Let’s just get the obvious out of the way first; Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm is a beautiful looking game. The cel-shaded graphics combined with the superb animation just blows the mind and at times looks even better the show. But rather than talk endlessly about how awesome it all looks (which I seriously could), let's just move on.
When controlling your character in battle, the player uses O for melee, X for jump, Triangle for charging your chakra meter and Square is for throwing shuriken/kunai knives etc. R2 and L2 are used for block, where timing the block allows you to do “substitutions” and appear behind the opponent after he/she has attacked, and R1 and L1 is used for calling your “assists” which are characters that come and help you by doing one of their attacks on the opponent.
The combat is fast and frantic. If you’re facing an opponent who is equally as skilled as you are, be prepared for some hectic battles and a f**k load of substitutions. There isn't much depth in terms of the actual fighting combat, since melee is just one button and everyone has pretty much the same button combinations of OOOOOO UP OOOO, Triangle Circle for their special ninjutsu attack, and so on. Admittedly it does get quite tiring to see your character perform the same old combos over and over again, even if they do look spectacular. However despite this, the open world, items, assists and substitution timing gives NUNS a fairly good amount of depth and strategy. In fact some may be surprised how much of this game requires timing, such as if you were smashed into the ground you only have about half a second to press "x" before you hit the ground so to recover from it. Also contrary to what some may believe, you can't keep tapping R2 while getting attacked to do a substitution. Actually you could, but it's not effective. Of course it's no Tekken or Virtua Fighter in terms of skill level and learning curb, but it's not meant to be as CC2 are clearly trying to be as mainstream as possible in terms of the easy-to-pick-up nature of the combat. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm is it's own type of fighter of which there aren't many like it.
The roster, although 25 characters long, provides plenty of variety in terms of the range in which some characters are best adept at and the visual style of their attacks. For example, Kankuro is good with long-range since he uses a puppet to do his fighting and Neji is skilled at close-range fighting. However it is disappointing to see some important characters to the story being missed out, such as Zabuza and Haku, the Sound Ninja 5, and even Drunken Lee!
Ultimate Mission Mode is the story mode of NUNS, where the player can explore Konoha village in a sand-box style and play out missions regarding the anime’s story and also seek out extra missions. However, the story portion of the game doesn't really explain the show's plot all that well either for people unfamiliar with the series, as the game is far too reliant on text-summaries and there aren't many cut-scenes. However despite this the cutscenes look incredible, especially the final showdown with Naruto vs Sasuke which I felt really captured the tone of the show. It should be noted that NUNS skipped over the first story arc of the show; “Land of Waves”, and many fans believed this arc to be pivotal to the overall storyline of the series.
Aside from the story missions, there are plenty of extra missions to do in Ultimate Mission Mode. The missions are ranked D through S, and will take quite some time to complete them all. There isn't much variety with mission types, however each of the actual missions are tailored slightly differently so it doesn't always feel like your doing the exact same thing over and over again.
While exploring the village in Ultimate Mission Mode, you can collect scrolls to increase support-character ninjutsu, find hidden ramen ingredients to improve the chakra, and find hidden treasures that unlock character ninjutsu. The traversing element itself is pretty fun, although it could use a little tightening up. Naruto handles well when you're jumping from roof to roof and vaulting across long distances with the clone jutsu canon, but I was disappointed by the fact you could only run up walls at certain points on the map.
The wealth of collectables is very impressive. Seriously, there is a ton of stuff; music, character movies and character models (similar to Smash Brothers). These alone don't sound too compelling, however when a certain "set" is collected, you can unlock these animated "dioramas", which are like cut scenes which last a few seconds but are pretty cool to say the least. For example, when you buy a Naruto model, Naruto finishing move movie, and the training grounds music, you unlock a diorama scene of Kakashi doing his "stick fingers up ass" jutsu, and it played out exactly like it did in the show.
Also lastly, after I finished the story mode, there was a promise of a "true ending" that can be unlocked.
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm has been hyped by many for some time now as the definitive next-generation Naruto game. CyberConnect 2’s latest instalment doesn’t quite live up to that hype as there are several flaws that plague it, such as a story mode that’s way too stingy on the cut-scenes, not enough variations of missions and minigames, a lacking roster, and a combat system which could be a little deeper. However despite those flaws there is much fun to be had with Ultimate Ninja Storm, although probably not so much for those who aren't fans of the show.