NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM Review

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM takes place within the original Naruto series, following Naruto throughout his journey from the very beginning, starting off with his, Sakura's, and Sasuke's fight against Kakashi on their survival training.

The story goes down exactly as the anime does. However, it's told through some sort of journaling that Naruto is doing the events with some terrible writing that sounds like it's fanfiction written by a 12-year-old fan. It could be justifiable given that you are watching the story through Naruto's eyes, so I won't grill the developers too hard for that one.

After finishing your very first quest, you are explained how the missions work, where you'll have to be completing them in order to be able to continue down the main storyline. You'll be doing these "side" quests that are intended to give you mission XP, which I assume is the game's attempt at bloating the content.

These side quests include playing hide and seek with Konohamaru and his gang of ruffians, or fighting Kiba and Akamaru as you try to chase Akamaru through a little mini-game that has Naruto jumping through the trees in an attempt to catch up. These were actually really fun, and made so much sense with Naruto's childish personality present throughout the original series which I really appreciated.

The game doesn't give you much guidance, so some of the quests felt extremely difficult since I'm not very accustomed to playing fighting games. One such quest was when I was fighting Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji. One of the requirements was being able to land three hits on a downed enemy, and I was incapable of doing so, given I didn't even know how to do that back then, and there was no tutorial explaining how to.

Since the game refuses to tell the player absolutely anything, I ran across a pretty harsh bug that didn't allow me to get any more mission XP regardless of whichever mission I did, which led me to trying aggressively hard to be able to find any quest to give me the experience, meaning that I forced myself to fight through the S rank missions, one of which had me dying from just a few hits whilst it took me a couple dozen to be able to beat them, only to not be able to get any experience. I had to restart my entire save file and start from zero to be able to progress.

The side quests allow the player to be able to fight with whichever character they choose from the roster. Although this might be a bit un-immersive at times, given that these characters shouldn't be doing these quests, it was the only way that the game could make it so that Naruto wouldn't be the only playable character and become boring.

That being said, I felt like the side quest and mission XP system overall was very poorly incorporated. Although it is meant to be a way to give the player a break from progressing the main storyline and give way for other things, it was mostly disruptive and annoying to deal with, and not a design choice I was fond of.

It isn't so much the side quest system that I dislike, given that I actually am quite fond of the possibility of doing these quests, especially the silly ones that feel the most lore accurate, but rather the way they are built which prevents any main-quest progression, making the game feel needlessly dragged out.

The fact that the only cutscenes present in the game were Naruto's narration that sounds like him writing into his diary was something that I found disappointing. Given that the game has so many beautiful animations and wonderful voice actors backing it, it felt like a poor and lazy design choice overall.

However the graphic and audio quality were truly astounding. I was a big fan of running around Konoha, using the Naruto cannon and just the overall exploring aspects of the overworld.

Aside from the open-world story mode, the game doesn't actually have an Online multiplayer mode available for players. That being said, the game does have a free battle mode that allows players to choose whichever character they want and fight against either a friend or an AI.

One of the things I did greatly appreciate about the game, however, was that after launching it I received a notification informing me that it can be played with remote play. It was nice to see that despite the old age of the game, the support for remote play was included to be able to play with friends from across the world.

The AI opponent's insane difficulty isn't anything to scoff at, either. The difficulty felt pleasant enough that it felt as if I was actually fighting something more than just some robot that perfectly blocks every attack, all the while not so easy that I was constantly stun-locked by its abilities.

One of my favourite things about the battles in NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM was that whenever casting the ultimate jutsu, an event plays that pits both players against each other. The one that clicks the most buttons gets to dictate whether the attack happens or not; this can also be changed to button mashing or joystick spinning in the option settings. It was nice to see that I couldn't just spam the ultimate jutsu and there was no counterplay.

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM's story mode definitely requires some much-needed attention, with its lack of cutscenes and disruptive mission XP system that just makes it feel clunky since it interrupts in the middle of important quests. Especially when considering the writing that feels more like a fanfiction than an actual company designing the game. That being said, the free battle mode offers Steam remote play in order to play with friends across the world as if it was couch co-op, and has some battle options. The game's age is obvious, however as a first entry, it doesn't do half bad, and fans of the anime or even the series for those that began on the second installation, it might be worth a try on a discount.