This review was based on a review copy of the game and not a retail copy, generously furnished by D3Publisher.
This game and I have a rather confusing relationship. There are times where I’m quite enjoying what Tomy has done with the fighting engine, but other times the lack of presentation, or the random absurd imbalances, cause great frustration. In the end, Naruto: Ninja Destiny is a good concept plagued with some issues that I feel could have been taken care of easily during development.
The general presentation of this game, like Path of the Ninja, is passable, but a bit lacking. The story for the story mode especially is confounding; you’ll start at a rather arbitrary point in the middle of the Chunin exams, some key battle opportunities are skipped over, and it stops as abruptly as it starts. In addition to that, you’ll be continually switching perspective, occasionally switching to play the bad guys, or fighting a seemingly meaningless battle in the big scheme of things. It’s rather disorienting overall.
The game goes for a cel-shaded graphical style, which does its job for the most part and looks fairly good. The problem is the character models, which are somewhat simple with less-than-elaborate animations, and it shows. The inclusion of voice acting is a good decision, but the music doesn’t really end up matching it in quality. Through story mode you’ll pretty much hear the same (annoying) tune over and over until the point where you just turn the DS sound off. These feel like minor nitpicks, though, and for a DS game it’s nothing very deal-breaking.
But enough ranting about presentation; let’s get to the gameplay. The general fighting engine actually is surprisingly good, lending itself to fast-paced battles, but not letting the button-masher take away victory (at least not at later levels). You’ve got standard attacks, which you can string together into 5- or 6-hit combos, as well as teleportation, blocks, shurikens, and special attacks. If they were to keep this engine for future installments of Ninja Destiny, you wouldn’t hear any complaining from me.
Unfortunately, the fighting itself is not without its flaws. First off, there’s nothing resembling training mode in the game; all you’ve got is an instructional manual to prepare you before you’re thrown in headfirst, and it doesn’t even tell you about special attacks or combos. Also, an interesting design decision on Tomy’s part was the inclusion of touch-screen functionality, to activate powerups that can help give you an edge in battles; unfortunately, since you’ll need to keep both hands on the buttons 90% of the time, it’s very hard to activate a powerup without giving your opponent a nice chance to beat you down.
What really brings Ninja Destiny down in my mind, however, is some curious balance issues. What immediately comes to my mind are the special attacks; they’re definitely overpowered, especially in story mode, and when I say overpowered, I mean for everybody but you. For the most part when you play, your special attacks can take out about a quarter of your health bar, but your opponent’s can take away upward of 3/4 of your own health bar. Even when you get a hold of one of these overpowered characters, that just means you’ll be ending fights quickly and cheaply, as it’s not hard to get enough chakra to pull one off.
Other than that, the game never feels like it’s at the proper level of challenging. For the most part, battles can be easily won, especially considering that you can spam an enemy with shurikens and usually never give them a chance to attack (try it, it works well). With special attacks and a general knowledge of how enemies will attack, you can win most fights easily. When the fight isn’t easy, though, it is mind-bendingly frustrating; the eighth battle of story mode, especially on difficult, made me want to tear my hair out. Luckily, the game isn’t that difficult very often, but it is rather easy too often.
The game also has a local multiplayer mode, but unfortunately, due to a lack of resources (i.e. other people with a Nintendo DS), I was unable to test this part of the game. Perhaps when you’re playing against another human, most of the balance issues will clear themselves up; unfortunately, I can’t say this with any certainty.
I can see myself really enjoying the next Ninja Destiny game; the fighting engine is pretty solid, so if balance issues were cleaned up, it could be a very competent fighter, especially on the fighter-starved Nintendo DS. This entry, however, has more than its fair share of issues that shouldn’t be ignored. I’m going to have to say Yay! for hardcore Naruto fans, or Naruto fans with friends, and Nay! for everyone else. Wait for the next iteration, which will hopefully be cleaned up a tad.
