The story of the game is as such: puppets, teamed up with bandits, are trying to capture the “spirit orb” in order to revive the Master Puppet. We find out because these puppets have already attacked the Hidden Sand village and are now at the gates of Konoha. Far be it that the puppets aren’t even being controlled by any puppet masters or anything; we’re in filler territory here, so the rules are out the window.

So now, various characters from the Naruto series become available for you to go through these missions on in order to try and retrieve the orb. Each character has their own combination of moves, with 10 characters in all available for play. While playing as Naruto, Shikamaru, Kakashi, or any of the characters, you’ll have your weak attack, strong attack, along with two signature moves for each character.

Combat is down to a Dynasty Warriors level of simplicity, where you spend your time mashing buttons and there is little variation in how this flows. Enemies have some slight level of intelligence, where they will try to run away from your attacks, and juggle you if there’s the opportunity. Special moves are used only to take out large groups of enemies – or your boredom – and vary in effectiveness. All the stereotypes from the show still exist in combat: Sakura can’t do anything, Naruto is really annoying and only succeeds by using specials, and that you’re better off playing as all the really cool secondary characters.

One of my biggest problems, though, has been how the levels are designed. Many objects have barriers around them, because you can’t interact with the object, or it’s designed to be a wall. The problem is when things like grass and small bushes have this same barrier, it becomes dumbfounding why I can’t run through them. I thought this issue was resolved by the first year of the PlayStation 2’s existence. When you kill an enemy, their spoils will sometimes be flung over the border of the level, and just sit there, while knee-high grass prevents you from collecting it.

My favorite story to highlight is during one part of the game, you enter an enemy fort, and have to go through a clockwork jumping puzzle (which the controls are not suited for). Once I cleared the first room, the second room looked oddly familiar. I went through it, and into one of the other doors. Then, I realized why. Every single clockwork room was exactly the same. Every gear and block was laid out in the same space. This went on for seven or eight rooms. I was absolutely stunned at how lazy the level design was here.

As for the animation quality of the game, it was rather bland. The model designs seemed dated to 2 years ago or so. There was an odd lighting on some of the characters that seemed to give them a cel-shaded look, which I’m not sure if it was just a design choice, or just some bug in the game, as it was only for a select few. The cutscenes also used in-game graphics, and the facial animations were extremely limited. Mouths had three different positions: two open, and one closed. In both open ones, the characters bared their teeth, making it impossible to watch the cutscenes.

Similarly, the voice work in the game was that of the Naruto dub. There were no redeeming factors about listening to it in English, and I had no option to switch to a Japanese language track. So, after a while, it was unbearable, and I’d just skip through the cutscenes. Of course, I’d miss important information, and then have to guess my way through the level. That punishment is fair, though.

The game features additional modes such as versus, missions, and survival modes. Survival mode is fairly straightforward: fight a group of enemies within a time limit, and earn some money. Missions usually have you run around a map and try to defeat a leader. The only problem is, if you happen to die completing a mission, the game will load from your last save point, losing all of the progress you might have done. It’s not like this with survival, though, which is really confusing. It’s a bad system for saving, in my mind.

The game also has a co-op feature in the story mode, so that your friends can join in on the “fun.” The problem is, though, that the camera centers on the first player, and then pans left and right according to how the second player moves. When you’re in the middle of a battle (which is almost always), the camera will be swinging every which way, making it impossible to actually tell what is going on.

Overall, the game doesn’t throw much difficulty at a veteran gamer. To an 8 or 12-year-old child, though, this game would be more difficult, and the flaws of the game wouldn’t be as apparent. From a hardcore perspective, there’s no reason why you would want to play this game – unless you subscribe to Naruto completely, and will follow the series to the ends of the earth. The only redeeming factors are that the game forces me to think beyond mindlessly pressing the square button, but only barely. With some fairly poor handling in combat and in the jumping puzzles, this game is best being one that time forgot.