izigame.me

Found this forgotten year-old review stored somewhere on my old HDD and wasn't sure if I should post it. Thought some things would have changed for the better by now. But, as far as I can see, everything is almost exactly the same. So, I figured it's still fair game.
The game's sole existence is a very late attempt by Bandai to create a yet another live service Naruto game after milking Shinobi Striker dry. Instead of a fun experience from preceding games, you get a rehashed shallow compilation of series' previous titles that have minor amount of new additions, while stripping away most of the original content and gatekeeping it behind a $#!tty season/battle pass, daily login rewards, and a run-of-the-mill grind system that wants you to treat this game as a second job and work towards unlocking random items and features, something most people don't care nor have the time for, or alternatively have to purchase said features that used to be part of the base game (like changing your character's outfit color) in an attempt to elicit compulsive behavior from its players and get them addicted to a gacha-style game loop. In the preceding games, you could earn so much money that by the end of your run, you could buy out everything twice over. Performing better in fights, completing special win conditions and playing the game on harder difficulty used to net you extra rewards and gave you that satisfaction of mastering a game, as oppose to here where there's nothing to do but grind stingy amount of in-game currency so that you can spend it on arbitrary cosmetic items. By the end of my completion run that lasted for about 46 hours, I had somewhere around 150,000 ryo that I could barely use to buy a few items. Contrast that amount with previous titles where, with the same playtime in mind, you would have earned well over 1 million ryo. You have nothing valuable to work for and if you've already played this before, it's pretty much the same experience, but you're revisiting a less complete version. It's also kind of insane just how much money they ask of you for such simple DLC bundles that contain basic costumes and music tracks (also stripped from previous games so that they can be sold back to you separately) that you can just mod in if you really want them.
The story mode for Naruto's adventure barely exists, which is just disappointing when you consider that this game was advertised as a complete package, both for longtime fans and newcomers. You basically get a condensed compilation of crucial story events and battles from all the previous games in the Storm series, many of which have been either completely cut or dumbed down to a point of them just being a regular versus match, making you feel like you're skipping through huge chunks of the story. Some major boss fights were also stripped of their various utilities and unique actions and triggering some of these for bonus conditions also takes way longer than it did in the originals. QTE prompts are somehow worse by being either too simplified or not correctly corresponding to on-screen action; In one of these original interactions, you'd press the directional button that corresponds to your character's on screen movement. In Connections, you'd usually get a completely random button prompt to achieve the same outcome. Since QTEs can be tedious, they could have just added an option to disable them altogether. What was the point of simplifying existing ones, but leave all the 10 to 20 second-long button mashing sections unchanged. Well animated cinematics were replaced with anime screenshots that are accompanied with closed captions to tell the story as quickly as possible with no regard for the pacing, serving more as a recap for existing audience rather than a fully fleshed out story (Storm 4 did this as well, but it did have original animations and it did it to save on time of having to animate excessive dialogue from the final arc). For whatever reason, some of these scenes were rerecorded in the English dub with worse takes and audio mixing, and reworked ults for older characters don't even have any additional voice lines. Instead, it's usually just a recycled grunt.
The new story mode, which is just game filler, solely focusses on Boruto's side of things. It's not interesting, it drags on, has poorly fleshed out characters with nonsense motivations, new characters are not playable (probably will be through more DLC), said characters utilize some of the strongest abilities in the series like they're nothing (such as Infinite Tsukuyomi), game uses the idea of becoming in-universe characters from previous generations via VR game to pad out the plot, you're forced to grind said VR game's repetitive fights to progress the story and no explorable areas within the story mode. Ironically, most of Boruto's story is about him reliving Naruto's rather than starting his own. Everything somehow goes back to Naruto, even though Boruto's journey is suppose to be the continuation to the story rather than a recap. Additionally, you also have to do history recap fights twice just to finish the game; Once from Naruto's perspective and once from Boruto's, who's reliving Naruto's battles.
There are some minor mechanical overhauls and combat changes. However, these changes don't really justify this being a standalone game with a possibility of getting a few more characters and stages in a hypothetical future. It's more akin to that of a quality of life patch to an already existing title, and even then, certain things like long range spam characters and the substitution system were hardly touched. Having easier methods of executing combos means you're left open to enemy spam that's hard to get out of if you've already used up your supports or substitutions. Supports also have a tendency to spawn right into the enemy's combo and waste their charge. The only downside for your opponent to stop the combo is because they either ran out of chakra or they chained it for far too long that the combo's damage becomes redundant, as the damage scales back the longer your combo lasts. Some characters have stuns, which can leave you open to ults. Visual clarity is sidelined for the sake of flashy effects, leaving you blindsighted at times; Had a few instances where, due to jutsu spam eroding the ground and causing smoke screens, I couldn't see enemy's attempts to grab or ult me.
There's little to no new game modes, minimal customization, no modern day utilities like spectators, queues, or group and friend invites (at least when I initially played). Other platforms' net code is supposedly better, but Steam's version is next to impossible to play online, as it almost always breaks. We still get modern day releases that lack features or are broken on day one, yet we have to wait an indefinite amount of time on a possible future fix. Net code has been an issue since PS3/360 days. You also have post match reactions and surveys that ask you to express what you felt after each point in the story (Or collect data on you. I'm more willing to believe this, since you're basically signing a contract to play this, with a pinky promise that they won't misuse it) and then shows you the overall results in an attempt to force this notion of an online community where there is none; You can't really have one when you don't allow players to interact with each other or express themselves. What is even the point of these simplistic choices and stupid questions; 'Do your ideals align more with the guy who cherishes his companions and lives his life to the fullest or with the guy destroying everything in his wake and uses people for his 'might is right' ideology.
Additional issues include lags and glitches, coupled with a few crashes and softlocks, mainly when you alt-tab. Best way to experience this story for the first time is with the original Storm collection.
Unless you're a major fan of the series, I strongly recommend against buying this game.