Naruto Online First Impressions

Lame teaser aside, as with any MMO or large game, it’s difficult to understand if a game’s any good until having chewed through a good chunk of it and I feel that Naruto Online needs more time to give a full indepth review. And that’s because this game has promise, Naruto Online retells the much beloved series of Naruto from the beginning of the manga. Set with our fledgling Naruto who’s just passed his Ninja exams, he finally gains the respect of his Sensei/teacher Iruka which the story neatly follows on - or there abouts. Jump to the verdict for a summarised point, as much of this game left me feeling confused, sad and happy for lots of reasons.

What’s important about Naruto for me is the story, and sadly for the most part, the transition of Manga to MMO isn’t that great, it’s a weird amalgamation of what Anime is suppose to do and operates as a game to sell the franchise; but doesn’t do much of what the (if slightly overfilled) Anime does. This is fleshing out the content and selling you the original source material, whilst understandably not all MMOs will feature large incites of lore or even backstory to what every part of the world does. As a fan of the Naruto franchise since 2006, it’s really gutting to having replayed thought the Land of Waves - what really kick started and cemented the foundations of the franchise as a whole. It left me as sad at what was missing as opposed to what I was seeing.

Zabuza, your lack of good writing made me cry.

The entirety of the arc I was expecting storytelling reminiscent of the Ubisoft Montreal’s Rise of a Ninja, or the more recent Ninja Storm series. Fast paced story that cuts some of the talking and leaves in the parts that hit home to what the Naruto story does well: create heartfelt moments that have on more occasions crushed my heart and make me weep for the sincerity in what made each person a character. Reading the short sentences that made the story so great broke me for what I was expecting, and after sinking about maybe 24 hours and progressing to the fourth story arc, it’s left me bone dry and just sad that the writing hasn’t served to what the original Manga did.

So my burning fanboy impression of the writing aside and off my chest, the core concept of the game is still fun - if you’re looking to spend short periods playing it. Featuring light strategy combat mechanics, for all intensive purposes is an idle game that the user will interact with on a minor scale - so don’t expect to focus solely on it for long periods of time. It knows that time is sparse and to a certain extent I can appreciate that, for the flack I give the writing it provides the necessary plot to move on (other than the potential translation issues maybe with the phrasing of sentences). Containing time saving features referred as Sweep in game, depending on the what you’re doing, will save you time on grinding for certain things like items to upgrade your characters or sweet sweet Ryo (your in game standard currency). There is a premium currency and a pseudo version of it which just doesn’t afford you some of the more pricey things as a heads up.

Instances are like raids, but with less interactions during the battle.

It features a three by three tile area to stick four Ninja, positioning is key with certain characters having buffs based on it with your standard priority aggro range, move priority dictating the order your Ninja will operate and avoidance of area of effect moves. You also have a class system (almost, it’s not really a prescribed thing but maybe down the line knowing the stat biases can help form a solid meta level team) with the Chakra nature cycle being a thing: water beats fire, fire beats wind, wind beats lightning, lightning beats earth and earth beats water before repeating.

These core mechanics lay the bases of the what the provides and that’s making really cool combos that your selected Ninja perform. Early on in the game, they give you the eponymous Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno and Sasuke Uchiha. The game already has them perform a neat little combo that can be further lengthened depending on your main character’s chakra nature. It’s this part of the game I find really entertaining and fun, coupled with the large assortment of the Naruto cast means the potential of Ninja squad to perform a cool full squad combo is cool, it’s the way they animate each impact and connection that really rewarding and presents a really cool gameplay mechanic that I haven’t seen explored before in this method.

PvP is madness, great for finding combos that work and don't.

The characters have different biases and finding the right one can be difficult, but with the initial impression of the game I’m expecting the game to challenge me later on with squad configurations to get the better characters and be able to sweep missions for items and fragments which are required to unlocking and upgrading characters. This is rather annoying if you have a collect ‘em all attitude, but considering how things are turning out, this is probably for the better as it’s not overwhelming just yet with its progression mechanics. It’s because of this limitation that I’m not focused on the chakra natures of characters since having progressed enough, the introduction of Ninja weapons can help reduce the impact of certain debuffs a character may have and vice versa. How much it’ll impact on progression hasn’t been seen yet, but judging from how it's playing now, I think it’ll be negligible for the main story campaign and will be more focused as part of the PvP elements.

The game and its selling point could do with some polishing some aspects, regardless though it’s fun and considering that the game is picking pace, it could potentially harness a solid community depending on how Oasis plans to update the game. It’s not going to win awards for looks, but if you want to experience a light tactics style game that feels kinda like leading an actual Ninja squad of your dream cast then it does that at least.

Verdict:

The main gameplay loop doesn't quite hit the mark for me, and the client constantly needs logging back in through Google. It's accessible for newcomers, and it's free, so if Naruto is your thing give it a try.