Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2 (DS) Review

Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 09.29.2009

Naruto Shippuden videogames are now hitting the consoles, how does the newest fighting game stack up for the Nintendo DS?



Title: Naruto Shippuden - Ninja Destiny 2
Publisher: Tomy
Developer: Takara/Atlus
Genre: Fighting
Players: 2
Rated: T For Teen




Graphics

All the characters and environments in the game have been rendered in 3D. The look is comparable to other fighting games in the Naruto series, in that the character models have this sort of cel-shaded, animated type of look. While the game is rendered in 3D, all the fighting and main action on the game takes place on a 2D plane that has a slight 3D element with the strafing. The Quest Mode and Map Levels are in full 3D however. Graphics and colors overall come off nicely for the DS, but since it is a 3D game on the DS there is quite a bit of pixellation and blockiness. It does not overall negatively affect the look of the game or the actual gameplay though.



Gameplay

The fighting mode is the main bread and butter of the Ninja Destiny series, though Ninja Destiny 2 does offer several different modes of play: Story Mode, Survival Mode, Quest Mode, Versus Mode, and Wireless Battles. Story mode is your basic fighting game story mode and it follows essentially the first season of the Naruto Shippuden anime. The story begins with Naruto returning from his lengthy training mission with Jiraiya to Konoha, the Hidden Leaf Village. The evil ninja organization, Akatsuki, however is on the move. Akatsuki is trying to collect all the bijuu (tailed demon monsters that have been sealed into the ninjas of hidden villages). Kyuubi, the most powerful and 9 tailed bijuu, is sealed into Naruto. Akatsuki however have kidnapped the kage of Hidden Sand, Naruto's friend Gaara. So Naruto and friends must save Gaara from Akatsuki. Following the Gaara mission, Naruto and his new teammate Sai along with new team captain, Yamato, are dispatched to investigate a tip from an Akatsuki member meeting with an informant on Orochimaru, which for Naruto means finding his best friend Sasuke. In the Naruto series, Sasuke turned traitor and fell into Orochimaru's camp.

Story mode is fairly short and divided into 14 chapters of play where you get to play through the storyline as various characters. There are frequent autosaves during story mode, but its a little frustrating when you have two battles in a row and you can't save inbetween.

The fighting gameplay itself is fairly simple. There are light and heavy attacks as well as some variations and combos you can execute. As mentioned early, the fighting is on a 2D plane, but the strafing move does over a slight element of 3D gameplay to the fighting. With strafing you can dodge attacks and get behind or to the side of an enemy to kick their butt. My main problem with the fighting is that once your opponent starts doing a combo or a juggling combo there isn't anything you can do to try and break the combo or get out of it like in other Naruto fighting games. All you can do is teleport or do a replacement jutsu by pressing the left shoulder button. Jutsu are performed by pressing the left shoulder button which does like a teleportation technique. This however drains your chakra/jutsu meter which you want charged up for your special jutsu attacks. Like the console Naruto games, each character has a special jutsu they can unleash and it's a big cinematic event. However, unlike the other Naruto fighting games, here you can only do one per character - no Naruto Uzumaki Barrage or Kage Bunshin attacks. The bottom screen is used to display the power-ups accessible to your characters. Your character is given a certain amount of various power-ups during a fight or power-ups you can pick up during the side quest levels. These are helpful when you need life or chakra boost. None of the power-ups are quite as fun or creative as the ones in Ultimate Ninja. Also no chakra bombs or exploding tags makes me a sad panda.

Additional modes are Quest Mode and Survival Mode. Survival Mode allows you to take on a gauntlet of opponents one after the other to achieve a high score or unlock new characters. Quest Mode puts your character in a 3D dungeon where you have to get through Konoha's tunnels and dungeon maze while facing random foes that pop up. This is sort of like an RPG where you are just search through areas and a random enemy battle starts. This mode is nothing special and rather frustrating to play. Survival mode is fun but repetitive. Versus Mode lets you do a basic one on one fighting battle to bone up on your moves and combo technique. Wireless battles lets you play against a friend on another DS.

Sound

The soundtrack for the game is not all that impressive. Some music from the show would've been nice. What is good though is the voice acting, and all the characters have spoken voice actors, most of which are their same English voice actors from the series: Maile Flanagan as Naruto, Yuri Lowenthal as Sasuke, and Kate Higgins as Sakura. Sound FX and other sounds are fairly average.



Lasting Appeal

I think it depends on how much you like Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, and Naruto Shippuden Fighting Games on the DS. There are some good alternate modes of play, and in total there are 34 different playable characters, many of which you will have to unlock. The cheat though is that some of them are the same characters just in their younger, pre-Shippuden days. Some noticeably missing characters are people like Tenten, Hinata, Kiba, and Shino all of whom did appear in the first season of the Shippuden anime. Overall though, the game doesn't really have a ton of stuff that impresses and will keep you coming back again and again.



Fun Factor

As far as Naruto games go, this one's decent, but once you get the basic gist of the fighting mode and unlock everything there's little else to go and do.

Graphics	8.0	Good but very pixelated and blocky 3D graphics for the Nintendo DS.
Gameplay	7.5	Fighting gameplay is generally decent but could use some extra dimensions.
Sound	7.0	Average sound FX and soundtrack, but having the voice actors from the show do their characters are a plus.
Lasting Appeal	6.5	A good amount of characters and other things to unlock, but once you do all that, there isn't much else.
Fun Factor	6.5	Not the worst Naruto game ever, and the fighting's good, but there's not a lot here.
Overall	7.0   [ Good ]

Screenshots
All 5 Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2 Screenshots