Sunday, March 9, 2014

Naruto: Ninja Destiny (Nintendo DS)

Naruto: Ninja Destiny is a 3D fighting game for the Nintendo DS based on Masashi Kishimoto’s extremely popular shonen manga and anime franchise, Naruto. It tackles the first part of the series – with pre-timeskip characters – and uses an engine that is similar in principle to the Gamecube clash of Ninja games. The main difference is that aside from the button controls, players can also use the touchscreen to launch special moves and use power-up items.

Now that we’ve got the basic introduction out of the way, it’s safe to say that Naruto: Ninja Destiny for the Nintendo DS doesn’t even warrant a full length review. It’s a really terrible game that has no redeeming value whatsoever. Or at least none that are worth the asking price for the game cart.



The visuals, for starters, are substandard 3D even for a Nintendo DS game. The graphics are extremely low-resolution and you can see the pixelation even on the DS’s tiny screen. The controls are extremely floaty and laggy, and the gameplay itself is borked as it usually devolves into players teleporting behind each other until one of them runs out and gets hit by a combo. At this point, it is not even worth mentioning that the differences between the playstyles of the characters are superficial at best. I simply can’t recommend this game even if you’re the biggest Naruto fan ever.


There’s also a couple of follow-ups to this game, titled Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2, and a Japanese only exclusive 3rd installment but they’re not worth checking out. They added more characters (including the ability to fight tailed beasts), but didn’t bother fixing any of the gamebreaking flaws that the first game had.