REVIEW: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

The Ultimate Ninja Storm games are arena-style fighters known for their immersive gameplay and an art style that pays homage to the anime. This latest installment is certainly no exception, only this game takes it up a notch on every level. The developers, CyberConnect2, are renowned for bringing the Naruto anime to life in their Ultimate Ninja series. They have also found success in some of their other titles such as Tail Concerto, but the Naruto games are easily their most profitable due to the popularity of the anime and manga. This game is published by Bandai Namco Entertainment who are also famous for publishing the recent Dragon Ball games.

After owning and playing the hell out of the previous installments, I somewhat knew roughly what to expect. However, I didn’t expect the newest title in the franchise to be quite as good as it was. Starting the game up, you are greeted with an action-packed video showing off the neat graphics and amazing soundtrack. Even if you haven’t played any of the other Naruto games, just seeing this video will get you hyped.

Story

Now for the story mode. The thing I love about the Ultimate Ninja Storm games is the fact that they flawlessly bring the story of the manga into a game. In order to understand the story however, you really need to have either read the manga up to where the game starts, watched the anime, or played the previous games in the series. This means that other than the brilliant fighting modes that it has to offer (I’ll get into that later), there isn’t really a point in playing if you’re not a hardcore Naruto fan to start with. That isn’t a flaw or a fault, because these games were made for the hardened fan of the manga.

This title presents its story in a way that makes it easy to understand. The split paths act as a yin and yang of sorts, where separate events of the game are in fact connected. This is shown well in the first part of the story. After finishing the first fight of the game, which lets you learn the ropes if you’re a little rusty, you have two paths of the story you can play. One path depicts Naruto’s attempts to learn about Obito’s past, whereas the other path shows Sasuke learning about his brother, Itachi’s past. After several chapters, the two paths meet once again in a chapter significant to both Naruto and Sasuke. This is quite different to the story mode in previous Naruto games, where you can walk around in the world and such. However, now we have an adventure mode as a replacement, which I will talk about later.

Each chapter ranks you a letter, the best being rank S. In order to achieve 100% completion of the story, you must get the S rank in every chapter. This makes for a decent amount of replayability for the achievement hunters out there. Completing the story will also lead to extra characters being unlocked for the fighting modes, which I think is a very nice touch. This gives players who are only interested in fighting more motivation to complete the story. There is a season pass which costs £15.99 ($19.99) and this includes all future DLC.

Graphics and Soundtrack

Having explained the story mode, it seems like a good chance to talk more about the graphics and soundtrack in the game. The graphics are no less than flawless. It really seems like CyberConnect2 used the true power of the next-gen systems to get the graphics as close to the anime as possible. That’s not to say that the previous installments look bad. Even to this day they hold up, but there is a definite step up here. I also believe that Ninja Storm 4 is the only game in the franchise to run at 60 FPS on a console.

Changing tracks a bit…oh my God the soundtrack! The music in these games has always been beautiful. The fact that it was real orchestras that made these songs only confirms that the developers really care about the game and everything that comes with it. I even went as far as to download the official soundtrack on my phone so I could listen to it whenever I want.

Gameplay

Fans of the previous games of the series will find that the gameplay feels very familiar. I really couldn’t find much of a difference between Ninja Storm 3 and this one. You still press Y to regenerate chakra, X to throw a shuriken and so on. However, you can definitely tell that it feels a little more stable in this new installment, and playing with the Xbox One Elite controller definitely made the game that much more enjoyable due to the smooth analogue sticks and the rounded D-pad.

Fighting Modes

There are two main fighting modes in this game, Online Battle, and Free Battle. Online Battle gives the player the chance to show their skills against the world. From my experience with it, the online mode is really stable and I didn’t have any problems connecting to a battle and the fights I had were lag free. Free Battle was pretty much the same as the online mode, but instead of you going up against people over the internet, you are fighting publicly. This means that if you have two controllers, you and a buddy can fight on the same system. This is a very useful feature as there are still people who like to sit on a couch and just play. You can also go up against the CPU in this mode for if you wanted to hone your skills.

Both of these modes allow the player to choose from a huge range of characters from the Naruto series. Most of these characters are already unlocked but there is still a decent amount of characters that you will have to unlock by playing the story mode. I also love that CyberConnect2 have not taken away any of the characters involved in the previous games such as Pain, or any of the characters when they were younger. This is the same case for the arenas, from the Hidden Leaf Village, to the pre-war Hidden Leaf Village. This makes it even easier to pick up the new game knowing that all of the characters carry over and you aren’t losing any of your favorite ninjas.

Adventure Mode

Adventure mode is just brilliant. I love it. This mode allows you to explore the world of Naruto after the story is finished. It allows free roaming of certain areas such as the Hidden Leaf Village, among others. This is very similar to the story mode in the previous installments, which I really like. The camera angles are all the same, so if you are craving the sort of story mode that was in previous games, adventure mode is a welcomed substitute. You can also run into some enemies in this mode too, so tread carefully.

Summary

CyberConnect2 have done it again, and it’s very sad knowing that (at this time) Ninja Storm 4 is confirmed to be their last Naruto game. However, this game has so much content, that I honestly don’t know if we need one. They’ve served their purpose of illustrating the story of Naruto, and they’ve really wrapped it up with their best game yet. Everything from the graphics, to the soundtrack, feel right. I just hope we get an Ultimate Ninja Storm Collection from CyberConnect2 soon.