Naruto: Rise of a Ninja

"The first good naruto game is here"

So, the time has come for the Naruto franchise. After so many disappointing games we finally have a truly great Naruto experience. Naruto: Rise of the Ninja is not perfect, but it is definitively good.

Naruto: Rise of the Ninja Centers around Naruto. A young boy training to become a Ninja who wishes to become Hokage, the top of his Village, the Village Hidden in the Leaves. But Naruto is an outcast, when a demon-fox, the Nine Tails arrived in his village before he was born, almost all of the village was destroyed. But the 4th Hokage sealed the Nine-Tails into Naruto, ultimately dying in the process. Now Naruto is treated like trash in his village and he must prove himself in order to become accepted.

The single player mode is the Story Mode. You get to control Naruto throughout all of his adventures in the Hidden Leaf Village and beyond. The game has two "modes" if you will. Adventure and Fighting. In adventure mode, you get to run around as Naruto. You can compete in races, deliver Ramen, climb up trees and walls etc. The fighting part is self-explanatory. You take control of Naruto and fight against the computer.

The multiplayer is an OK part of the game, that could be enhanced if people didn't quit all the time to save their winning streak for those achievements. The multiplayer will probably not be played much, it's not perfect and it doesn't hold the gamers interest for a prolonged period of time.

The major flaw of this game is how short it is. I beat story mode in about 6 hours, without doing 10 of the sidequests and most of the races. While those could probably stretch the game to about 10-12 hours I see no point in doing so as all I will get is a few more achievement points. Another flaw is how easy the game is. There really is no possibility for failure during fights, due to the memochip system, which basically lets you regain all of your health while your oppenents health stays the same. And get this, you can use memochips for 4 times in 1 fight. While it IS hard to beat bosses without memochips, that's why they are there.

The graphics are very nice and polished. Cell-shading really works here. The major characters are very detailed. The villagers aren't very detailed, and they mostly look the same, but it still doesn't matter much as you will usually just run right past them without paying any attention to them. The sound was much better than I expected. The voice actors did their job, and did it much better than they did during the anime. If, however, some people still don't like the voices, they can download the Japanese voice acting and just read the subtitles.

Overall this game is a great game for Naruto fans to have, while an average gamer who has never seen the show may want to rent it first and then decide...then again if you rent it you'll probably get most of the achievements done anyways, minus the Multiplayer ones.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

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