Naruto Rise of a Ninja Review
Naruto Rise of a Ninja ReviewGenre: Fighting & Adventure
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Year: 2007
A long time ago I remember playing this game, and later I pretended to be sick to get a day off school, and because it was a rental, I had to finish it soon. And that day was awesome, I played through this entire game’s storyline. Now year’s later I played it again, thankfully not nearly in such a short period of time. The game covers the beginning of Naruto to the end of the Gaara arc, making that fight the climax that a lot of the games have done before. So let’s start with the story. You get the typical story of course, but thankfully they make it interesting to see. The anime actually does come in for some cut scenes, and does a pretty decent job at explaining things. That and most important things are covered. However some of the voices for the dub are gone, it takes place in Naruto’s point of view, so things like the Third Hokage vs. Orochimaru fight are gone. And it does do that video game thing of just kind of dumbing the minds of usually what we see in the anime, which is expected. Naruto acts like an idiot, but when he comes around for his moments in the anime, you probably did doubt him, and then get behind him as he’s flipping it on your head. In games he’s just an idiot, and these things happen with all characters. But that doesn’t mean you are not involved, there are plenty of new missions and assignments that haven’t been done, and story overall is very rewarding considering. Next, the fighting. To be honest, it’s not much. There is a small amount of characters, and the fighting isn’t exactly great. And the fact you are Naruto the entire time in the story, it gets really repetitive. And that doesn’t help when the only people you seem to be fighting are ninja and random ninjas. You do fight the other characters of course, but it’s still not much. But they do keep things going from getting too representative by adding variety to the fights. Each character has a rage mode, and an animation leading to it. Also you actually control the hand signs before going into your jutsus, which makes it really cool. And although the fighting style isn’t fantastic, it’s not what you’re doing most of the time, and definitely gets the job done, and that’s what counts. And then the best part of the game, the adventure portion. Yes, the leaf village becomes a plaything, and it’s beautiful. At first you can’t even run, you can’t climb walls or walk on water, you kind of just do the missions. But then you get to just run around, do shit, it’s really awesome. To be honest it kind of reminds me of Arkham City where you get to just explore a world that isn’t gigantic, but getting in every nook and cranny is what counts, not to mention just moving around is really fun. I mean not all the adventure stuff is fun, the tree climbing sections aren't exactly great... they get pretty repetitive. Not to mention there are a crap ton of things to do. You can do a lot of on foot races, and I’m never a fan of races in games, but I actually had a lot of fun with the races, I’ve noticed I like races where the character is running and not driving. You can also do this ramen mini-game where you run around the village giving ramen, and you can start fights with some of the people around the villages, and there’s a lot of exploration, and just so much cool stuff. And one big thing is this respect idea. In the show Naruto wants to become Hokage mainly to be respected as a person. And when you start each person in the village hates you, and has a big frownie face over their head. Then whenever you complete a mission, or a race, or anything to help them, they become a happy villager, and you can collect them all! But seriously, for some reason getting all the villagers to like you although not necessary, is one of the best parts of this game. And the world does expand out of the leaf village. Although the Village of the Leaf is the place to be, you can go adventuring outside, just expect more bland fights out of nowhere. You mostly go to random places, but moving again is just fun because of the climbing of walls and just running around. You can find these coins that you can use to buy bonuses, weapons, food that can heal you, and pretty much anything else. And for all that Narutoness, yes it comes around by making such a fun open world in a game that is more an adventure game than a fighting game. Naruto’s world comes to life in a way that hadn’t been captured before, and that’s the greatest compliment I can give this game.
Naruto Rise of a Ninja gets a 4/5
Spoilers: See, almost all fighters are hard to make spoiler sections for. Good luck getting to the top of the Hokage palace!
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