Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm

The side missions and just gameplay of this game, just frustrated me, my friend likes it, but jeez, I just hate this game. I played through and got to Ninja Storm 2, but I couldn't carry on, at all. Especially how the substitution jutsu works, it's just RNG and I despise it.

It's a terrible entry to Naruto games. Nothing here is memorable, the game is super repetitive and storytelling is weird. The only good thing is gameplay, but storm 4 is just on a whole other level of cinematography, so you should avoid this particular game.

NARUTO: NINJA STORM (2008) was a really enjoyable game. By no means was it a perfect game or the best game, but honestly something about it just tugs at the heart strings of this nostalgic 90's era anime/manga loving gamer. While I agree with many of the reviews here and was tempted to rate this game similarly as "mediocre"...my nostalgic inner nerd signals suddenly kicked on and I simply cannot low-ball the rating to this one, silly and repetitive as it may be.

Yes, this game has silly and highly repetitive side missions, yes, it is slower paced, yes, it isn't the best of the series...yea, it certainly has it's cheesy, pointless parts. But I guess that's what I loved about the original manga and the anime as well.

Even still, with its imperfections, the gameplay was really super great, the fighting style was fluid, fast paced and real fun, and the world and characters highly detailed. I've always wanted to explore the city of the Leaf Village, as well as other memorable areas in the series. The art style was suitable and perfect for Naruto. I loved the 2D (?) anime styled world and so glad it wasn't turned into some 3D un-Naruto monstronsity. It really held the similar vibes of classic early episodes of Naruto, which yes, made me very nostalgic. And vulnerable to loving it excessively and perhaps unreasonably so.

But, you know? So what it's not perfect? It rang all the right bells in my heart, was super fun to play and I just really loved it. Was well worth the play for me. Overall, this was a fun one, especially if you are a fan of early Classic Naruto manga and anime series and like Japanese anime styled games.

I don't really like how the Story Missions and Side Missions are structured in this game, but in terms of gameplay, this is one of the best 3D-environment fighting mechanics since Budokai Tenkaichi.

Its not a bad game, to start off the gameplay is really great! I've had a fun time fighting on this game. The main thing I really had a problem with was the fact you have to go do some side missions to get to the next part of the story mode which was really annoying. Also the story didn't feel as if it was a story mode at all, they felt just like a regular side mission that sometimes had cut scenes depending on how important it was during the series. Overall a great start to the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm series.