Naruto: The Broken Bond

I think i can speak for most people when i say most of the people who play games based off anime are looking for a quick anime fix, I include myself in this. So when i sat down to play Naruto the Broken Bond I wasn't expecting much, especially since I struggled to enjoy Rise of a ninja.
Now to begin I enjoyed this game a lot, and not just as a fan of Naruto but as a guy who has played some games.
To start you are thrown into the story with a quick short tutorial, which for what its worth gives you a nice reminder of how a fighter works however there is no reminder for what is going on in the story, Ubisoft Montreal rely

completely on you knowing the plot well beforehand, that doesn't mean to say that they don't do a good job of telling this story, they suprisingly unlike most anime games do a good job of retelling the plot.
When you get to do some fighting it presents itself pretty well, the controls are easy to pick up for anyone, which is great as there are alot of Naruto fans out there, however there could have been more depth to the fighting, longer combo's etc which is dissapointing but to be expected.

There are still a good number of characters to choose from, all chosen to keep in with the current timeline however we have characters returning. There are several modes to take your fighters to:
1. A basic versus mode
2. a tournament mode
3. Online multiplayer

To start with the basics, in this game Ubisoft decided to add a tag battle system and for the most part it really makes the fights that much more enjoyable, each fighter is unique with their own jutsu and combo's and are balanced in a different way.
In the tournament mode you can fight alone or with a friend, wherein you complete a number of fights to progress to the top, nothing special here.
Now for the online, first of all we all know a fighter MUST have online these days to have any kind of worth and The Broken Bond does this job O.K.
My first problem is that it seems to be very unbalanced, where some characters are much tougher than others meaning everyone chooses that character and it really does not work.
Secondly, well actually no that first one is a big enough problem.

Now to refresh your memory fighting is only half to ubisofts vision of naruto, we still have the platforming to cover.
So basically you will spend most of your time going on endless fetch quests and running back and forwards through multitudes of tree jumping sequences, this could have been pleasantly avoided with a kind of fast travel system, it really would have give the whole game the speed that the fighting system employs. As you can tell this is my biggest gripe with the game, and is probably why it took me up to 25 hours to beat the game and collect everything, time that could have been halved with fast travel.
So in the adventuring part you must use your friends to solve puzzles get past traps etc, and its pretty entertaining, but when you are on your way back from another fetch quest and have to build another clone bridge it gets completely tiresome.

In conclusion 5 main points to take away

• Fast paced Enjoyable fight system
• Good roster of characters
• Unbalanced fighting system online
• Repetitive fetch quests
• Visually stunning

So ye, for the casual Naruto fan maybe a rent
Hardcore Naruto fans your looking at a buy for this one
Everybody else well if you dont like Naruto you ain't gonna be playing this.