Anyone who isn't completely obsessed with Naruto should avoid this boring and frustrating game at all costs.
(-) complete lack of direction / dialog sequences last overly long, hampering the pace of the game / awful frame rate chugs / no variety in the enemies or environments / worthless multiplayer mode
The Naruto series came out of nowhere, and has become one of the greatest anime franchises to be localized here in America. There's lots of likable characters with different appearances and personalities, plenty of depth for the most fervent of fans to sink their teeth into, and a living breathing world with ninja villages and other towns. The series is brimming with life, delivering non-stop action and emotionally heavy storyline events, making for a solid experience for anyone who has the spare time to watch the 300+ available episodes.
And for the most part, most of the video games that Naruto has starred in have been pretty good. Clash of Ninja especially, offering a deep and strategic fighting system that's perfect for multiplayer battles, and can even suck non-fans into the world of the Shonen Jump anime and inspire them to look into the source material. Ultimate Ninja is geared a little more toward the fans, offering integration to the plot, but in doing so sacrificing the refinement of the gameplay, but it can still be an okay choice if you haven't played the functionally superior Clash of Ninja.
But this new release, Naruto Shippuden Dragon Blade Chronicles firmly rests at the bottom of the barrel for the Naruto games. It captures none of what makes the source material so endearing, and has a long width of annoying issues that are impossible to forgive for the common player, from technical problems to design problems. Simply put, anyone who isn't completely obsessed with Naruto should avoid this boring and frustrating game at all costs.
The game does try to offer a story that wasn't already shown on Disney XD, involving a girl named Akari who has found her way to the Hidden Leaf Village, warning everyone that her brother is trying to awaken an evil dragon to create massive destruction. And the headstrong but heroic ninja that he is, Naruto offers to save the day. They must explore through a land called Mt. Koryu, which depletes their chakra so they can't use their signature super powerful moves. But as a substitute, Akari gives Naruto the dragon sword, which is said to be the only weapon that can kill the beast which presents the utmost threat. But unless you happen to be one of the biggest devotees of Naruto, you're not likely to get much out of the storyline. Because the cut-scenes are overly long, forcing you to sit and wait through as much as seven straight minutes of spoken dialog. The voice acting is actually quite good, but you can only pay attention for so long before your patience wanes. This puts the pace of the game at a crippling halt, which doesn't help the other unpleasant side effects that you'll have to forgive should you actually play this.
Dragon Blade Chronicles plays like a standard beat-em'-up, but the levels are more geared toward jumping puzzles you'd find it a platform. The game isn't really sure what it wants to be. But that's the least of the problems, because the majority of the time you'll be wondering through uninspired and generic environments that carry the Naruto theme but little of anything else. And the enemies don't help matters, because you'll be fighting pretty much the same ones throughout your journey. These consist of rogue ninja devoid of any flair or personality, or my personal favorite, evil floating potatoes with a pumpkin face carved and come in various different colors. So to dispatch these foes, you'll be constantly hitting the A button to do a basic attack, which gets boring fast. Luckily, you do have some other attacks or moves that you can use once certain conditions are met, like Naruto can create a lump of mud to reach higher grounds, or use a small version of his famous energy ball attack, whereas when you play as Sasuke later in the game, you can throw spears and use his lightning blade. You'll also have the opportunity to use the assistance of another character, which they'll offer functions like an additional attack or health recovery. But it fails to save the game from tedium.
And that tedium will quickly lead to frustration, because the game does a very lackluster job of effectively informing you how to progress. You'll often wonder through rooms and more rooms that look nearly identical, around in circles, and worse yet, every time you re-enter a room you just entered, the enemies you destroyed before will respawn so you have the pleasure of redundantly taking them out once again. Not only is it annoying, but if they at least wouldn't re-appear, then you'd have a better idea where you've been or haven't been. The levels also have overly specific challenges, like as Naruto you're expected to use a chakara mud mountain attack to stop a waterfall, and enter a hole in the canyon. But the game will give you no clue on how to do this, and you'll need to stand at one certain hot spot to do it successfully, so if you're actually serious about completing the story for some morbid reason, you'll have to hit Youtube and sit through walk-throughs. Otherwise, you'll be lost.
The boss fights do give the game a brief step forward from its dullness, but not nearly enough to warrant everything you'll have to sit through to reach them. There's an enormous rock monster, and a large sea monster that casts water waves, which these battles demand specific strategies, offer the righteous amount of challenge, and it really does feel satisfying taking them down. But they're few and far between, and they do very little to save the game's case.
From the music to the graphics, you're getting a similar offering to what you've already seen in any of the Clash of Ninja games. The character models look jaggy, but have some adequate detail to them. And while the environments are selfsame after a while, they do fit nicely with the characters. But the game will only hold up while the frame rate cooperates, which is sadly not often. When any more than five enemies appear on screen, the game will make frequent lags and slowdowns. While it doesn't render the game unplayable, it does drag the experience down even further. And considering that Clash of Ninja could offer up to four players on screen at once, with more action then you'd ever see here, with some pretty awesome special moves, it doesn't make sense why we're getting slowdown from five floating rotten potatoes in a game that appears to look strikingly similar.
And if you can somehow convince somebody to play this with you, the game does offer an incredibly useless two player mode where you can have Naruto and Sasuke pit against each other (no other characters are available). It seems more like a joke than an actual feature, because the lack of a lock-on system, and the brain dead simple combat controls, and the still dull levels you fight in, there's absolutely no reason to play this mode if you have any of the superior other Naruto games at hand.
While Dragon Blade Chronicles isn't so bad that you'll be permanently scarred into avoiding Naruto the rest of your life, anyone who isn't the kind of person who must have every DVD, T-shirt, lunch-box, or plush toy should avoid this game at all costs. It's not a good game, not even close to a good game. Motivating yourself to bear through the whole thing is extremely difficult if you aren't completely obsessed, and the large amount of inexcusable flaws add over time and will inevitably get the best of you. For your ninja battle fix, there are better options available everywhere, and just pretend that this awful spin-off was never even thought of.