Recent reviews by Phase

The graphical fidelity and the overall efficiency of this game on PCs is amazing. This is a very well made port of an already super-polished video game. Game's design is modeled after the anime, and at most point it looks infinitely better than the anime. It looks downright beautiful. However, compliments have to end here.

The story mode, in my opinion, is too close to the anime. Cutscenes between playable segments, although beautifully animated, sometimes even last longer than your average episode of the anime. If you don't have any prior information about Naruto lore, this game will not be able to ease you in, and in fact will bore and confuse you further. The playable modes in the story mode switch between open-world mode, fighting mode and QTE segments in more climactic fights. The open world mode is incredibly shallow, not much to do other than finding obviously placed loot and talking to NPCS; not sure why they even bothered making it. After finishing the story mode, the entire map is open to explore, but all the newly opened quests feel like a huge time sink. The huge chunk of the playable segments is fighting and it is done alright. There is a branching path system that doesn't really do all that much but it's good that it is there. All fights do try to introduce little quirks to them, which is nice because all characters feel pretty much the same when it comes to control them, thus it would be very boring to go from fight to fight if it wasn't for little differences every once in a while. The QTE segments aren't too long or annoying, but they're problematic as in every other game. The animated segments are done brilliantly but as you are only focused on button prompts, the player doesn't get much chance to really enjoy them. The story mode takes around 10-12 hours to complete but if you skip all the cutscenes I envision it taking you not more than 3-4 hours. There are sometimes hours of playtime between save points so beware. Overall, don't play the story mode unless you have an entire day to waste.

The other two modes are Offline and Online battles. Every character plays the same, and only differentiating factor between them is how they use their super moves. Every character gets only two super moves and one "Awakening" mode (which might bestow the character one or two more highly damaging moves). These facts all do in fact hinder the borderline immense character selection.

If you have no interest in Naruto, don't get it. If you have, you're better off with waiting for a sale. It does not offer either a liberating open world experience like the Naruto games on XBOX360, nor it does offer a highly sophisticated fighting game experience. However, the game is gorgeous and stays true to the original material.

A very entertaining and awkwardly humorous game most people give less credit than it should have.