Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (Ubisoft)

Let me tell you something about this staple of Japanese culture. Naruto is no where near as good as it could be. The characters, more or less are the same stereotypical characters in all Japanese boy comics, reverting to the same cheezy acts as all the rest. I'm all for comics showing their culture, but I've gotten really tired with very few artists in this country trying something different in terms of story or art.

If you've ever read the comic, everything gets more than a bit repetitive, and with the lack of foreshadowing in Japanese writing styles, just way too straight forward. If you ever seen the animated TV show, you get all this plus filler episodes that are more so repetitive and boring.

That being said, I can forgive (nearly) all of this due to this game. It got a lot of hype, and it delivers on (most) of what it promises.

The Story

You play, obviously, Naruto, our out-of-luck and friends hero. You mission, to get everyone to like you. That's so sweet! You see, a giant demon fox was busy rampaging and killing everyone, and one of the legendary Leaf Village Hokages (top-of-the-top ninja) magically seals this demon into Naruto's tummy.

Fast-forward many moons, and nobody likes him, though it seems not everyone knows why they don't like him. They just KNOW that he's no good.


As he is the sterotypically Japanese hero, he's not very smart and has a loud mouth. But, he's a hard worker with big dreams! So he works hard to fulfill those dreams. Huzzah! What are those dreams? Well, to be the next Hokage, of course!

The Game

The game is an interesting mix of cell-animated characters, realistic settings and cut scenes from the 80 episodes of the TV show. 80 episodes? Wha? That's right! There was a lot of editing done here, and unfortunately, I have to say, not extremely well. These cut scenes seem out of place and don't synch well with the story being presented in the game. The game could have used less of these videos and more in-game videos.

There are ALOT of different mechanics working in this game for the different parts of the game. This is to be expected though as to understand what it is to be a ninja in this comic, there are many skills and techniques to master. You'll have to learn to run and hop from pace to place without running into every little item. You've got to learn how to climb trees, run on water and break impossible-to-break items.

And then, on top of all that, is the actual fighting system. Just like in games like Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter, to become a good fighter, you have to master ALOT of combinations. And then, on top of that you have to learn to master the super-combos, which require precise timing. It may seem like a lot of things to learn, but, the game breaks it down into manageable pieces of learning. This is a big, open-world game with lots of time to practice what you've learned.


Like mini-games? This disk is packed with them. From delivering ramen to the same fat guy all over the place, to running errands for random people, running races and satisfying the hungry ambitions of familiar horny men, there are tons of things for a young boy to do.

You can even customize the Naruto buy buying new weapons and upgrades. You can get exploding shuriken, extra big bowls of ramen (his favorite treat) and scrolls. Scrolls help you manage Naruto's abilities, allowing you to get certain advantages over your enemies.

Several things come to mind, though, that I think take away from the game. I mentioned up top that the video cut-scenes are pretty worthless. Something else is that everyone in the Leaf Village is the same. I understand that it's done to save space, but it just makes the game repetitive. This goes for your 'various' enemies that spring up. There are plenty, but when you're running around playing mini-games or something, it's tiring to see the same face you slaughtered the last time.

Another issue I have is in Versus mode. I can pick a bevy of Naruto characters, but the issue, as with so many fighting games that aren't made by Capcom, is that there's too much to learn and no reasonable way to learn it. You have to learn each move within the fight itself. It wouldn't have killed Ubisoft to throw a training module.


The last thing that pisses me off is the terrible pronunciation of the Japanese words by the employees of Ubisoft Montreal. If you are such über-fans of the show as you claim, learn how to pronounce their names, at least for crissakes!

In The End...

I like this game a lot. It was the first game I've bought of it's kind as it impressed me so much. I hope that Ubisoft will get over some of the limitations they have in this game in the follow up, The Broken Bond.

Go to Ubisoft's Naruto: Rise of a Ninja Homepage.