Naruto: Ultimate Ninja

"This game is excellent, believe it!"

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja is a game based of the popular Japanese anime Naruto. So who is Naruto you ask? In the Naruto anime he's a ninja-in-training who fights alongside his friends, Sasuke and Sakura, to become stronger so that one day he can become Hakage, his clan's number-one ninja. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja puts you in Naruto's (or his friends' and enemies') sandals, letting you take part in all of the awesome ninja action.

Gameplay 9/10- Naruto: Ultimate Ninja is a very fun game to play and to get into. There are many different modes to play through to keep you busy. The battles are fast paced and fierce, as one would expect. The controls are difficult at first but are very easy to pick up, and moves are easy to pull off which makes this game much better than a button masher. In fact there is only one attack button. To do combos, all you need to do is press circle in conjunction with directional buttons; Secret techniques simply require you to power up by pressing triangle before attacking. There are three secret techniques for each character (with the exception of two secret characters) that are easy to pull off. There are four modes to play through: Scenario (story) mode, Mission mode where you can complete various missions to unlock special fetchers, characters, and rise through the ninja ranks in the game, Practice mode where you can practice fighting moves and jutsu, and last but not least Free Battle mode where you freely select characters and begin battle against the CPU or with a friend. The game has three difficulty settings that you can adjust at any time in the game: easy, normal, or hard. The difficulty settings only pertain to the scenario and free battle modes.

Story 9/10- Ultimate Ninja has a lot to offer in the story department. Originally you only start out with six stories to play though, Naruto Saga, Sasuke Saga, Sakura Saga, Shikamaru Saga, Kakashi Saga, and Lee Saga. As you progress through the game you will unlock more characters and more stories to play through, each story captures the flow of the anime perfectly with the same fights the characters fights in the cartoon. Each story has about 6-8 fights but makes up with 12 stories total.

Graphics/Sounds 10/10- Ultimate Ninja defiantly takes full advantage of the PS2's graphics with beautiful cell shaded characters. Though this game is a 2D fighter every stage has a foreground and a background that you jump between in battle. You can also interact with the environments: destroying things for items, run up a wall to throw shuriken from afar, or use chakra to fight on top of the water. You can even change stages in mid-battle if you don't like the one your on. The game also has many sounds for each character (which can be unlocked as an extra), so it will not get repetitive or boring.

Playtime/Replayability 10/10- This game will take a long time to complete at 100%. Each story mode is very easy to complete and doesn't take too long, but some missions can get repetitive and frustrating taking even longer to accomplish, but even so they are still fairly simple. The most time consuming parts of the game are the S-Rank missions and Extras. There are lots and lost of extras in this game. You can earn scrolls for completing various tasks: there are a total of 99 scrolls to collect. There are also figures of each character acting out each and every one of their moves: there are a total of 419 figures. You can collect the music and audio of every character and background noise: there are a total of 387 audio sounds. You can also collect ninja info cards, which are pictures taken from the Naruto TV series including ninjas, Justus, and much more: there are a total of 270 ninja info cards. Finally you can watch the secret techniques from each character, well your thinking about 12 characters and 3 techniques each so that's 36... wrong, each secret technique has its own upgrade and other part to it: there are a total of 1176 (not a typo) videos of secret techniques!!! This game is diffidently worth playing again already if you've beaten it, I think of it as the Super Smash Bros. of PS2.

Final Recommendation 9/10- You might be skeptical picking up a game based on a cartoon, but rest assured this fast-paced, easy-to-learn fighter is the real deal. With tons of extras and multiple game modes, this anime brawler is something that everyone will enjoy, but has more than enough depth to satisfy the more hardcore players. The only downsides to the game where that some of the characters where noticeably missing, and some missions made me want to throw shuriken at my TV rather then the enemy. The missions at the beginning of the game are simple and some help you learn some of the more difficult moves in the game but a lot of them rely on the game giving you the right item, or you simply getting lucky, which is frustrating because it is out of your control. Also some missions are phrased badly, meaning you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do. Also, to use your earned money you must spend a little time at the shop, so you'll be pressing the X button A LOT to use everything you earned. But yea... the game is diffidently worth buying, and it's worth the search to find it; and already Independent Playstation Magazine PSM already gave Naruto: Ultimate Ninja there coveted Game of the Month award (the same award Kingdom Hearts 2 won a couple months ago).

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/06