Naruto: Broken Bonds - Review

Sparrow

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Feb 22, 2009
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Naruto is obviously a large part of Anime's popularity in both Europe and America, spawning god knows how much merchandise alongside the Manga and TV Series. Of course, this would inevitably lead onto several games being created to mirror the storyline.

Now, maybe that sounds negative but it's actually not a bad idea on paper. Every little kid wants to be a ninja, every teenager wants to enter a one-on-one fight with their favourite characters and most adult fans of the series just want to re-live what they've already watched. So, maybe a game of the franchise could attract both fans and avid gamers alike.

And it did. Under Bandai's gaming knowledge it did anyway. They may have bled the Anime dry, but at least they entertained us Naruto fans and serious gamers at the same time, whilst taking our well earned money.

Bandai's Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series, PS2's crack at the franchise, was a no-nonsense fighting game, with a large array of characters to choose from, along with their Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles titles. I don't know if it was the large amount of characters to choose from, or how well they kept to the storyline, but the games delivered. Bandai also followed up their success with the PS2 with the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series with Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm on the PS3. From here, Bandai also made Sony's success with the Anime a dead winner, by releasing Naruto: Ultimate Ninja for the PSP.

TOMY's chain of Naruto games for the Wii, Naruto: Clash Of Ninja Revolution, albeit less of a gaming experience than Bandai's effort, still proved successful and in my opinion, decent games. Also, their DS effort with Naruto: Ninja Council proved successful, and possibly one of the DS' only decent fighting games.

"So what?" you might say. Well, both Bandai and TOMY are Japanese companies. This might not mean much, but the latest Naruto games for the 360, were made by Ubisoft, a French company. Nothing against the French of course, as Ubisoft has made some fantastic games in the past such as the Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell series.

But, and it's a BIG but, they didn't grab the Naruto series like TOMY and Bandai. Naruto: Rise of a Ninja for the 360 was a nice looking, smooth playing game. That was about it. It was playable though, and it followed the storyline nicely.

It seems they realised this, and tried to add more elements to latest Naruto game to be released outside of Asia: Naruto: Broken Bond. Now, before I get onto the many reasons why I dislike this game, I should probably do it justice and describe it's good points. It has some quite nice visuals from the start of the game, and it throws you right into the storyline. Very exciting, of course. It's got some nice cuts-scenes too, and it gives you the option of viewing them all with the original Japanese voice acting. Nice touch.

Thats about it though. It's basically a mirror of it's prequel. The fighting style is exactly the same. The only few minor differences are the few added combos and the addition of the an overdrive bar. The teams set-up is also the same. Missions set you fixed teams to fit the storyline, and you can only change it after you complete the game and continue on with the free-play.

Free-play should have also been a defining feature of the game. Sadly though, it isn't. The game allows you to explore the surroundings in a squad. Sounds great, until you realise the limits of the squad. It can only have three people, which must always include Naruto. That?s not too bad, but there?s more. The selection of players you can take with you only stretches to a list of seven, which then lowers to six after the completion of the game.

The fact that they have to remove Sasuke is because of the point that they end the storyline at, which isn't too bad. The makers got lazy though. Why? Because they have larger selection of character to choose from than they have. For instance, the Gaara's entire squad is left out. Gai, Kakashi... the list goes on. The fact that they decided to leave out most of the games side characters in the free-play bemuses me. Mainly because of the fact, three of the list I mentioned above are characters you can play as in the game anyway.

The main games storyline is also full of childish and annoying tasks, that must be completed in order to continue the storyline. Why? Who the hell knows. They weren't even in the storyline to begin with. They're most probably included to lengthen the still short storyline. It wouldn't be too bad, but this includes at least a third of the game. Such tasks from constantly having to take five minutes to jump across a forest of trees to get to your next destination, playing pointless mini-games to progress through the storyline and having to jump across miles of terrains and avoiding set traps simply to find one part of your current mission. Some of the missions also feel like work. Work isn?t fun.

That might be hard to understand, so let me tell you every single part of the game that literally forced you to do pointless tasks for no reason, other than to lengthen the gameplay. You will at some point meet up with a few characters in the game, and control them. These are Choji, Neji and Kiba. Each have a special ability that allows them to do something pointless and irritating. Choji?s missions (And no, I?m not joking) make you gather his favourite type of crisps. Neji?s mission has you hunt down a terrorist (I?m seriously not making this up) and his twin brother. Kiba?s missions have you race against the main character, with only an arrow to guide you to the location your meant to be.

I did mention you have to do these to progress into the storyline didn?t I? You know, the bit that?s actually fun.

This brings me to another point too. If they wanted to make the storyline so much longer, why did they skip certain points in the Anime? Such as Gaara's squad's rescue of the leaf genin and Itachi's and Kisame's fight with Kakashi? That might sound like tough work to you, but all the characters I listed above are already playable in versus. They would have had to use minimal effort to create at least an hours worth of extra gaming.

So, in my opinion, Ubisoft has failed where TOMY and Bandai have succeeded. The thing is though, I think Ubisoft should continue on with the series and simply correct their mistakes, because whilst weaving through the game and furiously cursing under my breath when I became frustrated with gameplay, the points when the game went well, it flourished. The lead up to the ending of the game was fantastic, and was actually fun. Once Ubisoft sort out the kinks, fire whatever moron structures the in-game story and focus more on the fighting element of the game, I can see me buying the next game in the foreseeable future, as long as it doesn't cover the fillers...
 

Teraj

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Mar 28, 2009
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I agree with you on many points there
They also should have made more playable characters in the vs. mode
i mean they have 3 different costumes for naruto and sasuke
is it really necessary
and even itachi has a different costume
while although can be a good feature
just takes up space in the character selection
they left out some good characters and some not so good, but relevant to the story
for example
Hinata, Shino, Ino, Guy, Kankarou
Could have made the VS. mode so much more enjoyable
and the mini games, like you mentioned are endless, repetitive and annoying
i enjoyed this more than rise of ninja
mainly because of the squads, more character selection and better jutsus