Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2 | a Review
originally published on 01/04/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the HOEkage, G.E.M.Simov, a malignant tumor that dwells within the realms of man, and I’ve come to share with you a game - a PlayStation Portable game - Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2, a sequel to another game that I’ve already covered (guess the name).
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
Now, ladies and gents, as unbelievable as it is, this game has the exact same gameplay as the previous installment in the series. It is almost shockingly pleasant, as the folks behind it seem to have understood that they can go ahead and not make changes - after all, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!
The only differences are presented in ADDITIONS to the game. The gameplay is untouched - the fights are just as good as they were in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes (NUNH henceforth), so I’d recommend you go ahead and read it first.
So, the differences - there are far more things to do. The game features a dungeon crawl, of sorts, which presents the player with the layout of a floor (there being a certain number of floors, and the goal being to reach the highest floor). Each floor has a staircase leading down, a staircase leading up, and a number of predetermined rooms - such as Treasure Rooms or Healing Rooms. The rest of the rooms are blank.
The player is presented items that can be used to fill the blank rooms, and each item fills the blank room with a mini-game or a battle. The mini-games are various and somewhat bland, but there are five varieties, so it does not get too old, at least not too fast. These mini-games are based on performing a single task correctly. One has the player climbing a tree and avoiding branches, another has the player answering questions in a quiz, a third has the player following along a silhouette while two identical silhouettes intertwine with it… And there’s a casino one.
Now, as stated, these mini-games are reasonably enjoyable, but past the fifth time, each becomes a slog, and a bore, to deal with. However, unlike all the other ones, the Casino mini-game is bad from the first time the player makes the mistake of playing it, because it is literally just a slot machine.
This is gambling in a game, wherein said gambling is being performed by minors, wherein said gambling has no reason to exist in the game, as it is neither connected to the mechanics of the game, nor is it connected to the story of the game. It just feels like a very sharp shift in cultural understanding of what is okay and what isn’t - as far as I am aware, Japan doesn’t have a gambling issue, but gambling in Japan is incredibly popular… And it being shoved in games for teens is bad, because it normalizes gambling. Not good, frankly.
Fortunately, there are means of controlling what kinds of rooms the player can create. Over the course of the story, the player assembles a team, with each member having a skill that can be used to affect the map, the team itself, or something else. Many of the characters who can affect SOMETHING else actually affect the rooms that the player can place, and, thus, the player can control whether or not they get gambling rooms, quiz rooms, or tree-climbing rooms.
These are relatively minor issues, and yet something is missing. Over the course of the story, if the player explores enough of the “dungeon”, they will have accumulated items that can be used to power up a character of their choosing, only during the story. However, upon completing rooms, the player earns Ninja Points (NP), which is used to navigate the “Ninja Road”, which has replaced the Parameter Power Up from NUNH. Now, there is no increase in power - instead, the player earns vanity rewards, such as - music they can listen to, videos they can watch and images they can view.
There’s very little to spice up the gameplay, and, as a result of the wacky additions, it feels as if NUNH2 loses out on its quality. 2/3
Presentation
The presentation is identical with the one in NUNH, though I have to admit that, with the addition of a story, this one has some relatively decent cutscenes and a large amount of character sprites, effects, more music, voice acting, which is pretty good, and, all in all, a very reasonable presentation.
Most of the story is presented as a Visual Novel, which means that the characters are still images conveying some sort of emotion, who are placed next to one another, in relation to whether or not they are talking and/or are important to the scene, and everything is conveyed through text boxes. Text boxes that cannot be skipped over, and that is bad.
This game came with a pretty cool instruction manual/booklet. I really like those, as they remind me of gaming’s great past, and leave a sour taste in my mouth, knowing that I no longer even own any of the games I supposedly have. That’s beyond the point, though...
Unfortunately, NUNH2 does not really improve upon what NUNH did, and so its score for Presentation remains the same. 2/3
Story
The story exists, and it is not too bad, but it is not good at all. As with Kizuna Drive, this is some BAD Fanfiction Tier FILLER writing, which doesn’t have an effect on anything outside of itself, but, at the very least, the characters are believable, there has been an effort made, and the story has a reasonable, decent structure to it. It does fall into some of the tropes that plague kid/teen oriented media, so it’s not as good as it would have been if it had been directed at adults, and made with them in mind, but, overall, the story is passable. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time?
No. It was fun, a neat, experimental delve into something that looked like a dungeon crawler before RogueLikes became a big thing. It was decent, but not amazing. 0/1
Conclusion
6/10. It’s slightly above average, and that’s not a bad thing. I enjoyed it, even though there were some things I would have rather not had to deal with. If you like Naruto, and happen to have a PSP, give it a go. It’s also just a reasonably good PSP game in and of itself.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display.