Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2

"This Game Will Prevail...Believe It!"

Naruto Uzumaki is a young ninja raised in the small village of Konoha. The Fourth Hokage, or formally known as “The Yellow Flash”, sealed the Nine-Tailed Beast, Kyuubi, inside of Naruto Uzumaki. Being an exile, he did not have anyone to raise him properly until he met Iruka. From there on, friendship and happiness fell upon Naruto's shoulders. With that happiness and friendship comes the manga that we love to refer to as Naruto. Naruto Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 is a beat-em-up game. The player can either decided to button smash your way through mission mode or skillfully test out new combos. Normally, expectations for anime games are not so high. Yet, after tons of successful Naruto games, why would one pick up an American-exclusive game?

Story 7/10

What can I say? The story was boring and stale. Not only was it boring and stale, but the fact that the story was made solely for ANBU-knowledge, it made the story even more boring. Luckily, Tomy included a skip feature which allowed me to skim through the cut-scenes and landed me straight in the action. Even after using the skip feature for the whole story mode, I figured out the storyline and everything it had to offer in the end. If someone diligent could skip the cut-scenes and still figure out the story in the end, then there really is not a use for cut-scenes in the game. Yet Tomy has still decided to slap on the cut-scenes.

Towa and Komachi, two new ANBU members that were just introduced in this series, are going back to Konoha after a mission. Along the way back, they happen to pass two Rogue Ninjas in their path. Startled by their presence, Towa and Komachi decide to go and interrogate the two. After no response, the player is landed in their first fight in the game. Using their ANBU skills, Komachi and Towa made it out of the scrap alive. Before getting the information they needed out of the Rogue Ninja, they disappeared into the night sky. Investigating the area lead them to a village that was burnt to the ground. Both ANBU members hurried back to the village as fast as possible. Indeed, the story does sound interesting so far, but I was able to figure out what happened at the end of the story after watching one cut-scene.

Gaara, Naruto, and Kakashi are sent out on a mission to see who is causing a ruckus in Konoha. After much examination, they find Genin-leveled ninja scouring the village and destroying the three protagonists. These Genin are Naruto's friends and Kakashi's students. Fighting their way to the village gates, they find a rogue ninja and interrogate information out of him. Throughout this, Sakura is apparently kidnapped and the team of three is sent to find her. Lead to a hideout, they find out who is pulling the strings. An ANBU member of Konoha who has gone rogue has been trying to set the extermination of them in place. Yet, after they retrieve Sakura and return to Konoha to stop the extermination, they have to fight more of their friends to release a barrier that caused the spell.

The story may sound exciting, but I bought the game for combat. This story was not intriguing me one bit. This lead me to skip everything, as said previously, and destroy anyone who got in my path to complete the story mode. Going to the hideout one more time, the Komachi and Towa are defeated by Kagura (the leading force behind Konoha's extermination). Kakashi and Sakura prepare to fight Kagura, but Kagura catches Sakura in a binding technique that causes Kakashi to surrender. Tsuande knocks out Sakura and prepares to fight the kuinichi that rivaled her power. In the end, Tsuande wins the match, but she sees someone lurking in the dark. Naruto is sent to retrieve this person (who is later to be revealed as Kabuto) and strikes him with a Rasengan; which ends the story mode.

The village is safe from this scourge. Yet, the player has defeated the story mode in less than an hour. Yes, the story mode is that short. With the highest difficulty tweaked on and the lowest attack power, I was able to obliterate any opposition in my way in under an hour. This story deserves a lower rating, but the “super characters” gave it a bit of a challenge, thus I decided to put up the score. A possible explanation for this is that I possess the fourth Gekitou Ninja Taisen. This was also made by Tomy and it contained some of the same things.

Overall: Story...boring. Was the combat fun and challenging? Yes!

Audio 10/10

Regardless of what anyone else thinks, it should be up to the player to decide for themselves if they appreciate the voice acting and the voice actors. For one, they replaced Asuma's and Tsunade's original voice actors due to time restraints or refusal to participate in the game's creation. However, the voice actors seem to have done a good job with the jobs they are paid for and nothing seems off synch here.

The background music that plays for any section that you pick in the game's selection screen actually fits. Whoever they hired to orchestrate their music did a magnificent job. Instead of taking all of the old sound effects and applying it to a new game, they decided to mix up their own tracks and apply them. For example, the Rasengan has a new sound effect. In Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4, there were multiple scratches of the wind occupying my ears as Naruto started up the Rasengan. Now, Naruto's Rasengan is just four or five scratches that pass through one ear and goes out the other.

Overall: Yes, audio is never rated so much on my part. There is only so much to say about it. Reviewers can only say so much on a good detailed part. Yet, the audio was synchronized so perfectly and the sound effects were just made so great!

Game Play 10/10
Graphics 10/10

Nothing beats a good fighting game. There are two types of Naruto games: The one on the Gamecube/Wii and the one on the Playstation 2/Playstation 3. Naruto games on the Wii are usually like this. Naruto games on the Playstation are slow-paced. There are tons of things to try out in this game. When Veterans play, the action is always fast and there is a lot of thinking on your feet. A casual player who only plays against computers will not have to worry about this. The player will only have to face so much difficulty against computers before giving up. Essentially, that point will never be faced because the difficulty was toned down a lot. The computers do not reach the capabilities of a human player. This is great for the casual player, since this will probably equal Guitar Hero's first tier expert mode.

Some new characters have entered the fighting stage, some of which include: Kagura, Bando, Yugao, Tomachi, and Towa. All of these ninjas have been given unique personalities and special attacks. Aside from the new players entering the stage, older characters such as Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru come back for another debut. These strong characters are fun to play with since, if the player has happened to have an older version of the Clash of Ninja series, the player may have played as them before. This leads to more exploration.

Even though Tomy and Eighting decided to cut my fun in half by eliminating the Sound Five, the game still happens to pick up the pace by keeping Itachi and Kisame. Kisame is a great character who happens to pick up the slack for the left out Zabuza. Komachi seems to be a remake of Haku. Even with all these similarities, Tomy did cut out a huge chunk of chakra bars refilling faster and gravity affecting characters in the sky much more. Before, with Naruto, I could pull off a certain combo and then be able to unleash the Naruto Rendan. Now they have killed the gravity and I can not attempt that combo anymore. With Cursed Sealed Sasuke Stage 2, they slowed down his movement, which lead to him not being able to pull off his regular chaining combos.

This was another turn-off. Yet, this allowed spammers to stop picking One Tailed Naruto and Cursed Sealed Sasuke Stage 2. Another thing is that they made the cancels (a function in the game where you can stop your character completely and start your combo over from the start) appear dimmer. At first, I could not notice when I was cancelling and when I was not. After an hour or two of playing, I realized that the small dot in the center of my character's chest was supposed to be the initialization of cancelling. How is one supposed to know that? Well, Tomy could have mentioned that instead of a huge, glowing, circular object appearing below the character; a small dot would take its place.

Specials, the epitomes of greatness, previously all characters were able to activate two from the start. Now even though some still attain this ability, a certain character has lost his ability to activate two. Naruto Uzumaki, our protagonist, can not activate his second special without falling into crucial status. Crucial status is where the life bar turns red. Now, players with dignity do not use wake-up specials (the act of using a special when an opponent has just gotten up) and they will try and chain their specials with their combos. Most players will not have the time to chain the Rasengan because if the other player has dealt enough damage to lower you to red, they will kill you before you can use your special.

This was a bad move on Tomy's part and they should have just left it how it was.

Graphics was stuck in here since it is way too small for its own section. The graphics are amazing for a Wii game. Some Wii games like Guitar Hero and No More Heroes have terrible graphics. Naruto Clash of Ninja Revolution happened to be able to maintain the great systems it already had while implementing a complete new graphic engine.

Overall: Great, great, and great! I could not have made a better purchase. This combat has been keeping me busy as I let my Xbox 360 have a cool down from too much Devil May Cry 4 playing!

Conclusion – Overall 9/10

If I were to be asked if a potential buyer should buy this game or not, I would recommend you buy it. If that buyer is in love with fighting games and the Naruto series, then this game is for them. They will not only be investing in a great game, but this should keep them comfortable until Shippuuden games arrive on the shelves.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/10/08

Game Release: Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 (US, 10/21/08)