The Naruto franchise has lent itself well to the fighting game genre of games, but beyond that it hasn't really ventured too far out into other categories. For the first time, Naruto heads into what amounts to a light RPG mixed with typical action-adventure, beat-em up games. The formula works well for the franchise, but fails to do anything spectacularly well with it either.

THE STORY SO FAR
Naruto follows the story of a young boy, who upon birth had the ancient evil of a nine-tailed fox spirit placed within him, and so for that the village he lived in shunned him. From an early age, Naruto always wanted to grow up to be one of the top ninja of all time, and ultimately rise up to become Hokage (the leader of the entire village).

Typically, past Naruto games have focused on the actual source material from the manga and anime, such as the beginning story or the Chunin Exam portion of the story, but with Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles the developers have crafted a whole new side-story type adventure, that doesn't really fit into any discernable time period, so it falls almost anywhere in the middle you'd want to assume.

The story of the game isn't too much, because there isn't really anything that amounts to a sweeping, overarching branch. Instead, the game is more like living the life of Naruto than any specific story. For instance, you can roam around the top down over-world map by clicking on dots that represent locations or villages, and if you run across an enemy you'll fight them. Most of the game has you playing as Naruto, as the village has ran low on ninjas, and so it has enlisted their Genin level ninjas to perform some of the tasks. Being such a Genin level ninja himself, Naruto takes on several different tasks, like transporting goods, gathering cursed dolls, promoting a general store, etc.

The story is presented mainly through cutscenes that happen at key, pre-determined points, and though they sound like they feature all the original voice actors who perform in the American dubbed version of the anime series, the directing, writing, and overall poor design and graphic choices hampers the narrative.

GAMEPLAY
Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles is strictly a single player experience, and the vast majority of that time will be spent playing as Naruto, so you better really like the character. As mentioned in the story section above, the bulk of the game details you going to the Hokage's room and accepting tasks, which range from the more lowly and easier type D-ranking missions, all the way to the upper echelon level ones. The missions range in tasks, but at their core it still is mostly about beating every enemy that stands in your way and occasionally protecting something you are transporting.

Controls are fairly easy to use and get into, with the square and triangle buttons being your main two attack buttons, which you'll be using in combination to make different combos. Meanwhile, the X-button is used to perform jumps and dashes and the circle button is used to throw items, such as kunai and exploding bombs. The L1 shoulder button locks you onto a target, the L2 should button switches you out to your teammate characters, and the R1 and R2 shoulder buttons activate your jutsus and power attacks. The one shame here is there is no block ability whatsoever! How does a ninja live and not know how to block? The only defense is that once you start getting pummeled, you can perform a substitution jutsu by clicking the X-button right when their attack is about to land.

The main gauges you'll have to worry about are your health and stamina. Health should be fairly self-explanatory, because once it reaches zero, get ready to say hello to the big "Game Over" screen in the sky. The stamina is also important, as you'll need stamina to perform your shadow clone jutsu move and power attack as well. To refill it, head back to your main village or pick up the little blue orbs that appear after you beat an opponent in combat. You've also got the nine-tailed gauge on your screen, which builds with a successful number of consecutive hits from you, and once fully powered, will allow you for a short period of time to really unleash some damage onto your foes.

Another important factor is virtue orbs, which you get from completing quests and beating enemies in battle. You'll use these little yellow orbs to increase your health points, increase your stamina, or buy skill chips that you use to make your character stronger as well. Skill chips supplement different attributes, like making certain moves more powerful, giving you new abilities, etc. The thing is that you only have a tiny little board to add them to, so you aren't going to be able to fully max out your character, but rather must pick and choose what you feel is important to you.

Most of the time, your enemies will be your garden variety ninjas, though there are a few different types, with the regular run forward to attack kind, the shuriken throwing ones, strong and burly ninja, and fast and agile female ninjas as well. At the end of particular missions, you'll also have to fight some bosses, which are usually your fellow students. The boss fights are particularly tough, as they can do a lot of damage to you in a relatively short time, so you better make sure you are buying plenty of healing goods along the way. The other enemies can still put up a challenge, like the frustratingly hard female ninjas, but others are just fodder for you to do away with rather quickly.

Beyond the enemy AI problem, the other one comes from the fact that there aren't near enough characters from the series utilized, and even then you can't use them that much. Why aren't Sakura and Hinata playable? The only ones you can use are Sasuke, Shikamaru, Choji, and Neji. We'll gladly take all of those, but Choji? Really? Who wants the little guy? The developers did manage to include the character's personality as well as some of their signature moves, but the problem is that once you call them into play, you can only use them for a few seconds while their stamina meter is constantly going down. Look, I love Naruto, but if it was just him in the series, I wouldn't be a fan for long, because the other characters are what really round out the franchise.

GRAPHICS
Ugly. The characters pretty much look like they do in the anime, only they are a lot more blocky, jaggy, and dull looking here. If it were just the characters who didn't look perfect, then we wouldn't argue against the game so hard, but what is really the shame are the barren environments, which feature very PS1 looking graphics. Trees are really flat or have horribly designed textures, many open areas are exactly that, just barren nothingness, and the only standout level was one among a field of high grass, and even it looks nasty.

SOUND
The voicework is good, but not great, and partly that comes from the lack of really using the characters in the series beyond Naruto, and the fact that the writing for them is horrible as well. The sound work is okay, but you'll be hearing many of the same grunts and battle lines throughout the rather short game. The music is pretty good though, as it mimics the feel of the show well.

IN CONCLUSION
I'm a huge Naruto fan and was generally looking forward to this game, because I was interested in playing something I haven't already read or seen before. Though the game does indeed deliver that, it is very less than epic, which is okay if you want to read a side story about Naruto getting milk from the store (not really, but mundane tasks like that feels like what you are getting into) then the game is fine for you. As for me, I like my stories to have a bit more weight and for my game not to look so ugly.

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