3, which borrowed almost everything from Naruto 2. See the trend here?
Overall: Naruto fans will forgive the amount of recycling when they play the Sound Four and do a team super. Everyone else that isn’t a huge Naruto fan might want to skip picking up Naruto 4 and wait for more improvements next year.
< Screenshots >
Related Posts
- 3 on 3 tag battles with Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 for Gamecube
- Naruto battles it out on the Gamecube.
- Now there’s three player team attacks in the Geiktou Ninja Taisen series.
- Naruto Shippuuden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX 3 Meets Dynasty Warriors
- Eighting melds US features for Naruto: Shippuden Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX 3
Search Categories
