Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections Review

ign.com:

Like the four Ultimate Ninja Storm games before it, Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is a comprehensive ode to the world and characters created by Masashi Kishimoto. Its immense cast of playable characters, each with exceptionally well-animated movesets, and a heaping handful of maps ripped straight from the anime with loving detail look better than ever before. But no level of source material accuracy can save this absolute mammoth of a game from hollow single-player content and a stale combat system that hasn’t meaningfully changed in fifteen years.

As far as Naruto fans go, I’m a bit of a weirdo. I was actually first introduced to the series ten years ago through Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, and I still vividly remember marveling at that entry’s shockingly big roster compared to most fighting games. That spurred me to get caught up with the show, and then I found myself further hooked thanks to the story mode’s faithful recreation of that fictional world. But while I stayed a Naruto fan, my friends and I eventually moved on to games with more depth, like Super Smash Bros. That’s because in order to support a roster that’s aptly described as a literal storm of ninjas, the combat has to stay pretty simple. This makes it approachable and easy to master, but there’s also no pot of gold to chase at the end of this learning curve like there is in better fighting games.

Combos flow like a watered-down version of Devil May Cry or Bayonetta; you can add variations to your moves, but most of the time you’ll be pressing the single attack button until your combo ends with a flashy finisher – unless you’re quick enough to cancel it into a special move or a dash before rinsing and repeating. Combo finishers usually end by