E3 2008: Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 Impressions

After a middle-of-the road first outing, Naruto: Path of the Ninja is heading to the Nintendo DS for a second time. We popped in to see the new version at D3's E3 2008 booth.

The development team at Tomy has added a number of new features in Path of the Ninja 2. For a start, they've created a completely new story this time around. The original game's story was based on the comic, which meant that Naruto fans could burn through the game in record time. This new story is firmly rooted in the existing Naruto world, but considering that it has been created specifically for the game, the developers hope that it will be a more challenging experience this time around, encouraging players to explore and discover in the process.

The number of characters has been upped from 7 to 30 this time around. Instead of having three members in your squad, you now have four, and you can choose one as a squad leader. Leaders have special abilities such as increased experience in battle. In addition to your squad leader, you'll be able to call in some backup by summoning an animal. Each character has his or her own special creature to summon, and some of the ones available include a giant snake, a tortoise, and even a weasel.

One of the biggest new features is two-player support over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connect. Although we weren't able to try our hand at it, the team hopes this will add a great deal of replay value to the game. Ad-hoc multicard support is also on hand for a quick two-player game. Along with the story mode and multiplayer, Tomy confirmed that a new "as-yet-unannounced" single-player mode would be included in the final version, but unfortunately we weren't able to see that at E3.

Throughout the story mode and multiplayer, you'll also discover ninja tags that let you equip characters with status changes, new abilities, increased defence, and more. You'll find them scattered throughout the game, and it sounds like there'll be a good-sized stack for you to find and collect.

Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 will be out this September in North America. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more coverage as the game nears release.