From the Top - Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

After getting blindsided by a fistful of nostalgia upon seeing a compilation of Naruto anime openings, I took it upon myself to look into the Ultimate Ninja Storm series. As some readers may know, I cannot simply hop into the latest rendition of a game but have to obsessively rummage through the series' history to get the proper “context” to appreciate any sequels. Madness, I know! But, here we are nonetheless. If this is your first time popping into this series, make sure to check out the first part!

After finishing up Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, I was unsure what to expect from the sequel. With the series still ongoing during the game’s 2010 release — two years after the first — how would Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 manage portraying an, as yet, unfinished story? Well, the answer was pretty clear from the title image of the game: we were only following the story up until the Akatsuki’s attack on the Hidden Leaf Village.

To be fair, this is a genius move. Though there is a lot of story to go through after the antics of Pain et al., the Akatsuki do move to the background to focus on larger threats, making this a great start and end to a game to follow. However, I was a bit concerned about there being two whole games left to meander through with little story to cover, at least according to my hazy memory. Though, that's a problem for the coming sequels to tackle. Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is an interesting shift, much the same way Shippuden changed things up from the more light-hearted Naruto.

Instead of being let loose on a fully rendered Hidden Leaf, taking on missions whenever we fancy, the game takes a more RPG approach, reminding me heavily of older Final Fantasy titles or Rogue Galaxy. Playing as Naruto (or protagonist de jure, depending on the chapter), we are allowed to explore the world of the series much more openly, leaving town to explore the iconic locations nearby, even visiting the other nations on occasion! We also follow the story much more closely, having to play out each scene and travelling to locations, instead of simply listening to a cutscene and taking on a battle. Similarly, we are restricted in the teammates we can take along for the ride, with the story setting up each team you’ll fight as.

The game also has side-quests to complete, crafting recipes to fulfil in order to get better ninja tools, resources to collect, and even a relationship system with your ninja colleagues (though I didn’t really interact with it). Instead of rendering everything in-game, the game utilises a mix of rendered arenas with backgrounds taken from the anime itself, which I have middling feelings about. While I do enjoy the added detail this allowed the devs to add to everything rendered, I do sort of miss being able to run around freely. It’s a minor thing, though.

The combat itself was mostly the same, with an added level of smooth animation and possibly somewhat more responsive controls. A new support system allows your teammates to automatically protect you when you are charging chakra or make a surprise attack to add to your combo, which is really fun. Additionally, if you use your buddies enough in battle, you’ll fill up a gauge, after which using an ultimate move will have everyone in the squad blast your unlucky enemy with their ultimate jutsu. It’s very satisfying to pull off. As the battle seemed to be the same-old same-old, with some added bells and whistles, I settled into a comfortable, but familiar groove of fisticuffs. Then the first boss happened.

In the first game, boss battles boiled down to fighting a big monster in a small arena, dodging its attacks while getting in a few minor hits and performing a (very sudden) QTE to get some actual damage in. As such, when the first “boss” battle reared its head, I wasn’t expecting much. To my shock, the fight had choreographed little QTE scenes as before, but it additionally had a multi-phased challenge to take out the boss, complete with mechanics and everything! If nothing else, these fights were very much worth the cost of entry and made the iconic, and often climactic, battles feel that much more fun.

So, the story. We pick up pretty much where the anime does, as I mentioned. A suddenly taller Naruto returns to the Hidden Leaf Village after training with Jiraiya, after which we are quickly flung into the first misdeed of the Akatsuki, capturing Gaara of the Sand. We rush forward to save Naruto’s erstwhile foe, and it was fun actually travelling to the Village Hidden in the Sand, though I imagine the trip is probably much longer than the few minutes the trip took. We even got to explore the town, which was a surprising addition! We learn what happened and set off again, grammy Chio in tow, to save the new Kazekage.

One feature I absolutely loved in Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is how you often find yourself playing as different teams and characters. Sure, for the bulk of the game, you’ll be playing as Naruto or the enigmatic Sasuke, but the small interims playing as Kakashi or Might Guy are a nice palette cleanser every now and again. The story pretty much follows along the story of the anime, though we do move at pretty break-neck speeds at times! It feels like we’ve only done a few missions and suddenly Sasuke is facing Itachi at the secret Uchiha clubhouse (no Hokages allowed) and Pain is on the march towards our home. While I don’t mind the fast pace, the game has a habit of tossing minor variations to gameplay here and there to keep things fresh, like an RPG-style “dungeon” to explore, I did think the game could have taken a bit of time to breathe.

The final battle against Pain, for example, was missing a few of the “iconic” fights, focusing mostly on Naruto and the Akatsuki leader. Even Naruto’s training at Mount Myōboku happens pretty much offscreen. If nothing else, I hoped the game would save some time to explore the whole “relationship” mechanic you have with the main cast, since I didn’t really understand how it worked or why I’d interact with it at all. Oh well, I got epic fights and some beautiful animation, so I can’t complain!

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is very much the game I feel the developers wanted to make in the first title: every concept has been improved and tweaked to get the most out of it and it was pretty fun seeing how much the game progressed. Stopping at the Pain arc is a good call, as after that the whole Ninja World War thing kicks off and is a whole ‘nother ballgame in terms of power-scaling and Kaiju-level foes to battle. I do wonder how they intend to make two games out of it, but I’m also excited to see if they can keep up the current trend of evolution and polish. Join me next time as I dive into the third of our quartet, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3.