Less Story Content Than Destiny, But That’s Okay!

There is something special about CyberConnect2’s Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm series.  You’ll will never hear me say that I am a fighting game fan, but at the same time I am a HUGE fan of this series.  Could it be the huge cast of characters?  The fast paced battles?  The plethora of special moves?  Is it simply that I enjoy the story because of the anime it’s based on?  Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above?  Who’s to say what the exact reason is — all I know is that I get extremely excited every year when a new entry is released.  That being said, after playing Revolution, I wasn’t quite as high on it as I have been in the past.

Right from the start, I noticed that Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution has the least amount of story mode content in the entire series.  This is extremely disappointing because I really love diving into the series and experiencing the great story that I’ve come to know from TV.

In Revolution, you are given one story mode to start with, about the creation of the Akatsuki.  This takes you through six battles with a cutscene in between each one, which will only last you between 40-60 minutes.  The next one is about the Uchiha clan before their ultimate fate prior to the series.  It is only two battles and will last about 30 minutes at most.  The final story is about Naruto’s parents, and includes no battles and a few cutscenes that last about 15 minutes.  Of course I enjoyed every minute of story mode, but having under two hours worth of story content is not acceptable for the series.  There are obvious reasons why there wasn’t much story included, like running out of story to pull from the manga/anime, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.

CyberConnect2 tries to make up for their lack of story content by including a mode called Ninja World Tournament.  This mode allows you to pick your favorite character and play through several tournaments with varying difficulties.  It was fun because it takes place in a semi-open world where you can go around and find other characters from the game to battle and make friends with, complete quests, buy items from the shop, and enter tournaments when you are ready.

However, it felt like the open world part of this mode was more like a menu screen.  Running around the island became boring really fast, especially when a quest would require you to run back and forth from one side of the island to the other, just to battle the same guys for the fourth straight time.  CyberConnect2 attempts to make it interesting by adding dialogue to everything, but with a lack of voice acting on most of it, it just falls flat.  If all you want to do is battle and enter tournaments, this mode will be great for you.

The battle system in tournaments is one of the major changes made in this iteration.  Instead of the tried-and-true 1v1 battles that we are used to, these battles are 1v1v1v1 and take place in an open environment.  Each fighter starts the battle with 1000 orbs, which you lose when getting hit and gain when hitting enemies.  The objective is to end the battle with the most orbs.

I honestly wasn’t a fan of these battles and would rather have just had the normal battle system in the tournaments.  This style of battle just felt too easy — I won every battle by more than 4x the orbs of the next guy.

However, there is good news — the normal battle system is still just as amazing as it has always been (when you get to fight in it, at least).  All of the normal game modes are still there for veteran players to duke it out against friends or the CPU whenever they want. If you enjoyed the other Ultimate Ninja Storm games for their myriad of ways to beat up opponents, then you will like this one!

The Verdict: 7.7 out of 10

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution offers a lot for fans of the series.  Besides the good-but-short story mode, the tournament offers players a chance to lose several hours battling familiar ninja faces and fighting your way through the tournament ranks.   However, if you are more of a fan of story content than just battling, this isn’t the game for you.  Other features that make Revolution a must play for fans of the series is the fact that it has a cast of over 100 playable characters, several different modes to play, and even the interesting side story about “Mecha Naruto”.  This year’s iteration in the Ultimate Ninja Storm series was a good one, but overall felt a little lackluster.  Believe it!

For more information about what the score means, check out our official review scale.

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Courtney Osborn is MONG’s Founder and Editor in Chief.  He is also a notorious Science Doctor, so ask him stuff.  You can follow him on Twitter, Twitch, and IGN.