Naruto games seem to be getting published here in the states every month or so -- it's become crazy trying to keep track of them all. Being a big Naruto fan, I decided to give one the many Naruto games a spin: in this case, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2. Where in the grand scheme of Naruto games this one lands, I honestly have no idea, and thus cannot draw comparisons -- but I can still judge it as a game in and of itself that is based on the popular anime/manga series.
The story of Naruto follows a passionate young ninja in a fictional world woven (loosely) from Japanese lore -- the lad is a clumsy but dedicated ninja trying to become the leader of his village who happens to have an extremely powerful demon sealed inside his body. To cut to what's significant about this particular title's plot, Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 features a filler-like storyline that is not part of the anime or manga, which was definitely a good choice, since it can easily fit itself into a certain time span in the canon and at least makes the plot not a retread for Naruto fans. That said, the story is expectedly redundant and predictable and only serves two real purposes: an excuse for Naruto's friends to turn against him, and some bits of backstory on Tsunade's past (the well-endowed leader of the village at this time). It's fluff but Naruto fans may get a bit of enjoyment out of it, especially since there are completely original characters (members of the CIA-like Anbu organization) that are thrown into the mix that fit perfectly with the Naruto mythos.
Since this is a license game, it is integral to fans that the looks and sounds of the characters are preserved -- graphically, the game is adequate. Definitely not as slick as the recent PS3 Naruto title's visuals, but the characters look both three-dimensional yet very accurately portrayed at the same time (the game looks better in motion than in stills). Voicework, on the other hand, is rather inconsistent. Being someone who watched hundreds of episodes of the Japanese version (with subtitles), it was kind of interesting for me to find out how America portrays these characters. While it's grating to hear Japanese names butchered (poor Shikamaru...), I did like the casting as a whole -- as far as the physical traits of the voices are concerned. Hinata sounds pretty much exactly what I'd figure she would in English, as do Choji and Ten-Ten and all the rest. The issue comes with the acting quality. Naruto is, unfortunately, constantly yelling in monotone, which gets irritating when he's the main character and his Japanese actor is actually pretty expressive. My personal opinion of acting quality leaned more towards the voicework of the older characters: Jiraiya, Tsunade, and especially Kakashi [Interesting fact: Kakashi is voiced by the US announcer of Ninja Warrior]. That said, I'm sure Otaku purists will cry foul (as they seemingly always do) at the English dub, which on occasion even bothered me despite my leniencies with voicework. Overall, it's an extremely mixed bag and I wish the Japanese voices could be turned on with some subtitles added in, which has become a standard in many other multi-lingual fighters like Tekken. One final note on the voice-acting: having Sakura verbally direct the main menu may seem charming at first, but her English voice is unfortunately one I found quite annoying, as well, and hearing the same phrases repeated every time I make a selection gets old fast.
The locations which serve as the backdrops are pretty accurate to the show, which is nice to see, but the music falters a bit -- in and of itself, it's OK, but the Naruto show's early seasons had some stellar soundtracks for a cartoon, many of which would make great battle themes, so it feels like a wasted opportunity to have them tossed by the wayside.
Now we've covered all of the facets of the presentation, which I presume would be most important to anyone interested in the title, given its namesake. We'll move on to the gameplay, which I would hazard to guess will feel like a retread to anyone who has been keeping up with the games as of late (or ever, even). Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 is a fairly traditional fighting game in which most battles consist of one-on-one 2D fighting with some 3D elements (like most fighters these days). There are also some 4-player fights but I found these frustrating due to a lack of ability to toggle between opponents -- that or a very inconvenient way of doing so, since there was none indicated. Naruto tries to distinguish itself by incorporating the element of "Chakra" into battles: bio-energy of a sort which builds up during combat based on one's actions. This chakra serves many purposes, from traditional "super specials" to the classic ninja replacement techniques which dodge moves and warp players in a strategically advantageous position. This plays out all right, as it encourages some on-the-fly strategy in the midst of combat. The game also tries to give the environment some depth by letting players smack each other off edges, plant bombs or use obstacles to their advantage, but it's still a bit shallow and unpolished, mainly because moving through the 3D plane is stiff and restricting (which becomes a serious problem in any battles involving more than two fighters). CoNR2 tries these things to differentiate itself but it's riddled with many holes despite its meritable efforts.
For starters, character moves feel extremely shallow. There are two buttons to attack -- weak and strong -- and some variations of these moves can be made depending on where the character is and what direction is being pressed on the control stick, but it still feels much more simplistic than most of the more popular fighters out there, leaving me constantly wishing I had more variation at my disposal. The game offers different control schemes, which is a plus, especially in this genre, but I found myself using the Wiimote/Nunchuk combo the most (especially since certain abilities are not possible without it due to their uses of the Wiimote's features). Some of the more complex abilities, like throwing bomb-kunai or doing handsigns, felt convoluted in their execution, relying on holding down different combinations of buttons and the like. The hand signs were especially frustrating, as they required flicks of the Wiimote in specific directional patterns -- I found this difficult to do accurately in the heat of a fight as it was very touchy, and trying to use these abilities almost always proved to hurt more than help. The special jutsus were difficult to execute overall, as many of them required one to be right next to the target but take a second to pull off -- it's great that they're risky to use as they deplete all of your chakra, but on many occasions I felt like the hit-detection was spotty and cheated me out of a move -- or the opponent could simply hit me a split second before the execution and completely cancel it. Unlocking many of the characters involves playing repetitive missions with different characters which are mostly the exact same thing with minor tweaks...it gets very boring. On top of all of these problems, the story mode had a couple of fights which seemed incredibly unfair and cheap (enemies that didn't flich when being hit and being stronger than me on top of that), leaving me stuck for an hour or so on each one despite having not near as much trouble on the rest of the story.
Speaking of the story mode, I had to replay the first half of the mode twice, since it didn't save my progress. The game looks like it would save your progress considering your options are to start it from the beginning or continue, but not once was I given an option to save, and no where could I decipher how to do so -- one can't even seem to pull up an in-game menu to, say, exit a battle, change the options, or anything of the sort. If it exists, the game does an entirely poor job at demonstrating to the player how to save or even access a pause menu -- I pressed every single button on my Wiimote and Nunchuk to no avail. This is, frankly, absurd -- players should be able to exit a battle at any time with a menu, and if the story is able to be saved, it should be more clear how on earth one does so. These aspects of the interface actively impacted my play experience in a negative way.
