I admit it: I don’t really get the Naruto craze. I think that I might just be a decade too old to really appreciate it. Heck, I still remember when Dragonball Z was a big deal. Regardless, someone must love this franchise, as it seems like everybody and their best friend is bringing out games based on this excitable ramen-obsessed orange ninja.

Of course, I’m aware of what Naruto is. I could probably even pick a few of the characters out of a lineup. I still, however, felt a little out-of-place reviewing D3Publisher’s latest DS Naruto RPG. Would it make any sense to a Naruto novice? The best tie-in games offer something worthwhile for both the hardcore fanboys and people who have never watched an episode. Is Path of the Ninja one of these elusive games?

Unlike most of the other Naruto games, Path of the Ninja 2 is a traditional Japanese role-playing game. When I say traditional, I really mean traditional. It looks and feels like a Super Nintendo RPG. Of course, a Naruto-themed skin has been slapped over the usual genre tropes. You travel around with a party of plucky ninjas-in-training in order to save the world from some nefarious plot. Along the way, you’ll raid chests for loot, fight countless monsters, and talk to a bunch of villagers with a speech impediment that forces them to say the exact same thing over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the retro-feel. In a way, it’s kind of charming. Just know that if you don’t like old-school RPGs, Path of the Ninja isn’t going to do anything for you.

Your party has three members at all times. You’ll actually collect a ton of characters during the game, and you can switch active party members at any time. You can even swap characters during a fight. As you’d probably expect, characters collect experience and level up at pretty regular intervals. You can raid chests for new weapons and armor. You’ll also find scrolls littered around the world that grant new magic spells. It’s all pretty typical. Path of the Ninja isn’t exactly striving for innovation.

Battles are fought out on a grid. Your characters can move to any square on their half of the grid during their turn. Moving closer to an enemy lets you deal more damage, backing away raises your defense. When it comes time to fight, you can just use a basic attack, or you can spend “chakra” for magic “jutsu” powers. The attack jutsu are lifted right out of the Naruto anime. For instance, our titular character can clone himself and deal massive damage. Throughout the game, you can also find monsters that you can summon to fight for you. The battles are pretty fun, and adding that tiny bit of strategy with the grid makes for a nice difference. My main complaint about the battles in this game has nothing to do with the system, but with the fact that battles are random. I’m constantly thankful that the genre as a whole is moving away from random battles. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the encounter rate weren’t so high. I can barely go three steps without having to fight some ninjas. It’s like that Internet meme where four ninjas are supposedly hiding in someone’s living room, except that all four of those ninjas are going to fight you.

As I said before, Path of the Ninja 2 looks like it stepped right out of the SNES era. The entire game takes place on a 2D plane with a semi-overhead 45-degree viewpoint. Backgrounds look pretty nice. Everything is detailed and colorful. The character sprites look good, and individual characters are even recognizable. The character art and text can be a bit grainy, but it’s never a problem. In general, Path of the Ninja looks nice. For a while, the look kept reminding me of some specific SNES game, but I just couldn’t place my finger on it. Ultimately, I don’t think that it was reminding me of a specific game, but rather of an era in gaming.

While Path of the Ninja 2 is a solid Japanese RPG, I don’t know if there’s anything there to recommend to someone who isn’t a Naruto fan. The developers and writers probably realized this, because the game makes absolutely no attempt to educate the Naruto novice. I had no idea who 98% of the characters were or why I was supposed to care about them. Through inference, I picked up on a few basic elements of the overall Naruto metaplot, but I generally just sped though the story segments. It doesn’t help that the plot of the game is incredibly generic. Some evil ninjas have freed a monster. You need to collect magic mirrors to stop it. That’s about it. While a lot of RPGs have pretty generic plots, they make up for it with compelling characters. Because Path of the Ninja made no attempt to explain who these characters were; I just didn’t care. Of course, this does raise the question, would any non-fan ever play this game? Is it important to introduce everyone? I guess that it might not be.

Naruto Path of the Ninja 2 falls firmly in the middle of the quality spectrum. Other than some DS tricks like stylus control and blowing-on-the-screen gimmicks, it’s like some long-lost artifact of the Super Nintendo era. It’s a solid game that remains firmly rooted in the tropes of the RPG genre circa 1994. It doesn’t really innovate, but it doesn’t really need to. For Naruto fans, it’s a solid fifteen hours of entertainment. Everyone else might want to go back and play Final Fantasy IV again.

Score:

(Naruto fans, add a point)