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Review
Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2

There are a lot of Naruto games. So many that there should be a separate section on Toronto Thumbs for them. Would this be a good thing?

Cha(nnaro)! Of course!

Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 (known from now on as NCoNR2) is the latest in the North American releases for the popular fighting franchise for the Nintendo Wii. The sequel to NCoNR, this version presents new characters, new challenges and a lot of fun.

As always, the primary complaint about the Naruto: Clash of Ninja titles is that they don’t really change that much in their inevitable sequels. NCoNR2 breaks the mold by being an exclusive North American release, rather than a pale imitation of the Gekitou Ninja Taisen versions from the land of the rising sun.

Rather than rehash all of the features of the game that remain the same (as detailed here), I will write about some of the new features and my general impression of this title.

First of all, the story in NCoNR2 is unique to North America. I don’t want to give any of it away, but I will say that new, unique villains that are introduced fit in nicely with the franchise. The story mode itself is also well done. It’s well paced with increasingly difficult challenges. The final few battles are pretty tough, but doable after a few tries (and some rethinking).

There is a two player tag-team mode that allows for team special techniques. By engaging these techniques, both members of your two-man cell will attack. There is a standard two-person special move for most of the pairings. There are also unique team-special moves for certain pairings (for instance: Naruto and Jiraya). Like the previous iteration of the game, you can squeeze out more damage if you follow the on-screen Wii-mote guide to each of the special moves.

In single-player menu, there is a new mission mode that has ten missions per character. The missions for each character vary in difficulty and will present a healthy challenge to the player (such as “Rival” missions, where your worst enemy takes less damage and deals out more than you do). Considering there are over thirty characters, the player will be very busy trying to complete them all (as well as trying to attain a decent score for each mission).

As always, there are a number of unlockables (Seventy-five to be exact). There are multiple ways of attaining them, varying from mission scores to just fighting battles. Some methods are faster than others, but these are also harder to perform. For instance, you can attempt to get as high of a score as possible in fighting a rival, or you can engage in five hundred fights. Phew!

My only real complaint is the lack of a Japanese track. I find that the English voice actors tend to sound either wooden or too intense. To their credit, Bandai did a better job in this game than in previous ones. Whether or not this had to do with the fact this is a North American release I cannot say. All I know is that I wasn’t curled up in a ball rocking back and forth when I watched the story.

One aspect of the game that I haven’t mentioned before is the character-specific playability. As with any fighting game, button mashing can get you pretty far. However, if you follow the anime, you have an advantage. I find that if you apply the personality of the character from the anime to your on-screen representative, you’ll do quite well. It’s nice when game developers take things like that into account. It makes the game easy to pick up for people who are new to the characters, but it also rewards those of us who are die-hard fans.

With a single player campaign, solid multiplayer (four player brawls), many more characters and levels, as well as some new game modes, NCoNR2 is a defintite buy. It’s certainly very similar to the previous version, but there are enough differences to make it a better experience, further immersing the player in the world of Naruto.

Believe it!

Posted in Reviews, Wii |