Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2
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.jpg) Sequel are way better than most first games, believe it! - Naruto (probably)
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Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 is an action, adventure, 3D fighting, platform video game created by Cavia and published by Namco Bandai Games for the PlayStation 2 on November 16, 2006 in Japan and September 7, 2007 in North America. It was a sequel to Naruto Uzumaki Chronicles.
Plot
The Five Great Nations are at great peril: an army of walking-dolls called Puppet Walkers are attacking their villages with the intent of taking "Spirit Orbs", which are hidden within each land. They had their success at taking the Spirit Orbs from four of the five, the last is in the Land of Fire. Naruto Uzumaki, who was on his way to Konohagakure, is intercepted by Kankurō, who is trying to warn the village about the Puppet Walkers. But they come to late and have to battle several of them. Kakashi Hatake provides them both assistance upon confronting a lizard puppet in search for the Spirit Orb. At the Fifth Hokage's room, Kankurō explains that the puppets are the weapons of the Shirogane clan, a group of puppeteers almost extincted and they are collecting the Spirit Orbs with one single intent: revive the Master Puppet, a mass destruction weapon with the power to destroy the Five Great Nations.
Why It Rocks
- For starter, it is a massive improvement over the first game, which was incredibly boring, tedious, and just not fun. This is going to the controls and the gameplay as well as everything.
- This was technically the first Naruto game in which the battles were done in 3D, even before Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, the first Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm game that was done in 3D, which was the main Naruto video game series.
- While not great and a major downgrade from the first game, the graphics we're decent for the time, and they we're accurate to the show, although there is a problem... (See BQ#2)
- Extremely tight and responsive controls, the characters will never feel unresponsive at all, and while the jumps are rather clunky to control, at least it isn't as bad as in the first game, in other words, the controls are way better and make the game even more solid than it is.
- The soundtrack is very good, and look like it came straight out from the show.
- A good, original story, revolving around a clan of puppet masters, which is a style of combat that was mostly underutilized in the main series, outside of Kankuro and Sasori.
- The combat is extremely fun and way better than in the first game, since it is extremely solid to play, and the moves mostly come from the anime, also the combat had tight controls and the hit-detection is so much better than the first game, since in the first game, the combat was clunky, delayed and overall was terrible in comparison to this game.
- All of the recurring characters are well written and kept in character.
- Speaking of the previous pointer, the combat implements strategy to a certain extent, because it promotes not always bum-rushing in, but keeping an eye on your chakra supply and only using chakra techniques when you have to.
- Awesome boss battles, which mostly consist of fights with characters from the manga and anime, and it include some of the villains too.
- Extremely fun gameplay, especially because of the combats and the fact that the controls are way better than in the first game, also the gameplay is really fast-paced, in a similar way to Ben 10: Protector of Earth (another underrated PS2 game), and the gameplay is also pretty challenging but still stay fairly balanced as stated before.
- The villains, despite being one dimensional, are still fun and interesting.
- The box art once again look very cool, and is quite detailled, also it is similar to one of the artworks from the anime, and it is faithful to the show art style.
- The voice acting, despite being a little bit poor, is actually alright and all of the voice actors reprised their roles.
- There's more playable characters in the main story than in the first game, since here they are not support only and could be played in almost every levels, unlike in the first game where you can only play as them in a time limit.
- You can now block ennemies attacks, which is great because it can make the game difficulty way more balanced, and it add way more to the combat system, which is a little complex for it's time.
- Unlike the first game, there's not any cut contents.
Bad Qualities
- Believe it or not, but the game is somehow even shorter than the first game, with only 10 stages, and you can beat it in only 4 hours.
- The graphics, while pretty decent for the time, had now aged extremely poorly and look a little weaker than the first game due to not being as detailled but the colors are still way better than in the first game despite that the first had good graphics.
- While the controls are good in most cases, they can be rather flawed during platform segments. It's almost like the platform segments were thrown in at the last second, this is because the jump controls is terrible and clunky.
- The game could have used more checkpoints because if you die when you're traveling from one point to another you have to start all over again.
- Also connected to the previous bad quality, it can take a really, sometimes frustratingly, long time to get from one location to another.
- Despite being decent, the voice acting is a little bit poor, especially in comparison to the other games, though the japanese voices are way better.
- There's way too much cutscenes, to the point that they almost take half of the game, as they sometime last for 6 minutes, which is incredibly long for a game cutscene, even if it's an anime game.
- Despite being extremely fun to play, the game might be repetitive, although it is so good that you might not mind that flaw.
Reception
While it received mixed reviews by critics, with a score of 56/100 on Metacritic (which is lower than the first game who had a 62/100), the game received positive reviews by gamers and fans of the franchise who considered it to be a massive improvement over the first game, and praised the fun combat and the more balanced difficulty, but criticized the short length.
Trivia
- In the games' video game guide, despite everyone having a biography picture, Kankurō's biography picture is missing.
- In the first chapter of the game, there is a cutscene where a wall at Kisaragi Village with Itachi Uchiha's wanted posters can be seen, foreshadowing his presence later in the game.