Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2

"You take the good with the bad"

I managed to play the first UC game quite a while ago and remember enough about it, this game follows the same preface that you run around and beat stuff up, albeit improved. Being a massive Naruto fan where I have seen literally every episode of the anime into the shippuuden series subtitled, not dubbed, I have an extensive knowledge of the series. I picked this up as something fun to do to kill time being a naruto fan myself.

Graphics/sound- First thing you notice with all things is what you immediately see and hear. The 2d game art on the menu screens is very nice and detailed. It really brings about an excitement for playing the game as it reflects the amount of effort put into the game by the developers. The music for the game is a bit repetitive and can get annoying like old school NES games, but it's tolerable. The in game graphics are pretty nice for a run of the mill ps2 game. The characters in particular look very good and the detail is nice for cel shading. The DBZ series for the Playstation have something to learn from this. The environment detail is decent with some 2d plants and 3d trees and buildings that add some depth to your environment. They could have done better, but it could be much, much worse

7.5/10

Gameplay- Fighting early on is a bit of a trick to understand, and very difficult to master. Some things after playing this game for 30+ hours are still difficult to do, such as jumping and performing dashes, as well as timing your attacks. A MAJOR downside is not being able to block, which is unfortunate as not only can your default bandits and semi-bosses block, but when you play in the two player mode or against other leaf ninja, you cannot block attacks, which is very disappointing. There is a substitution jutsu you can do that helps but is definitely not a substitution for good old blocking. That being said, the combo's are fun to perform on some characters, and not fun to perform on others; meaning naruto, Lee, and a few others is fun to attack your opponents because their tai jutsu is quick and powerful, while other characters, and disappointingly enough, sauske, have slow, open combo's that leave you getting tossed around by the enemy more often than not. This very severely limits the characters you want to use and the ones you don't not to mention the ones that you can use to do more difficult missions. Oh man, and the jumping system is the absolute worst. You would think for ninja's they would be able to jump immeasurable distances and be fantastically nimble. No. You are limited to one blocky, difficult jump. No double jumping. Wall jumping also follows as a pain to perform. The flash jump used to quickly dodge attacks is also very difficult to use properly and shines only when being spammed to dodge attacks. Extremely frustrating at best. Also another major flaw in doing tricky movements is the camera which of course with most low budget games gets the boot. Doesn't pan correctly when you are getting from point a to point b via jumping. Overall, the controls are just very, very slim of a complete disaster. THAT BEING SAID. That all does not limit this from being a fun to play game. If you manage to get the controls "under control", you can have quite a bit of fun beating stuff up.


I'm including two scores depending on the mood you're in when you're playing the game.
Good mood- 8/10 Bad mood- 5/10.... It's really that bad.

Story- I really don't have a lot of respect for most Japanese things that are brought to the US. A great amount of the original content is lost in translation and watered down for US, below intelligence, minds, dragon ball z being a good example. If you only watch the series from US television, this is a pretty accurate depiction of the show brought to game. If you read the manga/watch the Japanese subtitled version you would know how disappointing this is. The first time I played through the game I was so disinterested I skipped through most of the story. But generally this forgotten clan reasserts power to collect these spirit orbs to resurrect a puppet. It's not as exciting as it sounds. You most likely will genuinely have 0 interest in it and want to just beat stuff up. The voice acting is truly boring and repetitive and totally predictable.

-6/10

Play Time/Replayability- There is almost too much stuff to do in this game, and at the same time, not enough. Once you beat if you are left with doing the missions and survival modes, which are enjoyable, and also leveling up your character skills. This is also a very time consuming and painstakingly difficult task to perform.

7/10

Overall- Could have done much, much better. Was worth 20 bucks buying it used, and come to think of it, there's no way I would have bought this new. Rental title for sure, or used purchase. You buy it new, you lose.

OVERALL: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

Game Release: Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 (US, 09/04/07)