Retro Naru­to revis­its Chunin Exams arc

When it comes to the Naru­to video game fran­chise, com­pli­cat­ed con­cepts have nev­er been part of the equa­tion. There’s noth­ing remote­ly hard about any of the games under the ban­ner and almost all are known for their pick up and play abil­i­ty. So, it stands to rea­son that the Naru­to: Clash of Nin­ja series is easy to start and get into it, and that rea­son­ing is cor­rect. Clash of Nin­ja 2 con­tin­ues the acces­si­bil­i­ty that the series is known for.

Naru­to is a great long-run­ning starter series if you’re just get­ting into ani­me. The basic premise of the ani­me is the basis of Clash of Nin­ja as well: A strong-willed boy from a world of nin­jas strives to be the best he can be and one day become the leader of his vil­lage. Because of a dev­as­tat­ing attack on his vil­lage the night he was born, Naru­to is orphaned and ostra­cized by his fel­low vil­lagers while host­ing a crea­ture known as the Nine-tailed Fox. He grad­u­ates from his village’s acad­e­my and is placed on a team fea­tur­ing his crush Saku­ra and his rival Sasuke while learn­ing team­work and the ways of nin­jut­su. Clash of Nin­ja 2 fol­lows the first half of the series, with Naru­to work­ing with his team­mates through the Chunin (first lev­el) exams that the nin­ja acad­e­my grad­u­ates face.

Clash of Nin­ja 2 does an admirable telling the begin­ning part of the sto­ry of Naru­to, sto­ry-wise. Because the begin­ning of Naru­to is sim­ple to under­stand and fol­low, the punch of char­ac­ters and addi­tions aren’t over­whelm­ing, and it’s easy to keep up with the action and char­ac­ter moti­va­tion. Every­one is rec­og­niz­able from the ani­me and it’s easy enough to actu­al­ly fol­low the sto­ry and learn more about the ani­me with­out the filler that the series is known for.

Graph­i­cal­ly, Clash of Nin­ja looks just like the ani­me, which is a bonus in its favor. The game is gor­geous and bright, and it accom­plish­es the goal of mak­ing you feel like you’re play­ing the ani­me instead of a game. Like­wise, the music and voice act­ing are great and feel and sound like they were pulled direct­ly from the anime’s soundtrack.

Mov­ing around with­in Clash of Nin­ja 2 is a sol­id expe­ri­ence. It’s easy to pull off moves and com­bos, and coun­ters are easy to under­stand and get the hang of with a lit­tle prac­tice. My only prob­lem is that every­one seems to play the same way, so there’s not much vari­ety in the movesets. The char­ac­ter you choose is mere­ly cos­met­ic with the movesets and mechan­ics not chang­ing from char­ac­ter to char­ac­ter. Oth­er than that, the abil­i­ty to jump right in and get to work is a wel­come and refresh­ing change of pace in a cat­e­go­ry of gam­ing known for its some­times-chal­leng­ing mechanics.

Even though there have been more games released in the Clash of Nin­ja series and oth­er Naru­to fight­ing games added to its lengthy reper­toire, Clash of Nin­ja 2 is just where you need to start if you’re want­i­ng to get into fight­ing games and have a love for ani­me or Naru­to. With a wealth of modes, great visu­als and facil­i­tat­ed abil­i­ty to ease into game­play, this is one well-regard­ed ninja.