Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2 Updated Hands-On

The Naruto series is still going strong, especially with its edgier, ongoing Shippuden storyline. Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2 will cover the first two major story arcs, giving fans the opportunity to play through the important events of the show, more so than any other Naruto game being released this year. Tomy came by to give us an updated look at Ninja Destiny 2 as well as show us the game's main features.

Ninja Destiny 2 is primarily a fighting game, but light role-playing game elements have been added to break up the gameplay. You'll wander the familiar grounds of the Hidden Leaf Village in a top-down view, tracking down the locals to progress through the story. A helpful minimap at the bottom of the top screen will flag where you need to go. Our Tomy representative emphasized that the RPG elements are extremely light, so you're not dealing with shops or currency, but there is freedom to explore. You're running from one objective to another, traveling through dungeons and other towns, and picking up items you find along the way--which will prove to be helpful in battle. While exploring these locations, you'll encounter random enemies before reaching the final showdown of that chapter, against a character from the series. The story is told through a lot of text, so depending on how much of it you want to read, it won't be long before you get down to business and tackle the main boss of that particular chapter.

Once the Story mode is completed, you'll unlock Quest mode, a new mode that generates mazelike dungeons for you to go through and complete. You can play this 30-level mode with different characters, which will ultimately unlock more characters to play. All the familiar faces from the original Ninja Destiny will return, and you'll see some new faces as well, so the final roster will have 34 playable characters.

The controls are smooth from what we've played, and fans will appreciate the cinematic jutsu animations that mirror the moves performed by the characters in the television show. Not much has changed from the previous game in terms of combat, because you still have your usual light and heavy attacks as well as your special move once your chakra gauge is full. Power-ups also return, and they're still situated on the bottom screen, for easy touch-screen access. In versus or single-player mode, you'll be given six random items to use to your advantage, but as you're progressing through the game's story, your items are based on what you can find.

We were told that Story mode should take about four to five hours to complete, but the battles can keep going if you want them to in multiplayer mode, which uses the Nintendo DS's local wireless capabilities so you can play with a friend. While the game does look very much like the previous Ninja Destiny, this sequel looks to be packing much more content for fans to use their jutsu on. Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2 is expected to ship sometime in September.