The game starts off with the wrong foot, throwing the player into a battle without any proper explanation of the mechanics. In fact the only explanation of said mechanics is in a boring, textual "tutorial" one can only access from the main menu that pretty much just lists the moveset general to every character and gives a few tips, and that's it. There is no actual hands-on tutorial in the game as far as I could see it.
The game also starts a bits stilted due to the slide-show style cut-scenes early on, though they become much less prevalent with time and completely disappear by the second half of the game.
Now, the gameplay itself is solid. It's fluid, flashy and filled with loads of amazing special attacks for all the characters. The controls are responsive, though a bit hard to get into it due to the aforementioned horrible tutorial (or rather the lack thereof). One also couldn't complain about the amount of content, since the story-mode and the adventure-mode alone should hold out for a couple dozen hours, more if one aims for the S-ranks.
However the part that really shines in this game is the actual story, or rather the adaptation of the manga's. Simply put, it is plain better due to a couple of extended scenes that make some character-motivations more understandable and the overall pacing is much better. Even the otherwise Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Kaguya makes more sense here, and not only because she is a last-minute boss in a video game, and the final chapter is outright amazing.
To be honest, I was always just a casual fan of Naruto (I got turned off from it in high-school, just around the time Sasuke stole the spotlight), and I only followed the manga sporadically through reviews and podcasts, but I can honestly say this game made me appreciate the series all over again, and I can only imagine how amazing it must be for people who followed the series from beginning to end.
Rocky start, amazing ending.
The game starts off with the wrong foot, throwing the player into a battle without any proper explanation of the mechanics. In fact the only explanation of said mechanics is in a boring, textual "tutorial" one can only access from the main menu that pretty much just lists the moveset general to every character and gives a few tips, and that's it. There is no actual hands-on tutorial in the game as far as I could see it. The game also starts a bits stilted due to the slide-show style cut-scenes early on, though they become much less prevalent with time and completely disappear by the second half of the game.
Now, the gameplay itself is solid. It's fluid, flashy and filled with loads of amazing special attacks for all the characters. The controls are responsive, though a bit hard to get into it due to the aforementioned horrible tutorial (or rather the lack thereof). One also couldn't complain about the amount of content, since the story-mode and the adventure-mode alone should hold out for a couple dozen hours, more if one aims for the S-ranks.
However the part that really shines in this game is the actual story, or rather the adaptation of the manga's. Simply put, it is plain better due to a couple of extended scenes that make some character-motivations more understandable and the overall pacing is much better. Even the otherwise Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Kaguya makes more sense here, and not only because she is a last-minute boss in a video game, and the final chapter is outright amazing.
To be honest, I was always just a casual fan of Naruto (I got turned off from it in high-school, just around the time Sasuke stole the spotlight), and I only followed the manga sporadically through reviews and podcasts, but I can honestly say this game made me appreciate the series all over again, and I can only imagine how amazing it must be for people who followed the series from beginning to end.