When Dragon Ball Z ended, the rabid teenage fanbase needed a new anime to sink their teeth into. Several alternatives have arisen such as One Piece and Bleach, but arguably the most popular is Naruto. The smash-hit anime and manga has seen multiple video game adventures, including last year’s first Western-developed outing, the open world adventure Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. After a positive response to the first game, Ubisoft is back with Naruto: The Broken Bond, which covers the next major part of the Naruto story while giving the gameplay a nice coat of polish.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Naruto is about a young ninja and his friends from the Hidden Leaf Village, and the adventures they have while training and developing their skills. Naruto is a special kind of boy; sealed inside him is the Nine-Tailed Fox, a mystical creature that once attacked the Village and killed many of its citizens. Sealing the beast within Naruto with his last breaths, the Fourth Hokage wished Naruto to be praised as a hero by the people he saved, but instead he was generally reviled. This results in Naruto developing a dream of become the Hokage, the most powerful ninja in the village, though his gung-ho attitude and underdeveloped abilities often lead him into getting into trouble.

The Broken Bond picks up where Rise of a Ninja left off, and covers the story up to the major break in the series (episodes 81 through 135). During the Chuunin advancement exams, former Leaf Village ninja Orochimaru launched a combined insurrection with members of the Hidden Sound Village. The Third Hokage stepped into action, fighting off the offensive and relieving Orochimaru of the use of his arms at the cost of his own life. The story deals with two major plots; the first is the search for a new Hokage to lead the reconstruction of the Hidden Leaf Village, and while the second is the disintegration of the relationship between best friends/rivals Naruto and Sasuke.


Story sequences are told via higher quality real-time cutscenes in The Broken Bond, as opposed to Rise of a Ninja’s use of clips from the show, which helps to eliminate the jarring transitions of last year’s game. As a whole, the game looks beautiful - even though much of the character models and environments were already produced for Rise of a Ninja and simply re-used for this year’s game, it’s still some of the best cel-shading you’ll see in a video game. Character animation is insanely fluid, and some of the environments, particularly the location of the final battle, are just amazing. Players can also choose between English and Japanese dialogue from the start, rather than having to wait for a separate language pack like last year.

The Broken Bond follows the same gameplay structure of Rise of a Ninja, breaking gameplay down into several different components. Most of the game is spent running around as Naruto, performing tasks for your superiors in and out of the Hidden Leaf Village. For the majority of the game, you’ll be accompanied by two other ninjas from Naruto’s cohort – Shikamaru, Choji, Neji or Kiba. Those aren’t the only ninjas you will control during the game, as some sequences will require you to control other favourites such as Sasuke and Rock Lee. Each member of the party possesses two jutsu, which will assist in your progression. Some of these you’ll use a lot more than others, such as Naruto’s Shadow Clone jutsu bridging technique (since every freaking bridge in the game is broken), or Shikamaru’s Shadow Manipulation jutsu for activating hidden switches. It’s pretty cool to start with, but quickly starts to feel like a chore since there’s no way to speed the process up, which is particularly annoying for Naruto’s bridge, since you have to spend 30+ seconds every time balancing his clones so they don’t collapse.


Most of your missions require you to go from A to B, find an object or beat someone up, then return to the Hidden Leaf Village. The game tries to stick closely to the events of the story, and reproduces everything you need to know, but this time they’ve tried to pad the game out with some filler (probably in response to Rise of the Ninja’s relatively short length). Most of these missions are harmless optional side missions, like racing Kiba, or performing deliveries for Shikamaru. Others are forced in the story, like looking for Choji’s favourite brand of chips or Neji’s search for escaped criminals. Some characters have jutsu that help you detect various objects, but it doesn’t help liven things up. The tree race missions you’ll go through between areas are fine the first couple of times you go through them, but the fact you have to do them every time you go between areas is particularly irritating.

Combat is the thing Naruto does best, but the fighting side of the game quickly becomes The Broken Bond’s crutch, thanks to a barrage of random encounters against weak opponents. It’s a fairly simple system, with horizontal, vertical, throw-based and jutsu attacks, but it’s reasonably versatile and fights move at a blistering pace. New to this year’s game is a tag-in system, where fights involve up to three ninjas on each side. By performing a combo that ends in a powerful white screen-hit, a quick tap of the left bumper will bring a partner in to complete a tag combo for extra damage. The basic tactics are pretty simple – players really just want to land enough hits to build up their jutsu meter, then knock the opponent across the screen to give them enough time to execute the jutsu motions. Most jutsus will trigger a mini-game that will require you to press buttons in a Simon Says sequence, lock a target onto a moving ninja, or just rapidly press a button to fill a meter. Some of the new jutsus are pretty cool, particularly Naruto and Sasuke’s new trademark energy attacks, Rasengan and Chidori.


The single player side of The Broken Bond should take about 10-12 hours to beat, depending on how you cope with the sharp increase in difficulty towards the end of the game. There’s plenty of side-questing and collection nonsense to pad the game out a bit further, and you can train your fighters up at the dojo (though this is recommended before the final mission). Outside of the main story, you can play the fighting mode with up to three other players, both online and offline. 28 different characters (plus two variants) are available, but many have to be unlocked by finding their card and defeating them in the single player side of the game. The online ranking infrastructure has been vastly improved, and the focus of the Achievements has shifted towards the offline side of the game, allowing for more serious contests.

Naruto: The Broken Bond is a satisfying follow up to last year’s game. The presentation is top notch, and the gameplay is accessible to all, not just fans of the Naruto series. The fighting engine is a little simple, but the blistering pace makes for some interesting contests. There’s just too many minor niggles holding the game back from being truly good; repetitive sequences, dull side missions and annoying filler are no doubt the result of a shortened development cycle. If Ubisoft can address these concerns, the inevitable Naruto Shippuuden game should be worth the wait.