Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2
Protagonist(s): Naruto Uzumaki Genre(s): Action-adventure Fighting Anime 2D Sidescrolling Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Release: September 30, 2004 (Japanese Version) June 12, 2007 (North American Version) October 19, 2007 (PAL Versions) October 26, 2007 (Australian Versions) Developer(s): CyberConnect2 Publisher(s): Bandai Namco Games Series: Naruto Naruto Ultimate Ninja Predecessor: Naruto Ultimate Ninja Successor: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2 is a 2D side-scrolling, action, adventure, fighting video game created by Namco Bandai Games and released for the PlayStation 2 on September 30, 2004 in Japan, June 12, 2007 in North America, October 19, 2007 in PAL Regions, and October 26, 2007 in Australia, as a sequel to Naruto: Ultimate Ninja. It was later followed by Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3.

Why It Rocks

1. Great controls.
2. Decent graphics for the FMV cutscenes.
3. The Ultimate Jutsus are really cool, and you can choose between doing one of three of them at any given time, plus if you're good enough you can extend them further with quicktime events.
4. The story mode contains four story arcs. The first two follows the anime and manga, those being the Invasion of Orochimaru Arc and the Tsunade Retrieval Arc respectively, and then there were two arcs that they created specifically for the game.
5. The arcs they created for the game were decent.
6. A good size roster of characters. There was a total of 32 characters in the game, (33 in the Japanese version, which was a special promotion for the movie Naruto: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow).
7. Incredibly fun and addicting gameplay.
8. You can have up to two other characters as support characters who can assist you occasionally.
   • In versus mode you can increase the amount of support characters each character has. To do this, choose a character and fight against another character, and win three times in a row. If you do this, those two characters will become support characters of each other.
9. An incredible amount of unlockables that you can buy form the Tanzaku Market if you build up your Ryo. These include, but are (probably) not limited to, Figures, Ninja Info Cards, FMV's, Voices, Music, etc.
10. There's also an incredible amount of side missions within the main game.
11. The game finds away to continuously challenge the player, at least in the side missions, even if they have gotten really good at the game, by coming up with unique challenge conditions for fights, such as using substitution jutsu a certain mount of times, rebounding a certain amount of times, finishing the battle with a certain Ultimate Jutsu, finishing the battle with a certain normal Jutsu, rebounding your ninja tools with your opponents a certain amount of times, finishing the battle in a more strict time limit, fighting in a state of slow speed, fighting in a weightless state, never stopping attacking for more than one count, or finishing the battle without taking a single hit, among many others. In fact, some of the toughest missions will put many of those restraints on you, only for the most skilled of players.
12. Decent graphics for the time, even though it hasn't aged well.
13. The box art is amazing and cool, even for a Naruto game.

Bad Qualities

1. The in-game graphics have aged poorly, even for their time.
2. While the Tanzaku Market is a cool feature, it can become tedious to grind Ryo until you have enough to buy everything.
3. The slot machines in Tanzaku Town. While it's kind of humorous, and even fun at first, considering that it's obviously a joke on the fact that Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage, often sneaks away to Tanzaku Town to gamble, and they are the quickest way to grind Ryo, they get boring after awhile.
4. The pushups mini-game with Rock Lee is one of the most annoying side quests in all of video games.
5. The substitution Jutsu is incredibly hard and frustrating to pull off, and half of the time it doens't work at all no matter how much you jam on the substitution button, (R2).
6. One of the Secret Scrolls you have to earn in the side game is earning 9,999,999 Ryo. This in and of itself is already tedious, but what makes it worse is the fact that if you have to have that amount all at once; if you spend any money, then it's subtracted not just from your wallet, but from your ultimate goal.

Game Tips

1. While the slot machines in Tanzaku can be incredibly boring, it is recommended to play them if you want to get quick and easy Ryo and you don't feel like fighting or doing missions. As long as you keep doing the slots, you will eventually keep earning more medals. You can earn up to 9,999 medals at once, after which you'll have to cash them out in order to continue.

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