Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Review

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 is a continuation of Ultimate Ninja series and presumably its final installment considering the manga and overall story has been concluded for over a year. As far as sign-offs go, this one is a fantastic one; a marvelous farewell to a beloved series and a conclusion 15 years in the making.

Story

The story initially thrusts you straight into a battle between Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, set some decades before the events of the rest of the series. These two battle it out for a while until the Nine-Tailed Fox frees himself from Hashirama’s Wood Dragons and the battle move on to it next stage.

Skipping ahead to avoid spoilers, the story picks up during the Fourth Great Ninja War, at the points where Naruto, Kakashi, and Might Guy are fighting The Masked Man, and where Sasuke has just finished his tag team fight against Dragon Sage Kabuto, and from there the two paths eventually merge and the story goes all the way through the war and into the end of the series, including a small portion of The Last: Naruto The Movie.

Gameplay

The gameplay here is just as fans of the series remember, with a few new features added on. First, the combat system is largely the same, which isn’t a bad thing as its something fans have come to love. What’s new about the combat is the ability to switch characters on the fly. Not only can you summon support characters to aid you in battle, you can switch control from one character to another. For example, is a player were to choose Naruto as his main fighter, with Sasuke and Sakura backing him up as support characters, in the midst of battle, with a flick of the right stick, the player can switch from Naruto to Sasuke, and Naruto becomes the support character or from Sasuke to Sakura and Sasuke is supporting. This adds an extra layer of depth to strategy in battle as it’s possible to switch characters mid combo to extend your combos and deal greater damage.

Other than that, combat is much the same as fans can expect: chakra charge, basic attack, ninjutsu attack, shuriken, and chakra shuriken (or other long ranged attack depending on the character). You can also block and use the substitution jutsu to get out of a combo and perhaps launch a counterattack, but both players are limited to four Subs before they have to recharge.

In addition to that, there are some interesting new gameplay modes.

Well, "new" may be a relative term. The UNS series has had an "Adventure" mode and "Practice" modes for a while but this time around, each one adds something to the tried and true formula.

Adventure mode is an interesting expansion on the story, filling in some empty space after the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War and well before the events of The Last. Adventure mode aims to add some depth to the relationship between Naruto and Hinata, initially taking them, along with Sakura to round out the trio, on a trip around the Ninja World to “deliver a message to Gaara, the Kazekage.” This is Sakura’s cover to try to get Naruto and Hinata a little more interaction and maybe spark Naruto’s interest in Hinata. You’ll be controlling Naruto while the other two follow behind as you make your way from the Hidden Leaf Village to the Hidden Sand Village. All the while Sakura and Naruto’s conversations bring up memories, usually battles you’ll get to fight. While you explore the Ninja World, you’ll find Memory Fragments, tear drop shaped memories of battles you can play through, though these are entirely optional. There will be a few memories that will not be optional, such as ones sprouting from conversations between Naruto and company. By the end of your roughly 5+ hour Adventure, you’ll have completed tasks for every from Kakashi and Tsunade to Iruka and … Shino(?) with many more side quests still available.

Collection is where you go to buy everything from new costumes to Ninja Info cards and much, much more. Titles, Substitution items, logs with different Japanese words on them, numerous cut-in images for each character, voices to go with those images. There’s tons of stuff to collect and tons to spend all that Ryo you’ll be collecting through the story mode on.

Free Battle consists of four different battle modes, as well as two customize options.

·         Starting with the easiest to explain, VS Battle is just what you expect: one player VS Com, one player VS another, or Com VS Com. The staple of fighting games these days, set up your own fights against the computer, battle a friend, or watch the computer duke it out against another computer opponent.

·         Survival is again what you’d expect. Fight the computer endlessly, until either you give up and bow out, or you finally take a loss. What separates this from other games is the different ways to fight those opponents. When you select Survival you have the options of Ability Cap and Ultimate Survival.

o   Ultimate has you choose between team or single and you fight until you stop, with the end of each fight restoring a portion of your health depending on how you performed in the match. Before each match a random condition is put in play, with some wild variations: Ninjutsu does big damage for both players, both players cannot guard etc. Do well, and you can go for a good long time.

o   Ability Cap Survival is broken into Ranks: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Only beginner is unlocked initially so you’ll have to win to unlock the others. Each Rank has set courses with a set condition attached; no random conditions here. Each win advances you to the next, win them all to clear the course. Clear all the courses to unlock the next Rank.

·         League­ Organized Fight! Like Survival, you select a Rank starting with Beginner, Choose your course, consisting of up to three total battles, pick your team, and FIGHT! The difference here is that once you choose your team, the fights are broken up into brackets and you choose who fights whom first and the overall order of each battle, but in all, everyone will have fought everyone and earned points per win. The team with the most points in the end wins the League.

·         Tournament mode is split into Free and Ever-Changing tournaments.

o   Free tournament is a standard tournament, you choose your team, then choose opposing teams, or randomize everything. You can have a tournament of either 4 or 8 teams. Once everyone is chosen, team battles are setup and the player fights to the top.

o   Ever-Changing tournament is a little different in that everything is set up the same: number of teams, teams themselves, who fights who, The difference in EC tournaments is that before each battle, two random conditions are set, changing the dynamic and strategy of each battle.

·         Practice mode is split into two choices: Free and Battle Practice.

o   Free Practice is the usual “choose your character(s), choose an opponent, choose an arena, and FIGHT!” Health, chakra, team gauge, and more can all be controlled in various ways, as well as practice dummy behavior. The practice can also be set to Com controlled with various settings or manual control with a second player.

o   Battle Practice is a series of tutorials by Kakashi-sensei, teaching the basics of battle, starting with basic movements and going through Substitutions, Ninjutsu, and Support. For Beginners this is a valuable tool for learning more than the controls but some of the intricacies of battle. My only issue with this is that it seems a bit hard to find. There’s no tutorial pop-up pointing to this. I can only assume CyberConnect2 figured there weren’t going to be too many new players to essentially the final entry to a roughly 7 and a half year old game series following a manga running almost 15 years. I can’t really fault them for that. Fans of the series have known it for a long time so it’s a logical, forgivable assumption.

·         Customize Character add some very slight customization options to each character. No cosmetic changes like new costumes or accessories (though imagining Sasuke fight in Groucho Marx glasses makes me chuckle), here you can change what your substitutions look like and your Finishing cut-in, he image that appears if you finish off your opponent using a secret technique.

·         Presets Here you can simply save your favorite teams so you don’t have to choose them all manually when picking before a fight. For instance, if you prefer THE LAST Naruto and Hinata, who can only be chosen when highlighting Hinata and scrolling through her costumes, it’s a faster option. Simple convenience, but appreciated all the same.

Online Mode has all the same features and battle modes as Free battle, with the addition of “Limited Time Only Events”, which change things up from week to week. Each week the player will be given a choice of preset teams such as Sakura and Ino, Temari and Tenten, Hinata and Hanabi, etc to fight against other preset teams at varying levels, Genin, Chunin, Jonin. At the time of this writing, the theme was “An Army of Kunoichi!”, hence the aforementioned teams. It’s an interesting dynamic that rewards winners with treasures to spend at the Collection.

Other than that, its all the same fare. Matches can be played Ranked or unraked, League, Tournament, or Endless, which is a King of the Hill type thing. I have only two gripes with Online Mode: the first is that a lousy connection can really hurt, the standard complaint for a fighting game but it still holds true here. Even a three-bar connection can make or break a fight, regardless of skill. Input lag is so slow your opponent can see you coming a mile away. The second gripe is that Endless mode doesn’t have a spectator mode. Granted, lobbies can only hold four players, so you wouldn’t be waiting long for your turn, but it still makes for a boring wait.

THE VERDICT

Honestly, if you’ve read this far, my verdict is that you’re amazing. But my verdict on Ultimate Ninja Storm is that the game is a worthy entry to the series, and helps wrap up the story of Naruto and his friends nicely. For those who don’t or haven’t read the manga and are waiting for the anime to finish things, you may be waiting a while. Over a year and it’s still in filler. Sorry. But play Ninja Storm 4 and it’ll tell you practically everything you want to know, right up to THE LAST. If you don’t want to read that manga, there’s a movie for it, go find it. In the meantime, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 has everything you need and want.