Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4

"Eye candy and novelties for the fans, not much for everyone else."

Hailed as an excellent "Super Smash Bros Melee Remake with Naruto Characters", Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 caught my attention quickly and I decided to loan the game from a friend for a couple of weeks. My first impression was that I'd have to be a Naruto fanboy in order to appreciate this game, but I was assured that this fighting game would be enjoyed by anyone. This is my review.

BACKGROUND: Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 is a 3D fighting game for 1-4 players based on the popular anime series, Naruto. Life and chakra bars dictate survival as opponents brawl 1v1, 1v3, or 2v2 to be the last team or player standing. Best of a set amount of games win. The storyline and characters are supposed to be based off of the series, and the graphics are reminiscent of the anime series. Essentially, it's battles between good ninjas and evil ninjas with a game that allows a few interesting match-ups in between.

GRAPHICS (6/10): Cel-shading done pretty well. The characters look detailed and smooth and the cel-shading does well to add to the anime effect. The backgrounds are lively and colorful (ranging from waterfalls to forests) and the moves are detailed and flashy (chakra swirls and the like.) The interface does justice to the "ninja world of Naruto" with scrolls, clouds, and graphics that project just the right image.

Upon closer inspection though, many graphics don't hold up. The stage floors, for example, are all completely flat and level, (which no fighting game nowadays is) and take on the same shape of either a rectangle, circle, or square. This was what originally led me to believe there was more graphical eye candy than ingenuity involved in the creation of the game, because there is really no difference between 90% of the game's stages. I'll also add that a handful of characters look different, but really act, for the most part, the same.

SOUND(7/10): The Japanese voice acting sounds good, it's like the anime, and that's what fans are looking for. The battle sounds are superb. Most of the effects sound real, and if they don't, they're just plain entertaining, from the satisfying slash of a giant clever to the crunch of a full fore arm to an opponent's face.

The music is really, really, annoying. It loops on average after 90 seconds, and it gets extremely repetitive--using the same flute, shamisen, and koto, you've heard so many times with little variation. The only BGMs that will stand out are the ones that are extremely inappropriate for a "life or death fight between ninjas". Hopefully your battles are loud and exciting enough that you can just ignore it.

GAMEPLAY (2/10): Let's get this straight people, the usage of random combinations of A and B with an occasional X is not the best control scheme for a decent fighting game. The move lists of the characters are identical and consist of alternating A and B. The Gamecube has always had this problem with fighting games. However, Super Smash Bros. Melee deals with this by giving characters vast aerial freedom, doubling the move potential. How does Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 attempt to deal with this?

It doesn't. By simply rolling my fingers randomly between A and B, I found that a majority of the story mode's and mission's matches were ridiculously easy. The computer, using this method, could easily be trounced time after time--until, of course, the levels where "the computer sees your move a split second before it actually happens and counters it" begin. And at that point, single player mode just ceases to be fun.

Fighting against humans though, is a different story. Not too different, since they'll most likely have picked up this game in an instant and learned to use the A and B buttons as well. But now people discover "special moves" and "substitution". Man do these two come in handy!

Special moves are "press-and-go" sequences initiated by a single press of the X button. A movie sequence then begins where the victim suffers massive, punishing amounts of damage with no further required input by the player. While that already sounds pretty cheap, substitution is essentially this: when you find yourself being hit by your opponent, just press L or R to teleport away and you even get to give your oppressor a free smack in the head. Combos be dammed, juggling around your opponent with skillfully timed strikes is no longer possible when they can teleport away at any moment and deliver it back.

The idea that a single move can decide an entire match is ludicrous in the fighting game world, but the special moves give players the opportunity to deplete up to 90% of their opponent's health with a single strike. There isn't any strategy behind this either; rack up chakra by beating your opponent senseless. Once he falls down, press X as he's getting up. The match will end even before the music will be allowed to loop.

What I liked about fighting games is completely turned upside down in NGNT4's gameplay. Characters with no weaknesses frolic about with apocalyptic special moves, random button mashing is encouraged, and the game doesn't even allow multiple players to use the same character, which could salvage some of the lost equality and balance of this game.

STORY (1/10): There are two noteworthy modes other than versus, Story mode and Mission mode.

Story mode is Mission mode with preset fight pairings, text boxes, and an occasional wall of Japanese text. No fully animated cutscenes? No final bosses? Nope.

Mission mode, in turn, is essentially Versus mode against a computer, except you are given "merits" for your victories. Most missions ask to you to do the same goals, (beat X score, do it without X tactic), and finishing one mission unlocks more missions. But when playing through the seemingly endless missions the game had to offer, I began to ask myself, "What exactly am I doing here?"

The answer lies in an elaborately disguised tedious unlocking system. Most of the missions force you to get acquainted with using all the characters in the game and to accomplish the same few tiresome goals over, and over, and over until more missions are unlocked etc. etc. There are no interesting battles at all (unless you equate frustration with interest), there is no story, and your opponent is random. Outside of versus mode, there's simply a void of meaning.

FINAL THOUGHTS: If you don't usually buy all the Naruto stuff you can get your hands on, don't buy it. If you like a decent fighting game, don't buy it. Borrow it if you can. And if you want to try and enjoy it, don't compare it to other fighting games, and don't play any good fighting games in the near future. I'll be returning this game to my friend in a few days, but I'm pretty sure for him to have lent it to me for two weeks he must've been pretty bored with Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 too.

Pros:
+Decent Graphics
+Excellent Sound Effects
+Cool Characters and Moves
+Faithful in feeling to the series
+Game is newcomer-friendly

Cons:
-Matches are simplistic
-Many characters are unbalanced
-Single Player Mode is tedious and boring
-Caters to a fan based audience
-Entirely unremarkable as a fighting game

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/07, Updated 03/24/08

Game Release: Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen! 4 (JP, 11/21/05)