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.