Welcome to our review of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Trilogy. The games from the hit manga series are out now on Nintendo Switch!
Naruto originally made its debut as a shounen manga in the Japanese magazine called Weekly Shonen Jump. The series ran from 1999 all the way to 2014, just a few years ago, it has a grand total of 72 volumes and a very popular anime series too. Both got translated and are distributed in the majority of languages worldwide. Proving how big a hit this series was. Its author is called Masashi Kishimoto.
Originally dubbed as one of the “Big three”, Naruto joined Bleach and especially One piece as one of the pillars for the manga industry in what could be conceived as their golden years. The series would spawn several movies and even today, the series lives on by means of Boruto, recounting the tales of Naruto his son and his way of life in the shinobi world.
In case you have never heard of the series before, Naruto follows the story of Naruto Uzumaki in his quest to become the Hokage, the leader in a way. He starts off as a clumsy but skilled apprentice ninja and his dreams are as big as can be. In his adventures, he becomes more and more skilled and after losing his friend Sasuke to the dark side, the series enters the Shippuden era, where they fight the Akatsuki, who threaten world peace.
This trilogy recounts the tales of Naruto and his epic battles in order to prevail and become Hokage! My review will first speak about the game per separate sub-title, this is a trilogy of games, after all, followed by general impressions on how it plays and more.
1. NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM allows players to battle in full 3D across massive environments. Players will unleash powerful jutsu attacks, perform acrobatic evasive maneuvers and even run up walls and over water as they pursue their opponent for ninja supremacy. Players will be able to customize their character’s fighting style and recruit up to two support characters to put their own stamp on the action. NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM has been remastered in HD.
2. Impressively faithful to the universe of the anime, NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 2 takes players through the Naruto Shippuden story arc with new battle systems enhancing the gameplay. Players must choose the right companions to fight alongside and together unleash explosive Team Special Techniques to lay waste to opponents. Ultimate Ninja STORM 2 has been remastered in HD.
3. NARUTO SHIPPUDEN Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 has been given a thorough overhaul for its FULL BURST comeback! Not least among the wealth of enhancements is the addition of the feverishly anticipated chapter in which Sasuke and Itachi take on Kabuto in a nail-biting confrontation. Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 has been remastered in HD.
Upon starting the game, you are welcomed by the usual logos of everyone that helped make this fine game and then, the choice between the three games had to be made. I start off by playing the first game of course.
A beautiful animation shows us how Naruto and the Ninetails were joined together and before you know it, you are in your hometown of Konoha, having some noodles with your teacher Iruka. He gives you the lowdown of how this game has missions and items, the better you become at everything, the higher ranked missions you will be able to take on.
Your first mission, taking on Kakashi, a powerful ninja, though he is not so difficult as you’d expect. The first battle is really all about learning how to throw shuriken, how to do the bunshin techniques (cloning yourself) and so on.
Once you pass this, the game really begins.
My impression, this is a fun game! It plays very smoothly on the Switch and despite some mild interlacing, which the original version also had, it holds up just fine. We uploaded some gameplay on our YouTube channel to show what I mean.
The second and third are basically also perfect ports of the original iterations of the games. I can only applaud Bandai Namco for a very nice job porting these. A small remark to be made, while Japan got a physical release, the west sadly did not get the same treatment and we have an eShop purchase to make. Luckily we can just go in for 1 title or all three. It does allow gamers that are new to the Naruto universe to just try out one of the games at 20 euros instead of having to buy the entire trilogy.
The trilogy also weighs in at a hefty 17,6 gigabyte at the moment of me writing this review.
In conclusion, fans of the genre and of the franchise will love this port and should be getting great bang for the buck. As a lover of the franchise but someone that is not the best at fighting games, I must be blunt here and say that I did have a lot of fun and reliving the story of the game, it felt very nostalgic. As I played the game, I think it is a good addition to the ever-growing database of the console.
Like all games of the genre, the more you play, the better you become and if you hang in there, you are bound for some amazing adventures!
My rating is 75%
