Naruto: Rise of a Ninja

"A success and disappointment all rolled into one."

Yes. I -was- a fan once. But as a gamer I must let my opinion be heard.

Rise of a Ninja is a appropriate name for the title as it covers the rise of Uzumaki through the first stages of his tenure as a ninja for Konohakagure (Village hidden in the Leaves). It covers roughly the first half of the NARUTO Part One story; playing through the first two major story arcs through the eyes of the titular character: the Zabuza arc and the Exams arc.
When I heard the Prince of Persia team was in charge of game creation, I had high hopes for the game and what did we get? An ok game. Not good, not great, nothing special, just okay. There was so much more that could have been done, but it's only saving grace is the prospect of future DLC.


Gameplay: 5/10
The game play is flawed, no matter how big of a fan you are of the anime or manga. This is a fact. I understand the background of the story and the characters so I can say this and take the heat. The game is short. Too short. Though it may be good enough to get the casual gamer into the show, the older fans will be throughly disappointed. The mini games try to stretch out the story and gives the players something tedious to do for some achievement points. Consisting of missions based on the anime as well as missions that just exist to help you boost your stats.

The mini games consist of racing around the village hitting checkpoints along the way, delivering ramen from Ichiraku (Naruto's favorite ramen place ), and playing hide and seek with Konohamaru (the village leader's grandson). If you want you can actually call the tree action stage a mini game (as it can give you a couple achievements). The adventuring portion of the game is well done, using the abilities of Naruto to go scouring for objects is nice, but after seeing the Shadow Clone Jutsu (I feel dirty writing that) so many times, whether it be a quick use ability than slow the platforming down with a 10-15 second scene, that or make it more interactive. The controls are easy to work with, nothing really seem too far out of place with an exception of the dashing ability as it sometimes feels slow to respond when you need just a quick boost of speed before a jump.

The fighter portion of the game is very unpolished. The use of the hand seal system for supers is nice, but that is about it. Since each character has a certain game to play to connect each super. The lack of moves and supers are a disappointment to fans of the show and fighting games alike, especially in the online versus game play.


Story:6/10
If you know the story, there isn't anything new other than a few "social" missions. If not. The story follows the anime well, though you miss some of the less important parts of the story. Even adding something from the anime like being chased by the bulls on the way to the final exam could have added something else to do, anything would have been nice to just add something to the story like actually having to do the first part of the exam where you would have to not get caught cheating on impossibly hard questions.


Graphics/Sound: 8/10
The graphics are excellent. You can see the amount of time that they had spent on creating the village. The portraits of the main characters from the show are well done, but it seems that all they did was take existing artwork featured from the anime or manga and enhanced them, while the artwork for some of the randomly encountered opponents look like they were drawn by someone with limited artistic skill to fit in with anime styled artwork. The fights were very well done it looks like it's running at over 30 frame per second with very little graphical slow down.

Using most of the voice talent from the American dub was a nice touch, but missing a few voices doesn't hurt it too much. The confirmation of the original Japanese talent filling the roles of the characters as DLC will delight many fans of the series who enjoy them. The use of the original soundtrack from the series was also a plus for fans, but it's nothing really anything that will get you really into the feel of the game if you're not a fan.


Play Time/Replayability: 5/10
I'm not sure how long it will take if you watch the video clips, but attempting to skip the video it took me roughly 5 hours to blow through. What do I mean blow through? As I said before, this game is easy. Though scouring for the ancient coins for the Collector achievement or the small mini-games that can easily distract from the story. They need to put in those mini games or else the game could be even shorter if you skipped past the story. There is very little replayability currently other than a multiplayer in online battle mode which seems flawed. Players will leave sometimes in the middle of the battles to keep their winning streak going. If it would only count as a win or a loss that would help frustrated players who are trying to reach their Forest of Death achievements .


Final Thoughs....
If you are a fan of the anime you may enjoy this game, but if you walk in from purely a gamer's stand point you may find that the difficulty is more suited to the younger audiences where the other gamers will blow right on through the game easily. It may not be worth the cost of the game right now, but with promises of future DLC the online component may be able to change into something better. Buy the game if yourself or your child are huge fans of the show, but if your more of the casual or achievement gamer; this will be a quick, easy game rental.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/07

Game Release: Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (US, 10/30/07)