Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
Naruto is one of the most well known and popular anime and manga there is around the world and it has spawn countless games that are based off the franchise. The Ultimate Ninja Storm games have been considered by many to be some of the best offerings of these games. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 however never seems to fully come together and become one of the better entries in the series of Naruto games.
Story
With the latest entry in the Storm series, Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 focuses the story on The Great Ninja War part of the series, where some of the most powerful ninja duke it out against each other. The mission throughout the main story focus for the most part on two characters, Naruto and Sasuke. Each of these characters has their own branch of the story that occasionally cross throughout the game but for the most part you are either fighting as Naruto or Sasuke throughout the story.
If you have read or seen the this part of the series beforehand then you will know what to expect story wise as they typically don’t diverge in any way from the story besides parts that deal with changing up the gameplay a bit. The story gets to the main point as a lot of the cutscenes and moments focus on the scenes that really matter the most. Those who are not familiar with the story will definitely be lost if you have never read or seen anything from the series but for fans of the series it should be a good refresher of the storyline (since the anime has had fillers for what seems like a year now!).
Gameplay
The area where Storm 4 shines the brightest is in its gameplay. Storm 4 improves upon the core mechanics of the previous entries. While the control scheme is rather simple and shouldn’t take too long to grasp, mastering it completely will take some time as there is a layer of depth to the combat that is not immediately apparently. Even with an element of depth to the combat that isn’t immediately apparent, I usually wound up mashing the same buttons over and over.
Fights between two characters at times looked just like they would in the anime with jutsu after jutsu being cast with some punches and kicks in between. Storm 4 does a fantastic job of showing off and highlighting many of the jutsu that occur during the game as pretty much most of the ultimate moves are breathtaking. They look great on current generation consoles and PC, many of which have been made to look more visually appealing than they appear in the anime with vibrant colors and bigger explosions.
There are a variety of mission types throughout the story mode. While most mission involve a one on one battle or one on one with the ability to switch or call for help with teammates; some missions have you fighting against a large crowd of enemies or fighting as a giant beast that destroys everything with ease. On the Xbox One version of the game, there were framerate issues that occurred fairly regularly during certain missions where there were many characters on the screen and during random parts of fights. Overall though the game ran well with very few issues. While the other mission types are a nice change of pace and overall are pretty well done they quickly get a little dull especially playing as a giant beast or character, since they have a very limited move set that gets repetitive quick.
If I had to describe Storm 4 with a single word that word would be repetitive. The core gameplay is well done and enjoyable a majority of the time but after doing the same few missions and the same 3 moves battle after battle, the gameplay begins to get a little stale. Seeing Naruto cast a Rasengan for the thousandth time begins to wear on a person even if the animation looks cool. The repetitiveness of the story and gameplay slowly began to affect my enjoyment of the game. However, even after getting to the end of the story I still was able to have fun with the combat but not nearly as much as earlier in the game. Luckily Storm 4 comes with a a plethora of playable characters from the series that for the most part are all slightly different from each other.
Storm 4 has over 100 playable characters to chose from, if you can think of a slightly important character from the series then most likely you can play as them. Most of them are available to play as right from the start with a handful of them being unlocked while playing through the story mode. While you won’t be able to play most of these characters during the story mode, you can play around with these characters in the free battle modes. There is also an adventure mode that has the player playing mission that take place after the main story. This helps add some extra content to the game even though most of the mission don’t really stand out much.
Conclusion
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 is a solid game that knows what it wants to be. The gameplay is the standout component of the game, as taking control of memorable fights in the series is always cool and fun to do. Seeing some of the extra detail put on to the jutsu in the game can be visually impressive and will make you never get sick of seeing the same jutsu over and over again. Even with a few framerate issues throughout the game, the game runs well on Xbox One and overall looks pretty good. The main story will only take around 5 hours to complete but overall the plethora of playable characters and other modes will give you plenty of things to extend your time with the game. While I can’t recommend Storm 4 to everyone, there is plenty of fun to have with the game and fans of the Naruto series will find plenty to like with the game.