Reviews// Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

I’ve always been a massive fan of the Ninja Storm games and Naruto in general, so when I had this new beauty flung at my face I really couldn’t resist, although part of me was also hesitant. Whilst I enjoyed the previous games in the series, they started to become a bit boring.

Sure, you got a few new characters and a bit more of the story to play through, but there wasn’t really much more to make me want to play through most of the game. So I wondered - will this new game keep me interested long enough to write a decent review? Well, after playing it for about 10 hours straight, I’d say so.

There are so many things to do in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution that I’m not sure where to start! There’s around 100 playable characters, with new costumes and a new exclusive character. There’s also over 50 minutes of new exclusive animation footage and new 'Ultimate Combo Jutsus'.

The first thing I did (as I always do in the Ninja Storm) games was open up the options and change the language to Japanese. There are various other options in here - you can change the controller functions to your liking and you can also turn off violent and bloody imagery if you have a little one watching / playing with you. If you have played the previous games in the Ninja Storm series, you’ll get the nice little present of a new character and some special accessories.

The fighting aspect of the game hasn’t really changed much. You have the usual one main ninja and two support ninjas. One thing which disappointed me was still only having the option of only two jutsus to use. When you like to use a character like Kakashi who knows over 1000 different jutsus, that can be a bit frustrating. You can place items on the D-Pad to use in battle, with options such as healing food and offensive explosive tags that can offer you a solid advantage in battle when used correctly.

At the end of a battle, you are assessed and given a rank. The higher the rank, the better the rewards. If you’re new to the series or haven’t played in a while and want to brush up on your skills, you can head over to Free Battle mode and fight to your heart’s content.

As well as being able to choose your support Ninjas, you can also choose a support type. There are three types to choose from: Awakening types, Drive Types and Ultimate Jutsu types. Awakening type allows you to use your awakening from the beginning of the battle. Drive type is interesting in that as well as auto-summoning your support characters, when your Storm Gauge is at max you can summon your team to use a seal barrier on your enemy so that they can’t use any ninjutsu.

The best of the three in my opinion, though, has to be the Ultimate Jutsu type. If you choose the right combination of characters and select the Ultimate Jutsu type, you can use an Ultimate Combo Jutsu. For example, if you choose Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura, they form the newly revived Team 7 and they can unleash an ultimate attack which only the three of them together can use. I really enjoyed this feature and spent quite some time in Free Battle mode selecting different combos just to see their Ultimate Jutsus. The jutsu itself isn’t really any more powerful than their normal ultimate jutsus, so using them isn’t necessary unless you’re looking for a bit of fan service, but it's a fun addition.

There are various modes in this game – the main one being the Ninja World Tournament. Unlike past games, which have mainly been orientated around the story in the manga/anime, this one has a couple of new stories which branch away from the other mediums.

As the name would suggest, the story is based around the Ninja World Tournament. The five nations have gathered together, and through the use of some space/time Ninjutsu, most of the legendary Ninja have gathered together in a new world area called Festival Island to duke it out and see who really is the strongest of them all. At the start you can choose a character from a few that are available.

I was expecting this mode to be just a plethora of battles to complete so you could move up in the ranks, but after receiving a short explanation on the tournament, you can roam freely around certain parts of Festival Island. I was pleasantly surprised at this, as the free-roaming parts in the previous games have always been a firm favourite of mine.