[Review] NARUTO

Bandai Namco has released a new 3D action battle game. Community member Vincent took a deep dive into the game at the request of XBNL editors and shared his impressions in this review:

Naruto game offers an in-depth experience with a mix of combat and interactive elements that engage players in the game.

Toys and educational programs

The game starts with some helpful lessons/tutorials that take you step by step to familiarize yourself with the game. Every aspect of how combat is conducted is covered. This ensures that you know the basics well before you start the story. However, the drawback is that if you forget the exact instructions, you won’t be able to remember them anymore. For example, I had a situation in one of the later lessons where you had to hit someone in the air with a combo. I have no idea how to do this anymore and unfortunately you can’t view instructions for this during the training itself.

The story and the encyclopedia

The game follows the entire story of Naruto. Each battle begins with a story section featuring scenes from the anime. The story is told in a nice way. Almost every chapter of the game corresponds to an ‘arc’ of the anime, and it can all be followed precisely via a visual timeline. In this timeline you have large and small blocks that you can select. Big blocks lead to battles and feature a plot from the anime movie. The small blocks only tell a story but strangely they consist only of clips from the anime. I didn’t have to do the latter, it would have been better for the immersion if pieces of the film had also been used for this purpose.

Since the Naruto story is so big and wide-ranging, it’s nice to have an encyclopedia. This contains all the information about all the characters in the game. Each page contains a corresponding screenshot from the anime and provides links to other related pages. This makes navigating through the encyclopedia very enjoyable.

Bounties and boss battles

The game rewards players for completing certain missions with new costumes or new encyclopedia pages. Think about surviving a fight with at least sixty percent of life remaining or using a certain type of attack multiple times. The encyclopedia pages in particular sometimes caused me to redo the battle if it didn’t meet the condition.

In addition to regular battles where you and your opponent can run freely across the battlefield, there are also boss battles. In one of these battles you have to fight Shukaku (Gara in his one-tailed monster form) who dramatically “stands” to the side of the arena. This battle is very fun and different from normal battles. For example, Quick Time Events (QTEs) happen during battle (sorry, I guess so Good fun), who reenact part of the anime fight. The only downside to this is that QTEs sometimes interrupt the action. Then you’re so busy paying attention to the QTE instructions that you sometimes think you’re missing the action. More time for such a QTE would have solved this problem.

Controls and gameplay

Normally, I don’t like fighting games, especially because you often have to learn an impossible amount of button combinations to perform all the combos. However, this game introduces a new control model called “Simple”, where you only need three buttons while fighting, attacking, jumping, and jutsu. Feel free to keep pressing the attack button, combos will be performed automatically. This ensures smooth combat, especially if you alternate jumping or techniques. This mode works well and makes the game, at least for me, more enjoyable.

Conclusion

Naruto Despite some drawbacks, such as the inability to view instructions during tutorials and the sometimes unpredictable situation on the battlefield, the game offers a lot to Naruto fans. Thanks to the alternative control method, it is also very suitable for people who never play these types of games.