Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Road to Boruto the game that easily wins longest video game title of the year. The game is made for Naruto fans and not someone who has never played or watched it before (so me). The game is full of exciting Naruto content, a lot more than I expected coming into it. You can choose between story, which is the traditional Naruto Shippuden story. Adventure, which is after the events of the story mode mentioned before. Boruto Tale where you relive the events of Boruto: Naruto the movie. Then there is an online battle mode where you battle random people across the world. Holy crap those people are good. I did a match or two just to see if the rumors were true. I stood absolutely no chance. Those guys must only play Naruto fighting games because I got annihilated. Not something I recommend trying unless you’re very good at the game. I did a good amount of damage probably just because I got lucky smashing button combos.
That is where some of my discourages with the game come in. If you are not a Naruto fan, or know much about the game like myself, you’re going to have a very hard time following this game. Being the fourth game in the franchise, you’re following an already developed story following Naruto and a plethora of his counterparts. The story is very in depth and often follows with long cut scenes before, after or during your fights. Not being a fan I often found these a nuisance and ended with me skipping them. Every time you load the story section of the game there is a video that you either must watch or choose to skip. After the second time skipping it got quite bothersome. If you’re a huge fan of the Naruto series this game is going to be an absolute blast for you. The amount of work gone into the game is phenomenal though. The game is for a Naruto fan though, not for someone to pick it up for the first time. To be fair, it’s hard to pick up new players so deep into a game’s story.
However, there were some aspects of the game that I thought were brilliant. Even though I had no idea what the heck I was doing most of the time, I enjoyed when I smashed the buttons enough to make awesome stuff happen. Whenever I was lucky enough to hit the right buttons the right way I was thoroughly impressed with the fighting animations. The game was so smooth and being able to know what you’re doing would make it even better. The finishing moves or special button combo animations left me with my jaw dropping. I have experienced very little fighting games in my life, but if all of them looked like this I would for sure pick up a few more. The specific game I was able to play came with DLC and a bunch of additional ad-ons.
I wasn’t able to play every single character in the game and see their specific move animations, but I’m sure with the amount of characters in the game (it is A LOT), there are plenty of even cooler animations than I was able to perform. The game runs at 60 fps making it even better looking than you would hope Some games still lack in the framer category and feel like your tugging the screen along with you. Not this one. With the enhanced fighting animations the 60 fps of the game makes everything super smooth and even more enjoyable to sit back and watch.
Even though following the story was hard for me I enjoyed the way Bandai Namco developed the story. It was a little short but the different pathing you could take was very interesting. As it progressed throughout the story you can view and fight in different perspectives from different characters. This is something a Naruto fan can appreciate. With all the different characters to play it would only be fitting to have customization options for the characters. You can change the costume of your player as well as a multitude of other things. Customization has started becoming huge in games so it’s nice to see that trend continue in Naruto.
If you’re new to fighting games or Naruto, this might not be the game for you. Being new to fighting games is already difficult as is, but then throw in a confusing story line and you might not be enjoying yourself. Start with the original game and work your way up. Jumping right in might not be the best idea. If you’re a Naruto fan or have played one of the previous games I would suggest picking this one up. Other than being short, this Naruto game follows suit with its predecessor and is sure to make any fan of the series very happy.
