Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 Review

Naruto has had a strong presence on Nintendo consoles, a thriving partnership that has produced critically acclaimed games that have also been commercial successes. Building on that foundation, Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 delivers a content-rich, fast-paced fighter to Wii players.

Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 adds a ton of characters to an already large cast from last year’s game. In all, a whopping 35 characters are available for battle, including some fighters created exclusively for this title, consisting of new Anbu characters. Adding to the large amounts of new and exclusive content, there is a very long single player campaign with an all new storyline based around the aforementioned special black ops group, the Anbu.

Gamers will be happy to know that Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 allows the player to control the action using either the Wii Remote/nunchuck combination, the Wii Classic controller, or the GameCube controller. I chose to play using the Wii remote, which allowed me to take advantage of motion controls to recreate the series’ trademark hand signs. At times, I found that some of my motions didn’t properly register, rarely costing me a round. Still, Wii owners know that this problem isn’t unique to any one specific game, and for the most part, using gestures was just as effective as button presses. Pulling off special moves is relatively easy, as is character switching during battle. The game features a few minor tweaks to their fighting engine from last year, including the ability to use paper bombs. Overall, if you became familiar with last year’s game, you’ll feel right at home here. And, in a nutshell, that can be the biggest complaint that you’ll have with this title-its similarity to last year’s Clash of Ninja Revolution.

Multiplayer battles are fun, even more so than in last year’s Clash of the Ninja Revolution game. Up to four players can brawl at the same time, which is great, though sometimes the four player battles get a little too crowded with players doing special movies. Unfortunately the game STILL doesn’t support online battle through Nintendo’s WiFi Connection service. This omission prevents this game from being the AAA blockbuster it clearly has the potential to be, and will probably limit its replay value for owners. The gameplay and presentation for this series is so refined, that it’s hard to imagine another sequel to this game that doesn’t include online battles.

Graphically, Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 delivers solid, cel-shaded graphics with widescreen (16:9) support and progressive scan support (480p). If you played the original Clash of the Ninja Revolution, you’ll know what to expect, though the animations have been improved and of course there are new characters involved. The fighting arenas are also more varied this time around, though they remain relatively static and lack substantial interactive elements. As a bonus, there is a new opening movie created by Studio Pierrot, and 3D rendered cinematic sequences to move the story along. Overall, it’s a pretty slick presentation for a Wii game.

The sounds in Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 are well executed, and contain all the little details that help immersion, such as echo effects in cavernous arenas and other similar touches. There is quite a bit of text during the game’s lengthy story missions, but there is a good bit of voice acting as well during the cinematic sequences. Of course, the full array of familiar Naruto sounds are present during battles, and the sample quality on those are as solid as ever.

Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 is easily one of the best fighting game on Wii, a console with a deceptively solid lineup in that particular genre. If you’ve played the original Clash of Ninja Revolution, you will definitely get a case of déjà vu early on, but that will quickly fade as you dig in to all the new content presented in this year’s update. Given the dearth of first party titles on Wii this holiday season, or competent third party titles for that matter, Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 should definitely be a consideration for any Wii owner’s holiday wish list.