An improvement in gameplay comparing it to Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3, even if the rooster is not as beefy as the former.
Graphics 7,5/10: It's not an Ghost of Sparta in terms of effects and textures, but considering how much effort can be spotted in the cell-shading for anime-based games lately, this one brings it right. All characters, even the generic horde of enemies looks well rendered, have fluid moves and have nice animations. The most notable issue is about the landscape, since it looks like, wherever location you might be, an big backyard, because it's so flat that looks like more arenas than an battlefield itself. Also, I don't know if it was for sake of processing capabilities of the PSP, your vision range is badly reduced since you can see it forming several steps ahead of you, as well the apperance of objects/enemies, that may not jeopardize the gameplay as much as it looks like, neverless could gave been better worked. But one really good aspect, that have been nicely in other titles as well is the jutsus animations, that, like the Ultimate Attacks as well, looks pretty and well made.
Audio 8,0/10: Nothing much to say here, outside that the dialogues and voices are superb, having putted once again the good dub team to do justice to the series. The sound effects, despite may look like a bit bland, fits it's role in a massive 1000x1 game as well the special effects from the ninja techniques make up for the player ears. The only thing to complain is about how repetitive some lines became (Just like Koei's Warrior's series) no matter what action take on battlefield, that can become annoying over time.
Gamplay 8,0: I won't complain much here as I would in my reviews, since one of my greatest disappointment in Naruto games is the lack of special attacks each character can do in the same battle (like it was in UNH 3, where you must choose, in a reasonable list 1 jutsu to be your main attack), also the games tries it's best to prevent simple button mashing by combining sequencies and variable jutsus to make it fun and really feel like the character you are being using. Another thing to praise is that the rooster, despite not being as I stated before beefy compared to UNH 3, is pretty solid and decent with a good variation of actions between characters, making them not only simple pallete swap as many games of this genre might be. There are several timed events in the game, like Ultimate Ninja Storm, that resemble or remake in a good way many of the franchises momentum. On the downside, the generic enemies AI, despite being a bit more proactive than DW series, still makes no much challenge at all, looking like more a big wall of paper and milking the game than actually represent something usefull to begin with. Also the in-game missions aren't much varied and can be solved just with little more than "smash-buttons", still they don't make the game pointless as might look.
Replay 7,5/10: With many unlockables, as you would expect, extra battlemodes and a Ad-Hoc support, this game is a nice package that can keep a fan busy for a good bunch of hours, but may exhaust itself in hands of someone who's not so familiarize with the game. Yet, in my non-so-much fan of the series, worth the pick to kill some time....or several ninjas.
Overall 7,5/10: Ultimate Ninja Impact promised gameplay changes and a nice beat-up battlefield stuff in Naruto Universe and really did a good job in the role, and, despite having some setbacks, really improved in many ways compared to other titles of the franchise (especially in the Sony's Portable System). It deserves a try, at least in the demo, fan or not-fan alike.
That's it for now, sorry for misspellings, see you next time.
Faith