Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 1 | a Review
originally published on 26/09/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the presumed-dead but alive ninja, G.E.M.Simov, a shinobi so powerful I ignore the laws of the land and do as I will. Thus, I get to travel back in time to the distant 2008 and tell you about “Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 1” (Henceforth dubbed NUNS1).
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.
Gameplay
On PC, connecting a controller does not work. Half the buttons do not get recognized as buttons, the other half get recognized as different buttons. Playing with a keyboard somewhat works, but it is unbearably clunky and is impossibly bothersome.
Let’s talk about the main drive of this game’s gameplay. The combat. The fighting. After all, this is a fighting game, is it not? Well, of course it is. So, how does the fighting commence?
The Player picks a Character as whom to play. Then, the Player’s selected Character (PC) is thrown into an arena against another non-Player (or Player) Character (dubbed the Opponent). The Player can move in 360 degrees on the ground, thanks to the analog stick (or in the 4 cardinal directions, with the 4 possible combinations on a keyboard), whilst also capable of jumping.
The Player’s objective is to move close enough to the Opponent and hit them enough times to bring their health bar(s) to 0 health, thus winning. Of course, the other Character can do everything the Player’s Character can do, if a bit differently.
So, how do we get closer to the opponent? One can walk in that direction or they can tap the jump button twice, which will make the PC jump once and then, mid-jump, perform a short aerial dash towards the Opponent. However, the most dependable means of getting to the other Character is to perform a ‘Chakra’ dash, which requires the use of the ‘Chakra’ button, which would be the Triangle on a PlayStation controller (or the Y button on an xBox controller OR the I button on a keyboard) followed by the jump button.
By doing that, the Character performing a ‘Chakra’ dash will dash towards the opposing character, blocking most throwing weapons and bumping into the Opponent. In theory it is very neat. In practice, however, it is quite clunky. One thing that tends to happen is that the PC will sometimes not enter ‘Chakra’ mode when the corresponding button is entered, thus only jumping when the jump button is pressed. Other times the PC will enter ‘Chakra’ mode, but then will still just do a jump and the short aerial dash instead of the proper dash, if the Player is repeatedly pressing the jump button (as one tends to do in high-stress situations in games that are known to not care about one’s inputs).
In a high-octane situation, such as a simulated fight, in which Characters move at blinding speeds, which requires incredibly quick reaction times, having one’s control be shaky at best, is bad. I need precise controls that are as responsive as the most responsive thing can be, otherwise I’m not going to have as good a time as I could have had AND I will not perform as well as I could have performed. So having a ‘sometimes’ condition is not good.
But we managed to get to the Opponent. Now what? Well, it’s time to pummel them with the PC’s fists (or other implements of pain). To do that, just press the appropriate button a repeated number of times (roughly corresponding to the number of hits one would like inflicted upon the Opponent) and wait for the moment when the Opponent gets thrown back or slammed into the ground.
There are 4 ‘combos’ that can be performed by the Player. Either 3 land-based combos or the air-based combo. This simplicity is broken up by the ability to prematurely end one of the land-based combos and transition to an air-based combo, which opportunity to transition to an air-based combo is provided by another one of the land-based combos, though there’s danger in that because the Opponent might be able to get out of the combo during the transition or during the conclusion of the air-based combo. In short - there’s little complexity.
There are other means of delivering damage, such as the aforementioned throwing weapons, which have their own key (which is mostly useless, with rare exceptions). The Character will throw a small number of dinghies, which dinghies will be aimed at the Opponent who can just walk out of their way. Alternatively, if combined with the ‘Chakra’ mode, the dinghies will be more plentiful (or outright different) and might even be more useful, though they can still be avoided with relative ease.
Another option is to perform the ‘Ultimate Impact’, which is far more rotten than it sounds. It involves standing still for a lengthy amount of time - lengthy in the context of this incredibly rapid fighting game - and holding down the attack button. After the amount of time has been spent standing still, the Character performing the ‘Ultimate Impact’ will swing, but their swing’s range will be quite lackluster, requiring that the Opponent be very close to the Character doing the ‘Ultimate Impact’.
However, seeing as this attack is incredibly telegraphed, there’s no reason for the Opponent to get caught in it. The only reason they might get caught is if they walk into it, via a max-range ‘Chakra’ dash, or following a stun. However, there is a far better option than an ‘Ultimate Impact’ to use on a stunned target.
That option is the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’. First, though, I should go a bit more in depth on ‘Chakra’ and ‘Chakra’ mode. ‘Chakra’ is one of the 2 resources the Player should keep track of - the other being their health, shown in their health bar(s). ‘Chakra’ is shown in a blue bar, directly underneath the health bar, and it is used up whenever an action that ends ‘Chakra’ mode is performed, be that an attempted ‘Ultimate Jutsu’, a normal ‘Jutsu’, a ‘Chakra’ dash or a ‘Chakra’ weapon throw, as well as whenever a Character is ‘knocked down’ - more on that later. Additionally, there are fables of ‘Chakra’ being needed for the performance of the mythical and obscure ‘Substitution Jutsu’, but seeing as that’s just winning the lottery, I can’t be too sure.
‘Chakra’, unlike health, can be replenished very easily, by pressing and holding down the ‘Chakra’ button. As long as the button is being held down, the PC will restore ‘Chakra’, to a maximum limit (which can be overcome, but more on that later). Another means of restoring one’s ‘Chakra’ is by winding up in the ‘Maximised Storm Gauge’(?) mode, which is achieved by pummeling the Opponent very hard and with great superiority (in essence, perform 3 or 4 combos without having a combo performed on you). While in that mode, the Character rapidly regenerates ‘Chakra’.
So, ‘Chakra’ has many uses. Let’s get back to that ‘Jutsu’ thing - it is what happens whenever ‘Chakra’ mode is entered and an attack is issued. The Character performs their ‘Jutsu’, which is just a different, more special attack that does a lot of damage. It requires a certain amount of ‘Chakra’ to perform. Then, there’s the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’, which requires around 60% of the Character’s maximum ‘Chakra’ to perform successfully, and a different portion to perform unsuccessfully…
But that doesn’t cover it. There are two success states in relation to the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’. The first success state is whenever it is landed - generally, that ability is quite well telegraphed and requires either carelessness on the Opponent’s side or a loss-of-control situation for it to be landed. Landing an ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ nets the lander some damage, but the true success state comes after that. See, as soon as the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ is landed, a ‘mini-game’ is initiated, which requires that both Players (or the Player and the Computer) input the commands displayed.
Unfortunately, the way the commands are displayed feels somewhat backwards, or perhaps the issue is that I played using mostly keyboard controls, but either way it feels clunky beyond reason. The buttons that the Player needs to press are situated at the very bottom left/right corner of the screen - there’s no limit to how many of those buttons might show up, as the amount depends on how many times the buttons are pressed.
The goal is to press more buttons than the Opponent - if that happens, the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ goes through and that’s the second success state, which does around 1/3rd of a Character’s total health in damage. If the Opponent gets more button presses, then the ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ fails and the Character on the receiving end of it manages to block or avoid it. This is, conceptually, neat. It is also quite stinky, in part due to the fact it is executed in the manner that it is - as in just through a Quick-Time Event that somehow punishes the Player for pressing the wrong button but does not specify how punished they are (there is a ‘cooldown’ on inputting commands after pressing the wrong button).
Not only that, it’s a second way to get out of an ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ after getting hit by one - it’s either an invalidation of one’s correct play, by setting up a stun and then executing an ‘Ultimate Jutsu’, or a ‘get out of jail free’ card for fellows who play too recklessly but have fast fingers and good hand-eye coordination. It feels cheap, even if it is, conceptually, neat. Either way, that’s the last of this mechanic that will be seen in the series, as far as I know.
With that said, let’s get back to the ‘Ultimate Impact’ debacle. One could use the stun situation to get an ‘Ultimate Impact’ off, but it will do around 2x as much damage as a failed ‘Ultimate Jutsu’, and around 3x, maybe 4x less damage than a successful ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ - so there seems to be no good reason to use an ‘Ultimate Impact’ over an ‘Ultimate Jutsu’ in literally every situation, except when one doesn’t have the ‘Chakra’ to use the latter.
That’s the second moment of having something that’s there… But it’s not very useful. It’s like the throwable weapons - they’re there, sure, but they’re not really useful, except for the rare exceptions. It might be the same case for the ‘Ultimate Impact’ - there might be some Characters whose animations are really funky and they can sneak in an ‘Ultimate Impact’ here and there, but it’d be an exception, not the norm.
More on that later, I said, so it’s time for me to get back to it. Which more on that is it? It’s related to guarding, and to avoiding damage, overall. So, to avoid damage the Player can either not let the Opponent attack, by chaining combos or stunning them, the Player can guard, the Player can use items to lessen the amount of damage taken and they can even, supposedly, get to use the fabled ‘Substitution Jutsu’.
So, guarding - that’s pretty much what it says on the tin. The Player holds down the related button and their Character will enter a defensive stance, blocking attacks. Unfortunately, their guard is not infinite, and their stance can be broken. Whenever one’s stance is broken - which happens after taking HEAVY abuse while guarding - they wind up stunned for a short amount of time.
While guarding, a Character can perform a ‘grab’, or rather a ‘throw’, which would involve holding down the guard button and pressing the attack key. If the Character is close enough to the other Character, a throw will occur, doing decent damage and, in most cases, knocking down the thrown Character.
This knock-down thing has been mentioned more than once, so let me tell you what it is. It is a means of avoiding any more damage, and it breaks combos… By concluding them. Whenever a Character concludes their combo, they will knock their target down, slamming them into the ground, or a wall, and rendering them stunned for a bit, whilst also forcing them to lose a bit of ‘Chakra’, which ‘Chakra’ spreads over the vicinity in the form of ‘Chakra orbs’, which can be collected by walking over them or charging one’s ‘Chakra’ for a slight bonus to the recovered amount.
While knocked down, a Character is functionally immune to new sources of damage, with the exception of 1 possible down attack that can only be performed on knocked down enemies… Which attack barely does damage. Now, being knocked down is a means of avoiding damage, but it also takes a while to recover from a knock-down. Alternatively, if the Character getting knocked down manages to press the jump button at the right time (which might be when they hit the ground) they will recover instantly from their knockdown, which could then lead into them initiating a combo of their own, as Characters have a decent opening after they conclude a combo (animations and such).
With that said, let’s get down to business. There are items, there’s the ‘Substitution Jutsu’, there are Supports and there are Awakenings. I’ll leave the best for last, so let’s go with Awakenings.
Whenever a Character’s health drops below a certain threshold, a new thingie will appear as an extension of their ‘Chakra’ bar. That indicates that they can enter their Awakening, which is a special state that increases a Character’s stats (acting as a buff), provides them with a new moveset and maybe even gives them a funky new ability, like doing damage to both health and ‘Chakra’ in the case of Neji and Hinata.
Awakenings are funky means of potentially coming back from being far behind… In theory. In reality, they’re just pretty cool.
Supports are additional Characters that are selected when selecting the Player Character, which Characters can be brought into play by pressing the respective button. Whenever they wind up in play, they attempt to either cast a ‘Jutsu’ or perform a combo, which is pretty helpful, especially if it lands. Their cast or performance can be prevented by blocking it with a guard, evading with a ‘Substitution Jutsu’ or hitting them before they get to do their thing, which will send them out of play.
Supports can be called once per a set amount of time. In addition to that, sometimes they will assist by providing an opportunity to continue a combo after it was concluded through a finisher. All in all, that’s a really neat thing.
Then, there are items. Items are what throwing weapons wish they were. One uses items by pressing the respective button on the D-pad (the directional pad), and these items could do all kinds of things. They could restore some health, they could restore some ‘Chakra’, they could provide the Character with a temporary buff, they could be some kind of throwing weapon (that is a lot more useful than standard throwing weapons OR about as useless as those). Items can be very interesting and helpful, but they’re a little boring by default, as they can only be used while not doing anything else - as in they require their user to stand still, which isn’t a good thing in the context of NUNS1.
Lastly, but definitely not least, ‘Substitution Jutsu’. This weird freaking thing exists in the game without being mentioned in the controls or in anything that might remotely be bound to explaining to the Player how to do it. It is, in fact, so obscure and mysterious that it appears to be totally unexplored and inexplicable. Supposedly, the ‘Substitution Jutsu’ allows a Character that is being attacked to avoid the attack, to avoid getting hit, and to reposition behind the source of the attack.
Supposedly. Doing so, of course, requires something - a little bit of ‘Chakra’ and the reaction time of… Of something that reacts incredibly fast, and even F1 drivers are not that capable. The Player trying to use a ‘Substitution Jutsu’ needs to press the guard button right as the attack is connecting with their PC, at which point they ought to have their PC get repositioned behind the performer of the attack, thus allowing for some sick counter-attacks.
Unfortunately, it’s like magic - in that it doesn’t work 50% of 90% of the time. Sometimes, it works. Other times it doesn’t. Sometimes spamming the guard button (by pressing it as often and as fast as possible) works and gets one substitutions, other times it doesn’t. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, by the looks of things, or maybe there is, but seeing as this mechanic only exists so the higher-difficulty AI can abuse it, since it can always perfectly time its substitutions, it’s quite irrelevant.
See, the ‘Substitution Jutsu’ is, in theory, really cool. It’s a means of getting out of a combo, but when one considers that there’s no real way of getting an infinite or even a very long combo in this game, it’s somewhat pointless. Then, one ought to consider that this game is all about being the first to Triangle+X, or rather being the first to hit with an attack, so it becomes a little silly to add a mechanic that consumes a resource… And the one who starts consuming resource second wins out in the end, meaning that the first to Triangle+X starts to substitute second and wins the attrition game.
THEN there’s the fact that whenever the ‘Substitution Jutsu’ works, it does not. It should situate the Character performing it behind the attacking Character, but sometimes - and it isn’t a “sometimes” sometimes, it’s a 25% of the time “sometimes” - it just positions the Character above their previous location… Which is not only odd, but it literally places them in the path of the next attacks being performed by the attacking Character. It actively hinders the user, which is just wrong.
However, aside from the ‘Substitution Jutsu’, and the lack of responsiveness that occasionally haunts the Player, this is a really solid and enjoyable combat system, and it will be about half of what the Player will be doing while playing this game’s “Campaign”. The other half… Well, that’s the interesting part, isn’t it? But I must mention one other thing.
This game’s controls are Hell on Earth. That applies for the PC - Computer - port of the game. Whenever a controller is attached, some buttons don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Other buttons don’t do anything. That’s dreadful. Remember how I mentioned Supports? When playing on a PC, with a controller, there are no Supports for the Player, because the buttons that trigger Supports just don’t trigger the Supports. One of them opens up the menu, while the other does nothing at all.
It does not end here, though. Considering the fact that a portion of the game is literally inaccessible when playing with a controller - in essence, the Player is unintentionally handicapping themselves - maybe the keyboard controls on this port work? Wrong. Any game that gets ported as skillfully as NUNS1 is fraught with ass parasites and is, overall, ass. The way the buttons are situated on the keyboard is incredibly silly, the fact that they do not correspond to anything that gets displayed on the screen - not even positionally - is incredibly troublesome, and the intense amount of clunk is beyond stupid. Camera controls are non-existent, everything is accompanied by a tremendous sense of cadence and there’s an overpowering sense of limitation.
This comes to the fore VERY prominently when the game presents the Player with a Quick-TimeEvent - a QTE. The QTE requires that a series of buttons are pressed VERY quickly, without mistake. In a funky number of cases, the QTEs presented to the Player require astounding accuracy and precision. Some even change things up, so the Player can’t even memorize the patterns, because every time the QTE pops up on the screen, it’s different. Some are nigh impossible - the ones having the higher difficulty ratings - others are mind-numbingly simple, such as the story-related ones. Now, imagine, if you will, that you are playing NUNS1. You have a Playstation controller, not an xBox controller. You see the X button prompt on the screen, and you instinctively press the X button on the controller… Only to realize that’s the wrong one.
Or, even worse, you’re playing with your keyboard. Well, buddy, that’s rough, because the layout of the buttons means you’re not going to have a good time, and the fact that all the buttons do not correspond even slightly to what is being shown on the screen is going to guarantee that you have a straight up BAD time. When a QTE takes place, the Player needs to react as fast as possible.
That’s the theory. However, the Player can not do that, because the Player needs to do a number of other things. If playing with a Playstation controller, the Player needs to first translate the symbols on the screen from xBox buttons to Playstation buttons - which might take a very small amount of time, but it still does take some time - which leads into the Player failing the QTE more often than they would have otherwise. In the case of a keyboard Player, there are two things that need to be done - the translation of the symbols AND the discovery of the location of said buttons on the keyboard.
If the Player has played for a long, long time with that control scheme, they might be able to minimize the amount of time needed for the second part of that task, but it is still lost time. And when the Player needs to input 8 buttons, 4 of which are a span away from one another, in 2 seconds - that’s when stuff is ridiculous.
In reality, every single QTE in the game is too harsh on how much time it provides the Player. It is not fun, especially when considering the fact that AS the QTE is on screen, there’s a pretty well animated fight scene that’s incredibly eye-catching, and the Player NEEDS to focus on the stupid buttons, instead of looking at the cool visuals. And then there’s the fact that there’s a period of time during which buttons cannot be pressed, even though they are on screen and the timer is going and the QTE has already begun…
In short - really, really stupid implementation of an already silly mechanic that could have been done a lot better. Instead, it is done in an incredibly punishing manner that lessens the enjoyment derived from the game. The fix would have been to add 0.5 seconds to the timer, and, suddenly, it would have been a lot better.
Then, finally, we come to the other half of the game - the half that I found myself considering more interesting than the fighting game half. This half is split into a vast number of smaller parts, but it is characterized by the fact it isn’t connected to fighting. I will dub it ‘the village part’.
So, most of the time the Player will be running around the Hidden Leaf Village (as Naruto) and will be doing all kinds of things, many of which somewhat related to the fighting side of things, but another large portion of them still disconnected. Movement is a little sluggish, and that makes it feel a bit unpleasant, but it isn’t too slow or too bad.
It could be argued that the speed at which Naruto moves in the Village mode is lesser than the speed at which characters in combat move because of the fact that they are in combat - a contextual change - or it could be argued that if Naruto were to move that fast in Village mode, the village would feel smaller. I can assure you, however, that the Village would not feel at all smaller. Scale is not conveyed by just the amount of time it takes to navigate a place.
Either way, the speed at which Naruto moves is a tiny problem. The fact that the Player gets to have the entire Hidden Leaf Village sprawled on the playing field before them, however, is an incredible bonus. Exploring stuff is always stupendously fun. Exploring a location that is interesting to someone - be it because they are a fan of the media in which it appears or for some other reason - is even more enjoyable.
So, exploring is all well and good, but what can one find while exploring? Unfortunately, not a lot - initially. We will get back to that later, but to get on that topic we need to cover the way ‘missions’ work, and how the fighting mode is connected to the Village mode.
The game’s campaign is set in the Village mode, with the Player being provided the opportunity to select missions on which to go from the menu (in the Village mode). Those missions are either story missions - which change the Village after being completed - or optional missions, which provide some boons to the Player and increase their completed missions stat. Story missions require a certain completed missions stat, as a result of which the Player will have to do optional missions to progress.
However, by doing so, the Player winds up incentivized to do walking about and exploring. Story missions just happen - as soon as they are selected, the Player winds up in the combat scenario (or whatever other scenario is at hand) - but optional missions involve walking to a certain character in the Village. Walking to a character takes a bit of time and leads into the Player exploring the Village even if they were not intent on doing that.
Well, that provides opportunity for things. The Player might encounter breakable objects, which, once broken, contain Ryo (money), they might encounter ‘secret scrolls’ or boxes of ‘secret scrolls’, they might encounter chests containing some goodies, they could also encounter characters with interesting dialogue - there’s a decent amount of stuff that could be discovered.
Unfortunately, I paint a picture that is not too realistic. There’s actually no reason to explore, as everything is marked on the map. As soon as something new appears on the map - the Village changes as a result of the completion of a story mission - it will be highlighted on the map. Thus, there’s no real opportunity to explore. There’s nothing to be found before it appears and is highlighted on the map. Unfortunately, one can’t even turn the map off, as there is a constantly present mini-map that shows everything.
So this neat thing - the exploration of the Hidden Leaf Village - is actually something fans of Naruto might derive pleasure from doing, but there’s no in-game benefit for doing it. That’s a bit of a shame.
Either way, we now know that the Village changes whenever story missions are completed. It also slightly changes whenever optional missions are completed, but the change isn’t substantial in that case. Whenever an optional or story mission is completed, a number of ‘secret scrolls’ appear in the Village. They require walking through to be collected, and some might require breaking open the boxes within which they are contained before being collectible.
‘Secret scrolls’ are a currency that can be used as a means of unlocking new attacks for Supports. Not too interesting, but could be useful. Though I’ve mentioned breaking stuff at least twice now - how does that happen? Well, it isn’t via punching (though sometimes it can happen), it’s via throwing shuriken (as well as using the “Rasengan” after reaching a certain point in the story). Naruto automatically locks onto the nearest breakable thing and when pressing the appropriate button he throws shuriken at it.
The lock on isn’t what one might expect - it’s just a circle that spins around as it is situated over the object, showcasing that it is locked onto. There’s no interaction with the camera in the case of locking onto things. There’s an additional ‘Shuriken mode’, which features the ability to throw more than 1 shuriken at a time, and can be improved via the purchase of special items - thus providing the Player with a reason to accumulate Ryo and spend it - but it isn’t that interesting.
There is a way of moving a bit faster than walking, but it is incredibly clunky. It’s called the ‘Naruto Cannon’ and it is literally Naruto creating a clone of himself and throwing himself in a direction. He moves very rapidly, but is barely controllable and can bump into stuff to get stunned, thus somewhat removing the time saved by using the ‘Naruto Cannon’ instead of walking. This ability uses ‘Chakra’, which, in Village mode, is constantly replenishing, but there is a cap to it.
The cap, being a limit, can be increased through the accumulation of certain items, which is incentification to do missions and collect stuff whenever it appears in the Village as a result of mission completion. However, the thing that one can do with that ‘Chakra’, for a decently vast portion of the game, is to throw Naruto a bit further. Not very useful, a little boring, a little bothersome.
Then there are other things that one can do. The Player can have Naruto walk on walls - but only certain walls, not all walls, even though the context indicates that ninjas can walk on any wall. It’s stupid. Naruto is also, supposedly, able to jump off of a wall and, if he lands on another, to be able to jump off of it, in an infinite loop, but this mechanic has only worked for me once and I was not even trying to pull it off. Thus, very janky and quite stinky.
Overall, the feeling of neatness in concept and inadequacy in execution is ever present in everything that is to be found in Village mode. There are ‘puzzles’ that require the discovery of a box and its situation upon a button, so that a door can open and the goodies beyond it can be collected, but… Well, whatever story mission unlocks the goodies beyond the door needs to be completed for there to be anything worthwhile in there. Apparently, one can also grab barrels… But, much like with boxes, it is only certain boxes, and the visual indication that they can be grabbed is lacking - Presentation issue, but not exclusively.
In addition to that, there are not always boxes nearby, and that means the Player might need to find a box from somewhere else… Somewhere further away. Well, unfortunately, Naruto moves around 10 times slower while carrying a box, so have fun slowly trudging through half the Village with your silly box so that you can get some chicken. The silliest part is that, contextually, this also makes no sense. If Naruto himself is heavy enough to trigger the button - which he is - then why can’t he just make a clone - like he does whenever he uses ‘Naruto Cannon’ and just walk over and get the item?
Bah, it’s funky, but in an unpleasant way.
So, what other changes occur after a story mission is completed? As mentioned, some ingredient or key item can show up in the Village; new non-Player Characters (NPCs) might show up, unlocking new optional missions; some important NPCs - like story related characters - might show up and become available for interaction OR they could move around and change their interactions; new mechanics might become available; new merchandise shows up in shops
There are mini-games. Most of those mini-games are intrusively dull and bothersome, even if, conceptually, they have the potential to be interesting. Climb the tree– Oh wait, play that ONCE and you’ve played all the “climb the tree” mini-games there are. Jump from branch to branch– Oh, same as the “climb the tree” mini-games, you play the “Jump the branch” mini-game once and you’ve played all of them… With a few exceptions. Another option would be the ‘Hide and Seek’ mini-game, though that’s just running around the Village and doesn’t actually feature exquisitely new mechanics.
These mini-games would not have been bothersome and intrusive, had they been less RNG dependent. RNG stands for Random-Number-Generation, also known as chance. And these mini-games would not have been problematic, had the bonus objectives not all been based on getting lucky, making it through without getting hit a single time and going as fast as possible. This is not fun - being dependent on luck is not enjoyable, nor does it involve skill.
Another thing about those - they’re based on a timer. The Player needs to keep up with that timer… But that timer is messed up. The objective might require that the Player succeeds within 45 seconds or less, with a total allotted time of 80 seconds. So when the objective says “X or less”, that would mean that when the timer reaches 35 seconds, and the Player completes the race, they should get that objective marked as complete, right?
Well, actually no. So the game’s code either doesn’t work - being unable to comprehend “=>” - or the Presentation is bad. I can’t know which one it is, and so it’s an issue that I’m presenting.
Lastly, and this isn’t connected exclusively to the bad mini-games, but it’s an issue throughout the entirety of the game - hitbox detection is horrible. The collision box - which is an invisible for the Player box around their character - is either too big or too small, or the boxes around the objects that must interact with the Character’s hitbox are too small or too large for their models. Sometimes, things that don’t look like they should be hitting the PC hit the PC. Other times, things that look as though they should be hitting the PC do not hit the PC. It’s wonky.
With all that said, the overall quality of this game is above average. Playing a match - featuring 1 human character and another human character - is quite entertaining, and, seeing as that is the basis for the game, it is pretty good. The failures of the game poke their nasty heads out of the gutter the longer one plays the game, and the more acquainted one gets with it, but it is more good than bad. 2/3
Presentation
As is to be expected out of a console game in 2008, this one looks decent. After all, for some reason the draw of console games was their appearance (and it still is), so this one manages it. In fact, NUNS1 is a game that has been made in such a specific manner that even after 15 years it still looks quite good.
I’d go as far as to say that this game is, visually, timeless, due to the fact that the models and environments are done in cell shading. So, if we abstract ourselves from literally everything that is not concretely bound to the modeling - this game is fantastic. There are very few issues related to the visuals, which are so minor they’re not even worth mentioning… But some Character Arts look really goofy and/or wrong.
With that out of the way, there are other things that this game somewhat struggles at doing. One of those is audio - there’s audio related to some events, but then there’s no audio related to other events. The audio is also incredibly loud at certain points, and a bit quieter at other points. There are certain sound effects that deafen the Player whilst everything else is manageably loud. That’s a bit of a bumble.
Another thing that needs to be pointed out is the fact that this game will, sometimes, decide to not run as spectacularly as it otherwise could. Whenever it does that, the usual Framerate drop is to be expected, making frames swap more slowly and thus lessening the visual experience (as well as the emotional and immersive sides of it), but whenever that happens the audio does not get staggered. In fact, the audio speeds past the visuals and there have been instances throughout my play-throughs that featured sound effects playing more than 1 second in advance.
That’s owed up to a shoddily optimized port, which is problematic and will, probably, never truly be dealt with. There’s one other issue related to the audio - the variety of musical tracks is very lackluster… Or so it feels. As mentioned in the Gameplay section of the review, a large amount of time is spent running around through the Hidden Leaf Village. The vast majority of one’s time is seemingly spent doing that - running around - but while the sights are very interesting and pleasant to behold, which is owed up to the fantastic work on the artists’ part, the music that accompanies the Player is a single track that keeps looping on and on. It’s so inoffensively bland, or so it feels after listening to it for collective hours on end, that it worsens the experience after a point.
However, it is important to be noted that the music is quite decent. Even that aforementioned track, which one hears a thousand times, is actually pretty good when heard once. As a result of that, I can not actually present many faults. In fact, this game features something that I find quite astounding - voice acting in 2 languages. One can play with the character voices in Japanese or English (and I must inform you that the Japanese voice over is superior).
The voice actors have done a good job on both fronts… Though here comes the weird thing. There are missions which feature certain characters, voiced, and then there are other missions which feature those same characters… Not voiced. That’s one of the problematic moments pertaining to the audio of NUNS1.
The consistency is missing. Consistency which makes the experience of this game lesser, due to the fact that the Player begins to expect characters to talk to them. Then, some random, nameless character turns out not to be voiced, but the Player makes a concession - “Alright, we can have non-important goons be read-only!”. Then, it turns out that named and important characters are not always voiced. Sometimes they are, other times they are not.
That rips the Player out of the already weak immersion that they can afford themselves. That’s not really cool, but in reality that’s all that can be said about it. It isn’t cool. It’s obvious that it was done as a means of spending less money and taking up less space - after all, a console game needs to fit on a CD, so it can’t allow itself to be bloated, and audio is quite bloated in some situations. Even so, it lessens the quality of the experience.
Now, I get it - experience, schmexperience, no one really cares about that as it is very subjective. Very well, so let me present other problems with the game - ones that are problematic.
Every time a new mechanic is introduced to the Player, the game pauses and a text box shows up. The text box is humongous - taking up around 8/10ths of the space allocated for the game’s window - and contains tiny amounts of information. Now, splitting up information in bite sized chunks, which chunks have a massive font, so that the people playing the game while seated on their couches can see, is not a bad idea.
What is a bad idea is having these bite-sized chunks provide redundant information. Whenever the Player opens up the map, they are told that they can take a look at the legend. Map legends don’t need to be explained - everyone who is of the age to actually play this game, and has the facilities to play it, has had geography in school. People might not get good at geography, but they learn what a legend is. They figure out how a map works.
One could argue that this is not a stupid move if the legend was hidden by default, but it is not. In fact, it cannot be hidden, and it is a very well presented legend, with incredibly eye-catching icons that work at displaying the information that they need to display.
So that’s a problem - Gameplay gets cut up violently for the sake of introduction to mechanics. That’s, unfortunately, the norm when it comes to games. However, there’s more. If the information provided was purely redundant, it would not have been that bad. Unfortunately, the game likes to provide far too much information in some fields, and far too little in other fields.
Let’s use another example from the very early stages of the game. When the Player first enters ‘Shuriken Mode’, they are presented with 2 pieces of information. These 2 pieces of information are very rudimentary - they do not specify much of anything, they simply inform the Player of the basic functions of ‘Shuriken Mode’, which mode is a bit self-explanatory, but let’s admit that someone might not know what a shuriken is and, thus, might be unable to figure out what the ‘Shuriken Mode’ entails.
However, with the information provided to the Player at the map screen being so overbearingly detailed, we’ve been given the expectation that there’s going to be too much information. Well, no, not really. After the 2 bits of info are provided, the Player is left to their own devices. There are control indicators - which is good - but they don’t tell the Player much. “Lock On”? Lock onto what? “Shuriken”? Does that mean ‘throw a Shuriken’?
Then when the Player does figure out what the buttons do, they are presented with more information, which information does not mean anything to them. They might even find out that they can move while in ‘Shuriken Mode’, as the game does not inform them. They might not know that the 4 shurikens on the lower half of the screen are indicators of how many targets have been locked onto…
But that is not bad. It isn’t a bad thing that the Player is provided with no explicit explanation of absolutely everything. They are provided with the ability to use what information they have to better understand what they can do in the game. The problem is that there’s a stupendous inconsistency here. On the one hand, I was told how a map works. On the other, I was not told how throwing Shurikens works, which, I’d say, is far less knowable than the mechanics of a static map.
The best thing about this whole debacle is that some things are presented to the Player as information, while other things are not. Some things are presented in a very good manner, other things are presented in an inappropriate manner… And others yet are not presented at all. Those things that are not presented? The most important things that one can present to the Player in a fighting game - how to fight.
That’s, actually, one of the greatest failings of every single fighting game out there. They explain stuff to the Player, but that stuff is very disconnected from the main thing that the Player will be doing. There might be a command list somewhere in the menus that can be accessed by the Player, but then the indicators presented don’t tell them much. NUNS1 also does not tell the Player how to play. Older (and design-approach-wise better) games would come with A MANUAL, which manual would feature at least some of the desired information. This one, though, does not have a manual, so there’s no means of figuring it out.
The Player is left in the dust. So much so, in fact, that an incredibly important mechanic that is featured in fights - the substitution mechanic - is left wholly unexplained and even unmentioned to the Player. They know how to guard, because the game tells them how to guard… And that’s about it. They don’t get informed that they need to violently, rapidly and repeatedly press the guard button while they’re being attacked to potentially perform a substitution.
The fact that the Player is not informed, the fact that this information is not presented to the Player, when so much other (trivial) information is, is bad. One other bad thing - this game does not like being played on a PC, especially when it comes to being played with a keyboard. The Player needs to do a lot of guesswork to even access the controls screen, which ought to allow them to change which button represents which other button (as this is essentially an emulated game and the emulator it runs on fools the game into thinking the keyboard inputs are controller inputs, or so it seems).
In addition to that, some of the controls on a keyboard actively fail to match the ‘pseudo position’ of their counterparts. The direction keys - WASD, the Arrow keys and even the 2468 keys on the Num. Pad all match the positions of their counterparts on a controller - W for forward, A for left, S for down and D for right. However, when it comes to IJKL, which are emulating the ABYX buttons on an xBox controller (or the X[Cross], Circle, Triangle, Square on a Playstation controller) are flipped. For some reason, the B button of the xBox controller (which would be the Circle on the PS controller) is replaced by J… J, which is the leftmost button out of the IJKL group. The B button is the rightmost button on the entire controller! This is dreadful, and even though it is a Gameplay issue, it’s also a Presentation issue.
But even if the Player changes the buttons, they’re still represented by the xBox controller buttons. There’s no way to change that, as the game is just poorly ported and barely optimized - there are no icons depicting the keyboard of a PC. However, there’s also no means of procuring a cheat-sheet, there’s no easy way of accessing these controls from any menu - the Player needs to access the menu first presented when starting the game to do any checks or make any adjustments.
It’s indicative of just how dreadfully bad the situation is. This port was just made for the sake of being able to charge people money and then thrown somewhere. However, if we abstract ourselves from that, the issues of the game grow far fewer… Even if the problem of the control clarity is still substantial.
Lastly, there’s one little thing related to the presentation of the story. It’s done through ‘cutscenes’ which are not pre-rendered and just involve the characters that take part in them standing or performing emotes, which cutscenes feature no voice acting and are a bother to go through, because they barely provide anything of value to the game. The way they are presented is lacking and evocative of the JRPG way, which is a stinky means of presenting things.
In fact, everything is somewhat lacking when it comes to the way the story is presented. Even the big cinematics, which look really cool, are bogged down by having 1/8th of the screen taken up by a big text box. It’s somewhat unsightly. This isn’t a really big problem, but it’s a small gripe that does bother me… Though there’s a horrible thing. Some cutscenes can be skipped. Others cannot. Those that can be skipped have voice acting. Those that cannot be skipped do not have voice acting. This is, eloquently put, ass backwards.
But the story’s presentation isn’t all bad. Before every story mission there is a small summary, written from the first person perspective, of Naruto, which is pretty neat.
One last thing. This is one of those wretched games that force you to wait and look at the logos of the companies who worked on them - no skipping can be done. That’s just very poor taste.
Either way, one could say that the presentation of this game is its strongest suit. One could say that it’s pretty strong, considering the shortcomings, but the key thing here is that it looks very good, and it sounds quite good… And it, when played on PC, literally ruins itself. 1/3
Story
It’s the first part of Naruto. As a result of that, it’s pretty good, and there isn’t much to be said about that. Fortunately for me, however, there’s more than just that. There are the aforementioned side quests, or rather missions, which feature some kind of ‘story’ related to them.
Unfortunately, those stories are, at best, very mediocre. At worst, of course, they’re unbelievably horrible AND they’re also filled with inconsistencies and spoilers. It is possible to encounter Tsunade right after graduating from the Ninja Academy AND to reminisce about how Naruto fought Gamabunta and Shukaku and how Tsunade fought Manda - which are events that take place LONG after Naruto has graduated from the Ninja Academy.
It is also possible to have a chat with Jiraya about the power of the Curse Mark and the power of the Nine Tailed Fox, whilst also reminiscing about those things, at that very moment. The power of the Nine Tailed Fox is only ever shown going full force once, as is the case with the Curse Mark - which is at the END of the first part of Naruto.
The weirdest thing is that these missions are not locked behind other missions, unlike other missions. They’re available from the get-go, just because. That’s incredibly inconsistent, and it messes with all three parts of the game - the Gameplay, due to inconsistencies in the mechanical aspect, the Presentation, due to the fact that there’s inconsistency in relation to why things are locked and why other things are not, and the Story, due to the fact that the game spoils its own story without even trying.
As a result of that, I’m going to subtract a point, though I won’t subtract more than that. The Naruto story-line - especially what’s on display in the first “chapter” - is quite entertaining, even if it is presented in a horrible way here. Thus, it’s, overall, slightly above average, but just barely. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I wanted to say yes. Primarily due to the fact that I got to explore the Village Hidden in the Leaf - that was something I always felt was somewhat needed, as the way both the Manga and the Anime convey things is very story focused, and the world is far in the background. As a result of that, having the whole of the Leaf Village to myself, the opportunity to run around and explore it to my heart’s content, was supreme.
Unfortunately, that does not really compare to the rest of the game. I might have a great appreciation for it because of that, and because of the fact it is a solid-ish game adapting the first “chapter” of Naruto, but it does NOt manage to hit the mark. There are too many failings on all fronts, and the goodness that is within was not as impressive as it needed to be to warrant the point. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. A perfectly respectable game that could be enjoyed by just about anyone, on console. On PC, the enjoyment is going to be very hard to come by, but for fans of Naruto, I’d say it’s a must, especially since there are far fewer games focusing on the first part of the show (the non-Shippuden stuff) than there are ones focused on the second part of it. Fighting games fellas might like it, but then they might dislike it.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes. It could have been placed on the wall, but, alas, it was too shoddily made.