Having preordered this game from shopto.net and getting it three days ago because of the wonders of shopto, I've been playing this game a lot. Why? Because it's a Naruto fan's heaven, simply put.
The first thing I did (after installing four gigs worth of Naruto data and changing the english voiceover to Japanese with subtitles) was play a free battle with the small amount of players you unlock from the get-go. Due to the fact that I had already played the prequel, I already knew the fairly simple moves-O is combo, X is dash, Triangle to use Chakra moves (like Ninjutsu, more powerful shuriken, and the like), and square to chuck shuriken. All of it plays very similarly to
One of these differences is the new things implemented into calling teammates in, called 'support drive'. After you call in your teammates a set number of times (by pressing R1), your teammates will go all out with their support to you-helping out with combos, chucking shuriken with you, interfering their dashe s, even taking an Ultimate Jutsu hit for you so you don't take the damage. This adds a bit more depth into you using your teammates-you'll be trying to use them effectively as much as possible, since you can't just spam your teammates just for the sake of getting your support drive up because your teammates need time before they can be used again.
Another thing team-related is the Team Ultimate Jutsu-after 'support drive', more use of your teammates abilities result in the ability to use a Team Ultimate Jutsu, which is much faster than a regular Ultimate Jutsu and takes away a bit more. If you were looking for something truely amazing aesthetically, be disappointed-all it is is two guys punching the enemy then your regular Ultimate Jutsu.
Speaking of disappointing aesthetics and Ultimate Jutsus, if you had played NUNS, you would remember the Ultimate Jutsus to be insanely awesome looking, with highly unrealistic things happening even from ninja perspectives. Like these, for example:
A big disappointment, since everything else in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 looks fantastic and true to the anime. The story mode, Ultimate Adventure, has backgrounds which look extremely good, and the fighting looks, for the most better, much better than its prequel, as well as most of the anime-based games today.
The fighting has improved also. In NUNS1, some Ultimate Jutsus and ninjutsus were incredibly easy to hit, as well as insanely powerful-not any more. Most Ultimate Jutsus are incredibly slow, making them much harder to hit (although the result is normally worth it in terms of damage), and fully charged ninjuts us thankfully don't blow through your defence like they did in the original Storm. Awakenings, which were power ups when you had reached a certain amount of hit points, feel much more indivi
Ultimate Adventure, the new adventure mode, is also an improvement over the first games adventure mode. Following Shippuden up until its most recent arc in anime (fighting against Pain), Ultimate Adventure is better because of many things-the first one being the extras. In the first game, the only thing you could do instead of the main story arc, other than beat up crates, was minigames and redoing those minigames and main missions with specific conditions, which quickly became tedious. NUNS2, however, has a lot of extra things to do-more entertaining missions, collecting cursed dolls (which are basically fights), and finding messenger birds, are the more fun things to do outside of the main missions. However, some of the things you can do, like collecting pearls and other materials, picking which letter sounds the nicest so you can get your social status with friends up, and finding story parts, which is basically text wrapping up the story which you should probably already know if you're playing this game, are tedious. Still, the good outweighs the bad, and the extras are exactly that-extras. You don't really get anything extra beneficial from doing them (with the exception of the cursed dolls, but thats fun in itself) other than a trophy or two.
The best part about NUNS2 is the fact that it is a great improvement over its prequel. Its problems have been addressed for the most part, the 40+ characters all make sense (except for Kirin-who just feels as if she's there to complete Hebi), the online mode is good enough, and the fighting overall is more tight and fastpaced. If you liked the first, you should definitely get the second-unless the only reason you liked the first was because of the Ultimate Jutsus-which is a fair enough reason, I suppose.
Any questions about the game? I'll be happy to answer.
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