Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles Hands-On

Currently scheduled for release in North America next month, Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles is a third-person action game based on the popular Naruto anime series. In the game, you'll assume the role of the show's main character, Naruto Uzumaki, a hyperactive young ninja who's attempting to gain approval, recognition, and the title of Hokage by becoming the strongest ninja in his home of Hidden Leaf Village. The game's all-new storyline involves a sinister plot against the village, which you'll uncover as you progress through the game and carry out dangerous missions on behalf of its inhabitants and other friendly characters in the surrounding area.

Unsurprisingly, the missions you undertake in Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles, regardless of what they sound like when they're assigned to you ("delivering food items" for example), generally involve combat, and lots of it. Every time you leave the village and move around the map by clicking on the location that you want to go to next, you run the risk of getting embroiled in random battles, and many of the missions also incorporate scripted battles. The map that you can move around at the start of the game is very small, but it grows quite quickly because your missions task you with visiting new and more distant locations.

The good news is that Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles' combat, at least based on the few hours we've spent with the game thus far, is quite robust. When you start a new game, you'll be invited to play through a tutorial that walks you through the basics of controlling Naruto, and we recommend that you do so because some of the game's controls (as well as the young ninja's fighting style) are anything but conventional. There are some pretty standard jumps, kicks, and punches, but there are also satisfying "substitution" countermoves, some lengthy combos, a superfast dash, and the appropriately named "power strike" to come to grips with. Beyond those still relatively straightforward moves, things start to get really bizarre, because Naruto can summon shadow clones of himself, briefly assume the form of a scantily clad female to seduce enemies, and, when certain criteria are fulfilled, use the power of the nine-tailed fox (a powerful demon sealed inside Naruto's body when he was a baby) to make himself much more powerful for a short time. Thrown weapons such as shuriken, knives, and flash bombs can also be used in combat, along with health-restoring rations and the like.

As you meet new characters on your adventures, some of them will sign up to join your team, and once you've accumulated an ally or two, you'll be able to swap out Naruto for one of them during a fight at the push of a button. The only character who has joined us so far is the candy-loving Choji Akimichi, whose special moves include turning into a human boulder capable of destroying rocks and throwing a massively oversized punch. Other characters that we're told will join your party at various stages of the game include the experienced ninjas Kakashi Hatake and Neji Hyuga, the ever-lazy Shikamaru Nara, and the young prodigy Sasuke Uchiha.

Perhaps the most intriguing feature of Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles is the way that character development is handled. Many of the enemies you defeat will drop virtue orbs, and you'll also earn virtue, which is essentially the game's currency, every time you successfully complete a mission. You can spend your virtue points on "skill chips" that increase Naruto's attributes or give him access to completely new abilities. In order for the oddly shaped skill chips to have any effect, though, you'll have to find a place for them on your current "skill plate," which is an equally oddly shaped item on which you can fit a number of different chips by moving and rotating them like jigsaw pieces. The plate will get larger and more complex later on in the game, as will the more powerful chips that you'll want to place on it.

Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles looks to have quite a lot of depth to it, and although the combat initially appears to be mindless (as many of the early enemies certainly are), we can tell you from experience that you won't get by for very long simply by mashing buttons. On a related note, we can also tell you that you should save the game every time you get an opportunity to do so, because anytime you die, you'll have to reload your last save. Though we learned that lesson after being forced to play through about 40 minutes of the game for a second time, we enjoyed our time with a near-finished copy of Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles, and we're looking forward to bringing you a full review closer to the game's release.