Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact | a Review
originally published on 09/04/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the Impactful Ninja, G.E.M.Simov, a meme man so powerful I can snap my fingers and elicit silence. Today, I will talk to you about Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact for the PSP, henceforth known as NSUNI.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
NSUNI is a 3D 3rd person action game, in which the player takes control of a character and then completes missions, all of which involve beating up a number of enemies. For the purpose of beating up the enemies, the player has the option to hit them with their fists, throw Ninja Tools at them, or use Jutsu, which requires Chakra to be performed.
Surprisingly, unlike every other 3D 3rd person Naruto game, NSUNI has combos - and they’ve been done in a good way. The way it goes is that, upon pressing the Circle Button, the player character performs an attack. If the Circle Button is pressed again, within a second or less, the character performs another attack, which continues the COMBO. That line of attacks goes up to 5 or 6 total hits, and then the combo ends with the enemy ending up in a ‘knocked down’ state.
How does the combo happen? Well, the player can press the Triangle Button at any point, after pressing the Circle Button a number of times, but not after the last hit which finishes the Combo, to use a Jutsu that finishes the current or sets up another Combo. This does not solve the problem of the player being capable of just ending up with the enemy in the knocked down state and nothing to do, but it allows for a means to prevent that from happening for a reasonably long amount of time.
Most important thing, however, is that the combat in this game is relatively fluent and fast paced. Unlike other Naruto titles of the 3D 3rd person, NSUNI doesn’t have this tardy feeling to it. Now, how does NSUNI make the game feel faster, even though it really isn’t? Meters!
When the player defeats an enemy, they get a counter, and then a small line underneath that counter which depletes over a certain duration. If the player hits another enemy, the timer gets refreshed. If the player defeats another enemy, the counter goes up by 1, and the timer gets refreshed. The higher the counter goes, the better the Experience reward the player earns.
Yes, this game also has Experience. It doesn’t really fuck it up, but it doesn’t quite nail it, either. Progression happens, and stats increase, though it remains somewhat mysterious and unknown to the player. The character, currently being used, gets Experience for defeating enemies, but getting the counter to go up to 20, or 40, or 60, 80, 100, 200 and so on, grants them bonus Experience, and they level up faster, thus becoming stronger.
The game rewards the player... For doing good. Incredible, I know. But that is not the only way the game makes itself appear faster. Each mission has a timer, which is not shown to the player, but it just keeps counting down. At the end of the mission, the player’s performance is rated, based on damage taken, enemies defeat and time elapsed. Thus, to get the highest rating - an S - the player wants to go fast.
But why would the player want to get a high rating? Because, at the end of each mission, based on the player’s rating, they get rewarded with card fragments. What do those card fragments do? Well, when the player assembles enough card fragments of a certain type, they get a card - and cards increase the player character’s power!
The game incentivises the player to do well, and rewards them if they do. Absolutely unheard of!
Now, that is all well and good, but there are some cracks in the wall that I really feel the need to point out, as they somewhat ruined the experience for me. The player characters don’t get Experience together - only the character being used gets any. The rest remain on the same level, so there comes a point when the player is fighting level 40 enemies, and some of their playable characters are level 5, and there is no incentive to level those low level characters up, because the only reward would be making them more enjoyable to play on higher difficulty missions.
Another issue, which is a lot more major, is that the game has unlockable difficulties, which is just… Stupid. The player can go through half the game without even being able to access the highest difficulty variant of the missions, and they technically want to do that, because the higher the difficulty, the more rewards they get. That’s not good. It’s very bad, actually.
Additionally, those cards I mentioned - they are very weird. Sometimes the player spends a long time collecting card pieces for something, and it seems as if that something is going to be a rare card that takes 3 or even 4 chapters worth of progress to assemble, but then it turns out that said reward is of the lowest quality and is actually almost useless, so the reward was not a reward, and the player just wasted their time on something.
Relatively little things like that just stack up and slowly make this game less and less enjoyable to play. The longer a person spends playing NSUNI - which would be a lot, if they want to beat the entire game - the more of a chore it becomes. It tapers off, and that’s a big issue. Still, the foundation is relatively solid, so it’s not all bad. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks really, REALLY good for a PSP game. Sometimes it looks so good I think to myself: Hey, that portion really looked as if it was out of a PS3 or an xBox360 game, didn’t it? In short, this game looks really, really good. The folks who worked on it nailed it - instead of going for realism or looking to emulate the way the characters in the show look, they went for a stylized approach that allowed them to retain the appearance of the characters, which allowed them to have a really good looking game with a unique and recognizable appearance.
Now, when it comes to the manner in which the story is presented - which is relatively important - it falls a bit short, because it has gone on to do the Visual Novel meme of plastering still sprites of the characters and changing their expressions as they talk. HOWEVER, there is an option to skip all the dialogue, and the voice lines are well presented. On top of that, there is a possibility to go ahead and change the voices to Japanese, while retaining English UI and subtitles. That’s a bonus.
Lastly, the game sounds quite good. The music choices they’ve gone for are really appropriate, I feel, and seem to fit in the Naruto ‘aesthetic’ quite well. That might be because most of it is from the “Storm” franchise, but that’s beyond the point. This game has incredibly good presentation, and, not only does it nail the visuals, it also has a very good tutorial, which explains everything that the player might need to know about the game. 3/3
Story
The story for NSUNI is the same as Naruto Shippuden’s story, reaching the end of the 5 Kage Summit arc. Now, the cracks had started to show, at this point, but it is still, mostly, majorly, good.
In addition to that, there are bonus missions, which are not canon, but they sprinkle in some relatively interesting, reasonable, even decent character development for, say, some Akatsuki characters. It’s good, but it’s not a totally unique thing. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Even though this is the best 3D Naruto game for the PSP, I can’t give it the legendary point, because it did not stay with me after I played it. There were things I would have much rather had, instead of what I ended up having, and, as a result of that, it’s almost good enough, but not quite. 0/1
Conclusion
7/10. NSUNI is a good game. Almost very good, too. I’d recommend it to anyone who owns a PSP and wouldn’t mind spending some time and money on a copy - it is a good experience, I’d wager.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display.