Naruto: Ninja Destiny proves that you can make a good 3D fighter for the DS. This isn’t that 3D fighter, but at least it shows that the hardware is up to the task. It looks halfway decent and runs at a consistent frame rate most of the time. Until we see that better game, we have this, a cut-down version of the Clash of Ninja 3D fighters that Eighting made for the GameCube and Wii. It looks like it might be the equal of those games, which aren’t half bad in their original forms, but enough depth has been sucked out of this handheld version that it isn’t good for much more than a temporary diversion.

For now, Naruto fans are better served biting the bullet and playing one of the non-portable fighters available for the GameCube or having a go with one of the DS RPGs. There are sequels to Ninja Destiny out in Japan already, so maybe sometime soon we’ll see if Tomy got it right the second time around.

Don’t Sweat The Technique

Ninja Destiny’s single-player mode spans the middle arcs of the Naruto comic-book series, from the end of the Chunin Exams to just before Sasuke Uchiha bails out of Konoha village. Most of the fights and cinematic sequences are faithfully drawn from the source material, although that leads to some unusual match-ups. At one point, you have to win a fight using Orochimaru, who’s more or less the ultimate bad guy. Unfortunately, there’s just the one story mode, with the same pre-set battles  - and long, drawn-out cut scenes - every time through. If you want your choice of characters in the single-player game, there’s just the vanilla versus battle mode, without much in the way of progression or unlockable extras.

In general, the game’s pretty light on extra modes. The select screen feels weirdly barren compared to the Clash of Ninja series. It doesn’t even have a practice mode, and it could definitely use one. There’s no move list in the game itself or in the accompanying manual. If you want to figure out a character’s special moves and combinations, you’ll have to learn them the hard way, through trial and error in an actual match.

Sexy Jutsu, We Hardly Knew Ye

On the not-exactly-bright side, there’s not much to learn. Each character only has a couple of combo strings to call their own, and most of the signature moves they had in the Clash of Ninja games are gone. Everyone has a single game-breaking special technique, but all you need to do to pull those off is press the A button while your opponent’s in range.

This causes a couple of problems. For one, obviously, most of the depth of the console games is gone, along with a lot of the special attacks that gave the characters so much of their personality. For another, Ninja Destiny’s chopped-down design introduces a bunch of balance problems. The character lineup is pretty good-sized, and includes at least one fighter who wasn’t in the original Japanese version, but some characters are simply better than others, at any level of skill.

Quicker fighters like Naruto and Sasuke can spam their opponents with simple combos that come out much faster than most of the other characters’ attacks, and that lets them fill up their chakra gauges faster to pull off more special dodge maneuvers as well. We’re talking about the default versions here, too – some of the hidden unlockable characters are just completely absurd. For instance, Naruto’s hidden Rasengan special attack knocks off ¾ of a life bar with the press of a single button.

Flip Out, Kill People

Once again, it has to be said that the game doesn’t look all that bad, given the size of the screen it’s displayed on. The character models are solid, for the most part (except for Orochimaru, who’s marred by some ugly clipping errors) and the animation is very impressive. A couple of especially flashy character combinations can knock the frame rate down, but more often than not Ninja Destiny’s engine runs smoothly.

We’ll just have to wait for a while before somebody gets around to building a better game into it. First on the wish list, it’d be nice to see a more respectable treatment of the gigantic toad-god Gamabunta, who unfortunately appears in this game as a flat, badly aliased still image. For now, though, whether or not you love Naruto, Ninja Destiny doesn’t qualify as 30 bucks worth of fighter.

Review by: D.F. Smith