Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 Review - GC

The perpetual geek humor machine called the Internet has taught us a couple of things about ninja. Chief among those things: the ninja’s purpose is to flip out and kill people. Naruto was clearly conceived with this principle in mind – it’s a kids’ TV show, so killing is mostly off the docket, but it makes up with a feverish surplus of flipping out.

This is why Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 works, despite a whole bunch of visible flaws. It’s a fast-moving, colorful, cheerfully violent game where four players can flip out and maim each other for hours. It’s not incredibly complicated and it’s not unusually deep, but nobody who’s shopping for a Naruto game is likely to care.

Two Plus Two

As a two-player 3D fighter, Clash of Ninja is a little iffy. It’s a product of Eighting, the Japanese outfit that gave us Bloody Roar, and in head-to-head mode it’s kind of like a lightened-up version of those games. It has a similar limitation of options when it comes to movement, defense, and counterpunching. There are basic sidestep moves for getting around on a third axis, but the automatic character facing catches up quickly. When it comes down to it, the player who gets lucky and lands the most absurdly long combo usually gets the upper hand.

Two-player fights also tend to show up the fact that a lot of the characters share fairly similar movesets. Guilty Gear this is not – many characters might look different, but they play a lot alike. Some aren’t particularly well-balanced, either, giving them a pretty big advantage or disadvantage depending on who they’re matched up against.

All this hurts the single-player story mode, which mainly features one-on-one fights. Against weaker opponents, it just feels like a cakewalk, and when later missions spring some of the stronger AI characters, the frustration factor suddenly hits the ceiling. The story mode’s not especially long to begin with, and it’s even shorter when you hit the wall about three-quarters of the way through the plot.

In matches with four humans, though, more options invariably reveal themselves. There, it’s more like the old Aki Ultimate Muscle games -- cheap shots abound, but every player has an even chance at them. You could even say there’s real tactical depth to working out how to land the very cheapest shot possible. The ability to move freely around a 3D field makes it much easier to dodge and set up your own attacks, which supplements the more gimmicky canned evasion maneuvers.

In other words, this may not be much fun to play alone. With four Naruto fans throwing elbows on the couch, it’s a recipe for a pretty good time. Two-on-two matches work especially well – that cuts down on the tendency for three players to dog-pile a fourth, and teammates can split up to support each other at different ranges.

“Aw, Mom, It’s Just the Sexy Jutsu”

With two or four players flipping out at the same time, Eighting’s engine holds up under pressure. Cel-shaded models nail the look of the cartoon’s characters, and there are very few visible flaws in their animation. Sometimes an outline will drop out in the wrong place and make a pair of identically-colored pieces blend together, but it’s easy to miss or ignore those little glitches.

As mentioned before, some of the characters are pretty similar on a mechanical level, but they all have a very distinct visual personality. Eighting went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to animating so many broad combo trees, and each ninja’s special moves provide a cherry on top. Some of the bigger animated set-pieces are remarkably impressive – they’re up there with some of the goofiest Ultimate Muscle super combos.

This is a better game by most standards than the PS2’s Ultimate Ninja (developed by a different outfit, Bandai’s Cyber Connect2 team), but at the same time, it could stand to draw inspiration from its rival series. More varied, interactive environments would add a lot to the four-player mode – as it stands, most of the levels are simple, open areas. The interface could use some jazzing up, too, with more of Ultimate Ninja’s cool comic-inspired design elements.

Million Miles Away

On another note, in an international sense, this game is a little out of date. In Japan, Eighting’s cranked out four of these – volume two came out over there nearly three years ago. Volume four, from last fall, features nearly twice as many characters (nearly 40, compared to this game 20-odd), as well as a good deal more single-player content.

The players to whom that would really be a problem have probably already done something about it, though. To regular humans who don’t know about imports and don’t care that there might be a better version on another continent, Clash of Ninja 2 is the best Naruto game on the market.

Article by: D. F. Smith
Video produced by: Michael Benson