The fighting was fun and addictive, but the minigames were frustrating and could seem pointless.
Fighting: 10/10 The fighting system from Ubisoft was fun and addictive. The combat was 3-D and that aspect lived completely up to my expectations. The jutsu were great, each was an interactive minigame/ scene. Each character is completely equal in jutsu as well as fighting (unlike the anime and manga.) The story mode had its fair share of fights, although few were very challenging. If you felt like you weren't getting enough action in the story mode, you could play fight mode. In fight mode, you can play with a friend in a 1 on 1, 2 player fight, you can play against the CPU in a 1 on 1, 1 player fight mode, or you could play in a 1 player tournament mode. The 2 player mode doesn't need to be explained; you pick your character and fight the other person. The 1 player vs. CPU matches doesn't either; you pick your character and the CPU's character and you fight. The tournament mode however, is a different story. In the tournament mode, you select your character and fight against a randomly picked CPU character (although the first one is always Sasuke.) Then the CPU keeps randomly picking characters increasing the difficulty slowly as the rounds go on. If you beat every single character, you are the tournament champion.
Story Mode 7.5/10 The story mode just left a lot out, and added too much in. First off, the story mode only goes until the 80th episode, which I found extremely disappointing. Also, until you meet your sensei Kakashi, you have to go and collect ancient coins to help shopkeepers open their stores. Needless to say, that part is excruciatingly boring and might even make you want to return the game. Once you start getting real missions, it gets slightly more interesting, but all you then get to fight is bandits. The best (and hardest) parts of the game are the boss battles, where you battle real people from the story like Zabuza, or Orochimaru. If not for your memoclips (items that revive you), you would definitely lose those battles no matter how hard you tried. The worst part of the story mode though, is the minigames. The minigames vary from racing through the trees, which is pretty fun, to playing hide and go seek. The most frustrating one though, is definitely the ninja races. During the ninja races you have to go through these little gates that extend your time. If you miss a gate you have to go back and go through it. You only have a limited amount of time to get from gate to gate and if you fail the race over and over, it just gets frustrating. Also, at one point you have to beat an extremely hard race, just to get a scroll from this guy. At that point I thought, "I'm a ninja for crying out loud, why don't I just beat him up and take the scroll?!" The story mode is fun, frustrating, boring, pointless, and annoying sometimes, but I still recommend playing it.
Gameplay/Graphics 9.5/10 The gameplay of Naruto Rise of a Ninja is extremely smooth and fluid. During battles when there is a lot of action, it doesn't lag, or freeze for a second. All of Naruto's jumping, kicking, and running all happen as they would in real life. The graphics are vivid and amazing. There are only two problems. One is that the character's faces close up lack detail and texture. Also, when the characters are speaking in the game, their mouths don't move. Instead, all of the characters emotion is shown by a picture of their head, with expressions from the anime.
All in all Naruto Rise of a Ninja is a very good game that is close to perfection. Whether you are a fan of the series or not, this game incorporates both and I would recommend it to anyone.