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The Lowdown
Pros: Fast character switching and seeing the Naruto world in full out 3D.
Cons: A mission system that offers little freedom.
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
 Purchase
at Lik-Sang
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Year after year Naruto games are released, with the majority of them
being fighting games. This year's PS2 installment published by Bandai
forsakes the popular Narutimett (or Narultimate) hero series in favor of
an action game. Naruto: Uzumaki Ninden is developed by Cavia who comes
to the table with mixed games. They're the ones behind Ghost in the
Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Drakengard and Beat Down Fist of Vengeance.
Blending RPG elements in beat-em up games is their specialty so it's no
surprise Naruto: Uzumaki Ninden is a mix of those two genres.Instead
of starting way back to the beginning of the story Cavia follows the TV
series (minor spoilers beware!). Set after the search for Tsunade and
before the next major story arc, Uzumaki Ninden's position is around
episode 110. You start out playing the only ninja who can hide behind a
stack of orange road cones, Naruto. In this critical time Konhoa needs
all avalible ninja, even genin, to go on missions. As the player, you
bring Naruto to Tsunade for assignments and then go off to complete
them.
You start out with easy "D" rank missions where you have Naruto
protect a traveling caravan or go off collecting seals in a forest next
to his village. Since the early missions aren't that interesting, it
takes awhile for the game to pick up. By the time you start doing more
"advanced" missions like being a bodyguard, Uzumaki Ninden gets fairly
repetitive with the types of missions that are given to you. The game
can get even more redundant if you chose to retry missions that you
fail. Normally when you fail a mission you aren't given a second chance.
If you want to complete everything you have to reset your PS2, sit
through all of the same cutscenes (no skipping) and then redo the
mission in the hope you'll complete it. When you finally preserve,
Naruto: Uzumaki Ninden is rewarding. You'll get a lot of gold from each
mission, that can be used to upgrade Naruto.
Gold can be spent on directly improving either your life meter or
your chakra stamina. Although upgrading your stats this way can get
expensive, fast. The first upgrade of costs a hundred gold and the next
two hundred. The catch is you'll always increase your life by ten and
stamina by five. It's not much for the price you pay, which encourages
players to try out the block system. Each block you own can give you a
stat bonus to your life, chakra and your Naruto combo depending on its
color. Each block also has a specific shape and by rotating the block
into your grid you can alter what bonuses you get. Making certain shapes
or having most of the grid one color nets you a huge bonus. If you plan
to survive through the game you'll want to learn how to master this
system to press through the battles.
You would expect a Naruto game to have plenty of fighting and it
doesn't disappoint here. In fact there may even be too, gasp, too much
fighting. You'll throw punches during missions, between boss battles and
random enemy encounters. While you're directing Naruto's movement on the
world map you have a chance to be attacked by random ninjas. When a
battle ensues the game switches from the 2D map to a 3D battlefield
where ninja are ready to attack Naruto. Naruto can fight back by dealing
punches with square and finishing blows with triangle. Finishing blows
are slower, but a little stronger than a basic attack. Naruto also has
his signature moves, the Sexy no Jutsu, Kage Bushin and the ultra
powerful rasengan. By holding down R1 Naruto will begin charging his
shadow clone attack meter at the expense of his blue stamina meter. When
you let go of R1 Naruto will release a bunch of shadow clones that
attack all enemies in sight. The duration of how long the clones stick
around and how many clones you make depends on the amount of chakra you
put into the attack. Each created clone will run up and automatically
attack nearby enemies. This makes the Kage Bushin trick optimal
when you have a group of enemies to fight. If you're going man to
man the rasengan is probably a better choice. By holding down R2 you can
charge chakra into the rasengan. If you want to get crafty you can start
up a combo with a few punches while charging up for the rasengan, when
the combo is almost over finish with the rasengan for maximum damage.
You are going to play as Naruto 90% of the time, but you still will
get a chance to try out other ninjas. Sasuke, Shikamaru, Neji and Chouji
are all playable characters that can be assigned to the L2 button. When
you switch over to your partner character you have a limited amount of
time to play around before you switch back to Naruto. To compensate for
this you can perform special attacks at will. So when you switch over to
Sasuke you can launch chidori after chidori of if you're Neji you can
start with a kaiten and go straight to the 64 hit strike. The system
leads for some interesting combos like finishing off a Naruto renden,
then quickly switching to Chouji for a meat tank attack. Although, most
players would probably prefer being a different character for a long
time over team attacks. Sadly, that's not an option.
One huge difference in this Naruto game, besides the gameplay is that
the game ditches the cel-shaded trend. Instead the game comes out with
3D models for all of the Naruto characters and universe. The transition
from an anime game to being over rounded in 3D takes sometime to get
used to. It is a good change, but will probably be underappreciated by
die hard fans. Things look Naruto-esque instead of straight out of the
anime. Even though it may not be perfect Cavia did spend a fair amount
of time translating the anime over.
The bottom line about Naruto: Uzumaki Nidnen is it will be
appreciated by fans, but compared to other games it just stands out as
decent.
Fighting is simple enough to learn, but the mission goals could pose
a problem for gamers that can't read Japanese. Most of the missions are
fairly simple to figure out with some patience and possibly resetting
the game. If you just know kana you shouldn't have a problem since there
is furigana over the kanji.
US Bound?
This game won't be ready for a US release until the PS2 lifecycle is
over. This makes a US release improbable, unless it comes out as a
budget PS3 game.
Overall
It's really Naruto fans that are going to get the most out of
Naruto: Uzumaki Ninden, it is enough to satiate the fans until the next
major Naruto title.
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